My America

Dear Reverend Jackson,

As a child, like almost every other African, America to me was a dreamland, a land with the sort of values that we all cherished – and in many ways it still is.

It's the freedom – the freedom of speech, the freedom of association, the justice, the opportunity, the tolerance and religious pluralism that still makes America the big shining light for so many of the poor people of the world. I've always been attracted to America.

In 2000, while filming a documentary in Liberia about the long–running conflict with my country, Sierra Leone, I was imprisoned with three of my colleagues. If it wasn't for the efforts of the American government to get me and my three colleagues out, I would still be there now – or worse.

Not one of us journalists and filmmakers was an American citizen, yet your government – even President Clinton himself – worked very hard to get us out. I received a phone call from you, checking we were okay. Even as I spoke, I was surrounded by the chief justice, the head of police and five gunmen. You prayed for me over the phone and assured me of our release.

I will always be grateful to America. You showed me you are the good guys who care about our world.

So how can I describe how I feel today? I think the one word for me is “disappointment.”

openDemocracy’s “My America: Letters to Americans” series published eighteen exchanges between July and November 2004.

The series includes letters between the Somali journalist Harun Hassan and the American journalist, Michael Maren.

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The lives of so many people in Sierra Leone and the rest of Africa have been made worse by the ancient rule of African governments: “might is right”. If someone more powerful wants something, they generally get it. If you are a member of a tribe or group that is weak then you will suffer if you get in the way of the powerful. Being innocent is no protection.

In my country, Sierra Leone, hundreds of thousands of my innocent neighbours have experienced a more awful toll of human pain and suffering than you can possibly imagine, Reverend Jackson, and as I have grown up I have come to understand that this crude idea that might is right is probably responsible for most of this pain and the sadness and madness of my country and my continent.

America was the living, breathing example of what the world could be like if “might” was not automatically “right”; if justice was blind to wealth, if opportunity was available to all and if the innocent knew that the United States of America stood for them and all the innocent of this one world.

I say “America was”, because now I have seen things that have made me change my mind.

Two years ago I travelled to some countries where the American military have recently operated, amongst them Somalia and Afghanistan.

In Somalia in 1993 the US army was initially welcomed – there was famine and terrible banditry – but things went quickly wrong. I walked through the ruins of a two–storey building where seventy of Somalia’s clan leaders had been killed.

Four American helicopters, one at each corner, had hovered at the second–floor level of the building and opened fire. No one walked out of that place alive.

When I was there I asked myself how Americans would feel if someone did this to their own Senate.

Needless to say, the people of Somalia, until then divided by civil war, came together to fight the presence of Americans in their country. The famous “Black Hawk” was shot down, its pilot dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, and America withdrew its forces.

In Afghanistan, I visited a village in Oruzgan province. There had been a wedding feast a week before I arrived. According to the US army, they had been fired on from the village.

You could still see the abandoned food in the rooms where the villagers had been celebrating at the wedding party. The groom lost twenty–five of his relatives that night. The villagers told me that, right after the attack, American ground forces arrived and took away all the munitions they could find. I saw bomb–craters and bullet–holes all over the place.

In the hospital in Kandahar I found thirty victims, amongst them women and children. I saw evidence that plenty of women and children had died as well.

So, Reverend Jackson, I have seen what American power can do. I truly believe that those women and children were as innocent as any who died in the twin towers or on board those aircraft on 9/11. I know this is a very traumatic period for all Americans and many others as well. I understand that the evil killers must be stopped – but surely with more care for the innocent, the defenceless who get caught in between?

Sorious Samura’s letter to Jesse Jackson is published by special request of openDemocracy’s editor Anthony Barnett; see his “Best of ’04: openDemocracy, open politics”

More by Sorious Samura on openDemocracy:

• “My American dream” (March 2003)

• Caspar Melville, “In an African voice: a profile of Sorious Samura” (February 2004)

• “Re–presenting Africa: an interview with Sorious Samura” (February 2004)

If you consider this work valuable, please subscribe to openDemocracy and ensure a regular supply of articles, analysis and debates about the real world.

America to me has standards and values which for most of my life I have respected and admired. Reverend Jackson, my question now is: where were those standards and values, in the rubble of the village I visited in Afghanistan? Where were they in the destroyed homes of the innocent families who found themselves caught between American soldiers and their enemies?

I believe your government and many good Americans believe that your country’s involvement in Iraq is “a righteous cause”. But I don’t think that is enough to justify the death of so many good people, people like you and me, whose only crime was to be between the American military and the people who hate what America stands for.

I honestly fear that the result of all this killing of innocent people will be that more and more people will join those who hate what America stands for. The children, parents, relatives and friends of the innocent who have died will become the enemies of America.

So how come “my America”, the defender of democracy, voice of the voiceless and supporter of quality lives and human values, the America I grew to love, has become the America hated by millions in our world … now more than ever before?

How did we get to a stage where my respected America has become the resented United States of America ... an America believed only too willing to risk all simply to force weaker nations to accept its “made in America" label of democracy? How did we get here?

You know, in my mind, Reverend, America has always been the friend, my friend, the ally of the innocent and the free. Is this really true now? I'm afraid I don't think so.

Yours sincerely,