Guest contributor
Alan Clements
Prologue: A World Ablaze
Mr. President,
On May 25, Russia unleashed its deadliest assault on Ukraine, launching nearly 370 missiles and drones across the country, killing at least 12 in Kyiv alone, as reported by The New York Times.
This barrage, the largest of the war, targeted cities like Odesa and Kharkiv, leaving dozens injured and infrastructure in ruins. Since the invasion began in 2022, estimates suggest over 1,000,000 Ukrainian and Russian lives have been lost, with millions displaced.
This carnage compounds the toll of the past century’s wars—hundreds of conflicts claiming over 100 million lives. When you called Vladimir Putin “absolutely crazy” for these attacks, you spoke truth.
But I must ask—why does your outrage stop at Ukraine’s borders? If slaughtering civilians is madness in Kyiv, what is it in Rafah, Gaza City, or Khan Younis, where American-forged bombs have erased entire communities?
Your words carry weight, Mr. President. When you speak, the world listens. But when you remain silent, that silence becomes a weapon. It seeps into policy, resounds in drone strikes, and endorses destruction. It declares, with chilling clarity: some lives matter. Others do not.
That, Mr. President, is what is truly absolutely crazy.
- The double standard of outrage
You condemned Russia’s war crimes. Yet where is your voice against the devastation unleashed by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose campaign has buried over 15,000 children beneath Gaza’s sand and rubble?
Where is your compassion for the 260,000 children in Gaza—over half the population under 18—who now pray not for dreams, but for release from suffering?
Putin’s assault on civilians is unjustified, as you rightly said. But Netanyahu’s use of 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, hospitals, and ambulances—funded by American taxpayers—is not merely unjustified. It is a moral catastrophe. And it unfolds under your gaze.
As a former Buddhist monk, a witness to war’s exiles, and a father, I speak not from politics, but from humanity’s heart. I cannot unsee the images: tiny limbs protruding from shattered concrete, a child’s doll stained with blood, the hollow eyes of survivors who envy the dead.
This is not policy. It is spiritual desolation.
- The illusion of selective morality
We are enthralled by a theater of selective morality. We decry missiles when they fall on European cities, yet tolerate them when they pulverize Middle Eastern lives under the guise of security. We have crafted a hierarchy of human worth, and this delusion fuels genocide—televised, normalized, and streamed into every home like an unrelenting tragedy.
I invoke the memory of Yitzhak Rabin, who, despite a bloodstained past, turned toward peace. He said: “You don’t make peace with friends. You make peace with enemies.”
Mr. President, you understand transformation. You have pivoted, disrupted, reshaped. What if you condemned not one tyrant, but tyranny itself? What if you declared—not as a politician, but as a human being—that the era of war is over? That all bombs, no matter who drops them, are an affront to our shared humanity?
- The children are not collateral
The children of Gaza are not threats. They are barefoot dreamers, their lungs choked with ash, their futures erased by policy. Their cries are not lesser. Their lives are not expendable. When you ignore them, Mr. President, you are not neutral—you are complicit.
I write not in anger, but in grief—and in hope. I believe you can forge a legacy that transcends borders.
Imagine this, Mr. President:
You call for a global ceasefire.
You demand the dismantling of the arms trade.
You redirect billions from weapons to food, homes, schools, music, and healing.
You transform arsenals into gardens, missiles into bridges.
Do this, and you will not merely be remembered—you will be revered. History will not demand your campaign; it will rise to honor you. The Nobel Peace Prize will not be a gesture—it will be inevitable.
But this is not about accolades. It is about children.
- The Dhamma’s call to awakening
I end with six words from the Dhamma, the ancient path of awakening:
Tanhā: The thirst for more, even at the cost of ruin.
Lobha: The greed that builds empires on graves.
Mohā: The delusion that whispers, “This is inevitable.”
We name them.
And now, three more:
Ahimsā: The courage to harm none.
Mettā: The blessing of boundless love.
Karunā: The sacred ache that compels us to heal.
We invoke them.
Mr. President, the path is clear. If you dare to speak—not for selective outrage, but for the end of all war—you will not just shift policy. You will reshape history.
Why delay?
The world awaits.
And so do the children.
P.S. A Plea for Myanmar, my spiritual home
Mr. President, the madness of selective outrage extends to Myanmar, where my heart resides. Since the 2021 coup, 21,000 political prisoners languish in jails, 10,000 civilians have been killed, 20 million people—nearly half the population—need acute humanitarian aid, and 100,000 homes have been destroyed.
The entire democratically elected leadership, including President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, remains imprisoned, while weapons from Putin and Xi Jinping fuel this carnage.
That, too, is absolutely crazy. I implore you to speak out for the immediate release of Myanmar’s political prisoners and a ceasefire to end this suffering. Let your voice be a beacon for justice in my spiritual home. Thank you, sir.
Alan Clements is an author, investigative journalist, and former Buddhist monk ordained in Myanmar, where he lived for years immersed in the country’s spiritual and political landscapes. He is the author of Burma: The Next Killing Fields? and The Voice of Hope, co-authored with Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the four-volume Burma’s Voices of Freedom and Aung San Suu Kyi From Prison and a Letter to a Dictator. His decades-long work focuses on Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for democracy, human rights, and spiritual resilience.
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