Please sign and share this letter thanking Representative Ilhan Omar for her leadership to transform US foreign policy and put us on the Path to PEACE!

We, the undersigned, wholeheartedly endorse your Path to PEACE, a foreign policy legislative package based on a vision that centers human rights, justice and peace as the basis of U.S. involvement with the world. PEACE, or Progressive, Equitable and Constructive Engagement, fundamentally challenges our militaristic foreign policy and offers an inspiring message for what we want U.S. interaction with the world to look like.

For too long, our government has waged war and imposed sanctions in our names, claiming that it will make us and the world safer. As we get closer to the 17th anniversary of the Iraq war, we are making it clear that we know this is just empty rhetoric. Military threats, drone strikes, bombings, troop deployments, assassinations and sanctions that impede access to food and medicine don’t make us safer, they make us less safe by causing or intensifying conflicts, spurring mass migration, contributing to climate catastrophe and making the world more chaotic and dangerous. We say no more and are now walking the path to peace.

The Path to PEACE includes:

• a bill that would give Congress more power to limit sanctions by limiting the ability of the executive branch to wage economic war without congressional oversight;
• legislation to reduce support to countries that commit abuses;
• a $5 billion transfer of military funding to a create a Global Peacebuilding Fund;
• proposals to require the U.S. to join UN agreements on children’s rights and migration and International Criminal Court;
• a direction to U.S. officials to craft a robust international deal to address the massive displacement of people around the world.

If the United States joins the International Criminal Court (ICC) and signs the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, this would send a clear message to President Trump and others that neither the U.S., nor anyone else, is above the law. Joining the ICC would send the world a message that America is ready to participate in the global community as an equal partner, and not as a hypocritical bully. This hypocrisy is most evident in how we use human rights as a tool to pressure others while our Congress refuses to approve a treaty that establishes the human rights of children. We support you, Representative Omar, in your efforts to get the United States to abide by international law and protect children worldwide.

The legislation in this package also includes a bill to give Congress more oversight of sanctions. As things currently stand, sanctions legislation does have humanitarian exemptions. However, these exemptions do not work in practice, causing hardship, suffering and even death for innocent civilians in heavily sanctioned countries like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. We support Representative Omar’s efforts to strengthen humanitarian exemptions and ensure that sanctions do not affect civilian healthcare facilities, water infrastructure, civilian energy infrastructure, primary or secondary educational facilities, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, considering that economic sanctions constitute economic war, we believe that Congress, as the only body with the power to declare war, should have more authority over sanctions, which would bring the added benefit of facilitating diplomacy.

Representative Omar, please know that you have the support of thousands of Americans who are fed up with war and foreign policy that destabilizes the world and prioritizes corporate interests over the interests of Americans and the safety and security of innocent civilians abroad.

Thank you for leading us on the Path to PEACE. I will walk this path and ask others to join us.

Sincerely,

Will you sign?