An Open Letter To American Friends
By M Hasan Jowher
22 October, 2004
Countercurrents.org
Dear Fellow AmericansThank you America for your numerous gifts to earth. Your medicines saved numerous precious lives, your inventions made our life comfortable. American explorations from the sub-atomic to supra-galactic broadened our understanding of life, its origin and perhaps direction. And above all we
thank you for proclaiming the dignity of human race and liberty and equality of all humans on earth. Without you this world would have been badly impoverished.On this third anniversary of Nine-Eleven I join you in mourning the loss of innocent American lives and offer profound condolences to the bereaved. I want you to know that I had profusely cried with you and was angry no less. I too want its perpetrators punished. Along with other like criminals.
As a curious middle class Muslim in the far off India I grew up admiring your heroism, sportsmanship and adventures, science and technology, struggles and compassion. I marveled at your fine democratic spirit and institutions. Although culturally very different, I instinctively aligned myself with your travails and lapped up your icons. For most of mankind you became the ultimate dreamland.
That sadly is past. Alas! the famed American spirit, too, seems to have fallen prey to the vagaries of history. Your successive governments' foreign policies have developed utter contempt for the weak and vulnerable. Virtually righting the might you have adopted disturbing double standards conveniently overlooking stark truths. May I present another side of the reality?
You virtually coined the phrase Islamic Terrorism popularizing the notion that Muslims are by default terrorists. Undoubtedly Nine-Eleven was an act of terrorism. But reckon who killed more humans in history. Muslims? Consider the massacre of Jews in Germany, the carnage of innocents on both
sides in the two world wars including in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Picture these victims: mothers feeding babies, patients inside hospitals, revelers in wedding processions, peasants at work in agricultural farms and workers in medicine factories.. killed in Sudan, Vietnam, Afghanistan and now in
Iraq. These were about as innocent as those in WTC. The victims, not the killers happened to be Muslims.You and I have squarely condemned the Palestinian suicide bombers, the barbaric Beslan school killers. But have you imagined how a Palestinian, driven out of his homeland feels when Israeli occupiers bulldoze his villages and destroy whole streets in "preemptive strikes" - an expression
converting murder to statecraft? Or how the Chechens deprived of their right of self-determination for 300 years perceive our world?A bomb is a bomb, whether crude or nuclear; missiles, chemical weaponry, armoured vehicles, gunships, communication jammers and peeping satellites.. are not within the reach of the Palestinians and Iraqis. Suicide bombing, kidnapping and throat slaughters are. If these appear barbaric please
remember they are but minuscule, though more visible version of state sponsored terrorism. The American state has made this ancient human aggression more sophisticated and remote-managed - and hence seemingly less barbaric. But when American fighter aircrafts rained wholesale bombs on
unsuspecting innocent Muslims, the rest of the world saw it as just that: barbaric. Mass murder using state apparatus.When your foreign policy pampers Muslim despots, Emirs, Sheikhs and kings - for your oil needs - and helps them suppress the people's struggles for freedom, liberty and democracy, why does your sense of democracy not militate?
Would you like a Muslim ruler to impose his values upon you and your country and, if you disobey, be punished and called aggressors, militants, terrorists? Isn't your President doing just that in Iraq? In simple language America is aggressor and the Iraqis are fighting for their freedom from occupation.
Your government has fed you on familiar diet: homeland security, chasing the enemy, preempting terrorism et al. But, sorry, most people believe that today America has more enemies than before, that despite your mighty arsenal you live in greater danger than ever before. Anyone who pushes people to suicides lives dangerously.
Haven't you somehow developed a jaundiced, self-centered world-view? Liberty, democracy, freedom and rule of law for yourselves at home, injustice, aggression for others outside? Your soldiers are liberators and heroes; theirs jihadis, militants, aggressors, fanatics! To know how the world regards your foreign policy, you don't need global referendum; the UN General Assembly proceedings, despite the stifling pressure exerted by your government through puppet regimes and leaders, suffice. How come the heirs to the heroes of liberty came to condone such plain indignity?
Most of humanity sympathized with you for Nine-eleven. Even after blatant aggression in Iraq most people - including Muslims - distinguish the state from the ordinary American. By re-electing Mr Bush, however, you will be endorsing his policy of murder and aggression. Would you then not be liable to retaliation from his victims? Some don't believe America has the sole monopoly of murder.
We respect you because of what you gave, not for your power of killing. We count upon you to free earthlings of disease, deflect asteroids heading toward earth, not to police the earth and dictate your values on our lives. We want to love you, not fear. We adore those of you that show concern, understanding and reconciliation, not those calling for confrontation, destruction. If this madness continues, humanity loses, peace perishes, innocents fall, undoing all the good your forefathers did.
John Kerry who? I don't know. Bush I do. One is an unknown face, another tested evil. What right do I have to muddle in your politics? The same way as you have in Iraq, Korea, Iran, Libya, Indonesia.. minus the gun.
I absolutely dislike Osama and his ilk because they are against science, reason, modernity, secularism. But in all fairness - like many Americans - I see merit in his grievances. Remember he had started on your approved model: clean-shaven, trousers and jackets, a degree in economics, dances in Beirut.. But your system let him down, denied him justice. And the Jihadis won. Your political extremism fanned his religious extremism. Your injustice made the monster you now find him. You partnered him in repelling invading Soviets in Afghanistan. He partners with the Baathis in fighting your invasion of Iraq!
As truth seekers can you not see the man's commitment to his cause, sacrifices and character? What if you catch and kill him? You will have unwittingly made him a martyr. Then you lose, he wins more. Instead, through justice and fairness deflect his argument, his case. Reach out, as you once did, with truth, compassion, equality and thereby spread the famed American spirit.
Yes, the Jihadi's method is violent and I believe will betray their cause. But can you cure the ailments by treating merely the symptoms? Gandhi, Mandela and Dalai Lama have a message for you: truth, understanding and reconciliation. You have an opportunity this November of asserting Americanism. Peace on earth also happens to hinge on your decision.
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The author runs a voluntary organization, SPRAT, to further human rights
and may be reached at [email protected]
