Open Letter to President Obama about the Iraqi Attack on         Ashraf City 

by Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

International Analyst Network, Codex-Politics, July 28, 2009                                            American Chronicle, World Sentinel, July 29, 2009

Americans  for  Democracy  in  the Middle-East 

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.     Aristotle

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Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker, Chairman                                              New York, NY 10022-2902
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Dr. Alice Rose, Ph., D.                                                                                           www.ADME.ws 


28 July 2009


The Honorable President Barack H. Obama 
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500 

Dear Mr. President:

It pains me to write to you of an incident that occurred today in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, home-base of the Iranian resistance organization, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization that has supplied the United States with intelligence about the Iranian regime’s nuclear and missile programs. Camp Ashraf, which has been under the protection of the United States Army until the SOFA agreement of December 2008, in which the right of the residents of Ashraf to continued asylum in Iraq was assured by the Iraqi government, maintaining the status of the MEK in Ashraf that had been in force since its voluntary disarmament in May 2003, was brutally invaded after a siege that has been going on for some five months, by a heavily armed Iraqi police force joined by Iraqi army units of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s special elite Baghdad Brigade, numbering over 2,000 men. As of 5:00 PM (EDT) four members of the MEK have been slain, 31 have disappeared, 385 injured (15 seriously and two in a coma). Leaders of the MEK have been arrested.

I am in pain because I wrote you to warn you that you needed to act to protect Ashraf and the human rights of its residents’ who have been under constant threat from elements in Iraqi Prime Minister Dr. Nouri Kamal al-Maliki’s government, particularly the Interior Ministry—I wrote to you over four months ago—and you did nothing. By doing nothing, their blood now is on your hands Mr. President.

I must inform you that further inaction puts your entire Middle East Peace Proposal into jeopardy. If the United States reneges on its promise to protect 3500 Iranian exiles in Iraq, why should the State of Israel trust that the United States will fulfill promises to protect the Jewish State? And why should any of the Gulf States believe that the United States will protect them from a nuclear Iran with an American “nuclear umbrella”? If you break a promise to a small group, where there is almost no cost involved, how can you be trusted to fulfill promises that involve great costs, in dollars, manpower, and quite possibly, in lives?

When you were on the campaign trail last year, you spoke eloquently about the need to support human rights and human dignity—was that just rhetoric, or do you really believe in human rights, especially for those that would fight tyranny? Does Barack Hussein Obama believe in human rights, or is he just a hollow reed?

Mr. President, the entire world is watching you; pick up the phone and call Prime Minister al-Maliki now, to call off this vicious attack on innocent, unarmed men and women, an attack that has been carried out at the behest of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran.

Mr. President, we Americans expect our president to lead us on a dignified path. Do the right thing and make al-Maliki stop this attack, and fulfill his promises under the SOFA. God bless America.

Sincerely yours,

   Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

cc: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
      United States Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill