[Blog] An Open letter to President Trump

President Donald TRUMP,

From all over Planet ‘America’ (sorry, Planet Earth) millions saw and listened to your inauguration and first political speech as 47th President of the USA, on the 20th of January 2025.

As a group for the defence of Democracy, we congratulate you on getting down straightaway to business in the defence and rebuilding of your own country, and in declaring yourself a man of peace, hence willing to intervene to stop the wars raging at present and any future ones. Too many Heads of State and Governments move too slowly, even hesitantly, with implementing the necessary reforms to make this world a better place, preferring the status quo, an easy option! BUT behind these rapid, first day decisions of yours, there SHOULD have been science and research, in-depth consultation and discussion. Otherwise, such decisions may be trial and error, failure, or could even arrive at results opposite to those intended (making this world a better place for all).

There may be decisions taken too fast without the research needed to support THEIR VALIDITY. The host of top-level professors and researchers in your country can propose ways to make this world a better place for all to live in. It is a sign of profound ignorance about the world to limit your knowledge to what you have gleaned from television or from your businessman friends.

For example, your announced decision TO INCREASE not drastically decrease the production and use of petrol, hence of the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is totally contrary to what the planet and ALL its 8 billion inhabitants need and contrary to what USA needs !!With that proposed decision you climb to being public enemy NUMBER ONE of Planet Earth.

We mourn the 46,500 Palestinians, including 17,500 children, killed in the last 15 months, also more than 109,196 people injured, and the more than 11,160 missing. We also mourn the toll on Israelis killed, numbering 1,139. And we are grateful for the release of hostages held by Hamas, as well as political prisoners from Israeli jails, which started on 19th January. 

We witness the 10,000+ Palestinians going on foot, donkey carriages, lorries, vans, and cars back to their villages or towns to see their houses. In 80% of cases, destroyed and reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs and missiles. A sad tragedy of human wickedness. All perpetrated using arms and missiles provided by your country, plus billions of US dollars gifted to Israel.

All states must now support and indeed put pressure on Israel and Hamas to fully implement this ceasefire and agreement and let the rebuilding and reconstruction of Gaza start, now that we see the end of an attempted genocide in Gaza. From 2023 to 2025, there was an attempted genocide by Israel of the Palestinian people in Gaza, when Israel destroyed most schools, hospitals, housing,  roads, agriculture and factories, while attempting to starve the population. Gaza/Palestine can now reconstruct and rebuild their homeland.

(This is the latest crime of genocide this world has known. After Nazi Germans exterminated more than five million Jews during WWII,  after the Hutus massacred 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1993).

Please join us in condemning war “AS A TOOL OF POLITICAL ACTION”.  Invite all nations to use negotiation and where necessary arbitration- when or friction arises-instead of USING missiles, tanks and bombs or hostages as “arguments”. So, on the positive side we appeal to you to immediately open negotiations with President Putin, with Xi, Von der Leyen, with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the UN Secretary General, for a ceasefire, for stopping the war and start the rebuilding of the destroyed nation of Ukraine. An occasion of doing something good for the world!

At a time when entire sectors of the planet are roasting under extreme heat or freezing under extremely low temperatures, with droughts, floods, intense hurricanes and fires increasing in frequency and intensity, all STATES on earth have got together to combat and save it from climate change and global warming, which could render the Planet unsuitable for human and animal life. We have done so at the UN COP meetings, though  to a  limited extent, insufficient as per scientific assessment. We know the measures needed to control and limit climate change by 2030/40, and we all must start implementing them fully. Scientifically advanced countries, including Russia, and the USA should contribute a maximum to research to achieve this climate aim.

Your decision to come out of the Paris agreement under COP 25, and to increase (not decrease!) production and therefore use of fossil fuels is completely against what all scientists, leaders, and citizens of the earth are now embarked on doing to save this planet. Your decision if upheld will constitutes an absolute crime against humanity.

Please show respect for the UN Charter and the sovereignty of all 192 members of the United Nation. So, on trade, free trade, ALL nations have rights. Defending the USA is of course your goal and aim. But again, verify the facts before pronouncing! At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos, you repeated false claims about the European Union. “They don’t take our, essentially, don’t take our farm products, and they don’t take our cars.” Neither are true, European import of American farm products is huge. All 192 nations also place their own state FIRST. So, world trade, an essential system in this planet of limited resources and 8 billion people, CAN ONLY THRIVE through co-operation, give, and take.

Saddam Hussian justified Iraq’s occupying Kuwait in 2001, on the totally false basis “that Kuwait was a province of Iraq”. Nor can one claim back territory long settled and won legally and correctly. Is Russia for example going to claim back the biggest state of the USA (Alaska), purchased from it in 1867 for the bagatelle sum of 7.2 million US$ - now worth probably 7 trillion dollars?

Panama is not a province of the US!! The USA cannot claim part of it, nor indeed can Britain reclaim the Eastern seaboard of America, including the state of New York where you were born!
 
Dr Michael ATCHIA
For Democracy Watch Mauritius.
25th January 2025
mklatchia@intnet.mu