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my america: letters to americansThe most anticipated United States presidential election campaign in fifty years culminated in George W Bush's election on 2 November 2004. In a unique series of letters, individual non-Americans and Americans exchanged thoughts and feelings about the world’s lone superpower.
"Can the 'American dream' belong also to the world?" In August 2004, Richard Rorty, who died on 8 June, answered with reflections on imperialism and idealism
Dominic Hilton was part of the team working on openDemocracy’s “My America: Letters To Americans” project, in which eighteen non-American nationals wrote to counterparts in the United States. Here he gives his view on aspects of those exchanges and America’s role in role in world affairs. Read the rest of this post...
The Sierre Leonean filmmaker Sorious Samura wrote a letter to Jesse Jackson for openDemocracy’s My America: Letters to Americans series. This is its first publication. Read the rest of this post...
Can America make allies of Pakistan’s people rather than its military? In the eighteenth - and last - of our Letters to Americans series, Pakistani human rights campaigner Asma Jahangir writes to Steve Coll, Pulitzer-prizewinning author of ‘Ghost Wars: the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden’. Read the rest of this post...
Does United States democracy need the world’s aid? In the seventeenth of our Letters to Americans series, Swedish activist with The World Speaks, Kajsa Klein, writes to the African American writer and civic leader, Julianne Malveaux. Read the rest of this post...
Has America forgotten Russian national interests in pursuit of its own? In the sixteenth of our Letters to Americans series, Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies in Moscow, writes to Robert V Daniels, professor at the University of Vermont and author of ‘Russia’s Transformation’. Read the rest of this post...
Is America’s foreign policy a slave to political priorities and business interests? In the fifteenth of our Letters to Americans series, Ken Wiwa, justice campaigner and advocate for the Ogoni people in the Niger delta, writes to Gayle Smith, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Read the rest of this post...
Can the crucial relationship between the United States and Japan best be served by disagreement as well as harmony? In the fourteenth of our ‘Letters to Americans’ series, Japan’s former ambassador in Washington, Yoshio Okawara, writes to the historian John Dower, author of “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Two”. Read the rest of this post...
After Iraq, can the oldest transatlantic alliance ever be repaired? In the thirteenth of our Letters to Americans series, Sabine Herold of the libertarian group ‘Liberté Chérie’ writes to Kenneth Timmerman, author of ‘The French Betrayal of America’ Read the rest of this post...
How wide is the gap between Americans and Iraqis? In the twelfth of our Letters to Americans series, Iraqi blogger and mother of three sons, Faiza Al-Araji, writes to Anthony Swofford, ex-US marine and author of the 1991 Gulf war memoir, “Jarhead”. Read the rest of this post...
How real, and how rightful, is America’s support for Israel? In the eleventh of our Letters to Americans series, the journalist and West Bank settler Yisrael Harel writes to Jo-Ann Mort, peace campaigner and co-author of a book about the Kibbutzim. Read the rest of this post...
Can the writer’s imagination dissolve the lies of power? In the tenth of our Letters to Americans series, the exiled Chinese poet Yang Lian writes to Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm. Read the rest of this post...
Is America a model or a bad example for Europe? In the ninth of our Letters to Americans series, Czech Eurosceptic and presidential adviser, Petr Mach, writes to Jeremy Rifkin, author of The European Dream.
Can the United States see its Latin
American neighbours as equals not vassals? In the eighth of our Letters
to Americans series, the Bolivian labour and anti-privatisation organiser
Oscar Olivera writes to Jim Schultz, author of The Democracy Owners'
Manual.
Is the United States’s love affair with human rights over? In the seventh of our Letters to Americans series, the Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi writes a heartfelt letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, pioneer of American humanitarianism and commitment to the United Nations. Read the rest of this post...
Will Iraq’s legacy be a resentful, mistrusted America? In the fifth of a series in which original voices from around the world exchange letters with Americans, the British broadcaster David Elstein, a libertarian conservative and anti-anti-American, expresses his dismay over recent United States foreign policy to the Hudson Institute’s Irwin Stelzer. Read the rest of this post...
Can America be good as well as great? In the fourth of our Letters to Americans series, Antara Dev Sen of India’s “The Little Magazine” writes to Dinesh D’Souza, author of “What’s so great about America”. Read the rest of this post...
Is America its own biggest enemy? In the third of our Letters to Americans series, Harun Hassan, whose life was transformed by American intervention in Somalia, writes to Michael Maren, a journalist he befriended there. Read the rest of this post...
Does America need friends? In the second of a new series in which original voices from around the world exchange letters with Americans, Will Hutton, British author of “A Declaration of Interdependence: why America should join the world”, writes to the anti-tax, small-government crusader Grover Norquist. Read the rest of this post...
Can America combine power with modesty? In the first in a new series in which original voices from around the world exchange letters with Americans, the leader of the Chinese democracy movement Wei Jingsheng writes to Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton. Read the rest of this post...
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