Letter to America

Rishikesh, India
6 March 2003

A double exposure of a Cambodian prison cell (during the "Killing Fields") over a rice paddy. Photo by Michael Seto

From abroad, I have watched the image of America roller-coaster since that fateful day of 9/11. From pitied to pariah in eighteen months, how fortunes change.

I have listened to ill-informed, mis-informed, and well informed world citizens (backpackers like myself), and citizens of many nations hold forth on geopolitics, terrorism, globalism, environmentalism, capitalism; all the other -isms that scream for our attention from the daily headlines.

In these discussions, I sometimes play the role of American advocate, sometimes that of American apologist, but always that of full-time American. My observations:

The world loves us. And the world hates us.

I Want to be Like Mike

The world loves the American way of life - the consumption society and our abundant material comforts. This is envied and emulated everywhere.

Everywhere I go, I see people wearing Nike or NBA shirts; ball caps invariably sport 'NY' or 'LA'. They clamor to eat at McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut. They quaff Coke and Pepsi. Everywhere you look, American logos scream forth from shops, signs, billboards.

They surf CNN and Yahoo! and Ebay on the predominantly English internet on Microsoft software. Their local soap operas and news comes with Baywatch sandwiched in between and MTV available everywhere. Local cinemas play Hollywood blockbusters, with pirated copies on sale outside.

Still Waters Run Deep

The envy of our material success breeds much mimicry of our system, yet often without the proper underlying foundation of individual rights, democracy and rule of law. Capitalism-lite in many countries has devolved into crony kleptocracy, souring the masses to insensitive markets running roughshod over small farmers, ancient communities and traditional values. (Witness the backlash against the WTO and IMF and UN.)

Not that our system is perfect, but you have to hand it to a hundred white guys who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights two-hundred years ago.

Without the proper 'software' like courts and laws and government, the accouterments of capitalism ring very hollow and inflexible, becoming vulnerable to volatile markets. The 1997 Asian crises, Russian crisis, and current Venezuelan, Argentinian and Brazilian problems bear this out. Its imperative to build the institutions that regulate a free-market democracy; it cannot be faked.

Hypocrisy Democracy

And they hate us. The most negative feedback about America seems to boil down to our 'sanctimonious hypocrisy'. In the world's eyes, its "do as we say, not as we do." We do not practice what we preach; and we certainly apply our principals inconsistently in the eyes of the world. They see us as arrogant bullies.

We want to liberate Iraqi citizens, but not Saudi Arabian or Syrians or Pakistanis or Chinese. We will attack Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, but not North Korea or India or South Africa. We decry Hamas violence, but not equally egregious Israeli responses. We shower money on rebuilding Afghanistan and bribe Turkey, but aid not Zimbabwe or the Congo.

We make ill-advised friends of convenience, favoring patchwork short-term solutions over long-term problem solving. This thinking resulted in the Shah of Iran and now we chum up to Musharraf of Pakistan, smiling for CNN while making himself dictator.

The largest hydrocarbon emitters, we derail the Kyoto Accords. We take our ball and go home when it comes to setting up a International Criminal Court if US peacekeepers can't get immunity. The richest nation in the world, we still slap petty steel and banana sanctions against the EU.

We make a poor effort at trying to understand other cultures and beliefs, demanding that things be done the 'American' way. We paint the colored world in black and white, good and evil, with us or against us; alienating many potential supporters.

The most often heard phrase from locals as I travel, "We love Americans but not your government."

America the Beautiful

Don't get me wrong. I love America and in my travels see very little to entice me to live elsewhere on a permanent basis.

We do a helluva lotta things right and a lot of things very well. What country rallied to defeat totalitarian nations in two world wars? What country has landed men on the moon? Who invented the internet? Which country in just over 200 years of existence, from nothing, is the richest, most diverse, and most free place in the world?

Any local I met abroad, whom I queried, "if you could live in any country other than your own, where would you go?" The resounding answer, of course, they all want to come to America.

Return to the Desert

Thirteen years ago, I emerged from the black oil clouds shrouding the Al-Wafra oilfields in Kuwait from the sun. As part of a column of coalition military might, I helped to liberate Kuwait in a five-day, one-side war against clear Iraqi aggression. America faces two related short-term problems, the war on Iraq and the war on terrorism, the latter also a longer-term problem.

In my mind, we will be at war with Iraq in weeks. Inevitable. We will defeat Iraq quickly, but the postwar scenario ranks much more important and difficult than the campaign itself. Its installing and maintaining a democratic government in Iraq and preventing any possible instability from arising and spreading that will demand willpower and determination.

As Thomas Friedman, NY Times, puts it: "What all this means is that when it comes to building democracy in Iraq, the Europeans are uninterested, the Americans are hypocritical and the Arabs are ambivalent. Therefore, undertaking a successful democratization project there, in a way that will stimulate positive reform throughout the region, will require a real revolution in thinking all around ・among Americans, Arabs and Europeans. If done right, the Middle East will never be the same. If done wrong, the world will never be the same."

Grave New World (Dis)order

September 11th ushered us into a grave new world of insecurity, suspicion, and fear.

Terrorism is not new, nor is it unbeatable. But while we cut off the heads of the hydra, the important objective remains to kill the animal itself. This may be impossible.

Ultimately, terrorism gets managed, not defeated. There will always be the Mohammad Attas and Tim McVeighs. The task is to minimize their opportunities for success and minimize the tools available to them through political, economic, social, law enforcement, and preemptive action.

The longer-term task calls for us to minimize the number of people who want to be the next Atta or McVeigh. Tougher task, but again not impossible.

The dilemma is how to balance a free-society, and limit government intrusion into our privacy whilst accomplishing the above tasks. I am confident that our nation and the Western democracies will find a balance. Its inevitable that terrorist successes will bring overreaction in protective measures, but in the long-run, common sense should win out.

Brave New World

The next longer-term plan calls for us to loudly and consistently use our bully pulpit to push for the things we stand for. Democracy. Human rights. Free markets.

The West need to call on, cajole, and sometimes strong-arm governments, both friend and enemy, to move towards democratic systems where citizens control their own destiny.

Compassionate Capitalism

The developed and 'rich' nations need to use our wealth of resources to assist the poorer nations. In addition to the intangible 'software' of human rights, democracy, and free markets; we must assist in the 'hardware' building wells, sewers, schools, hospitals and power plants. To fail in this amounts to negligence.

We must offer hope.

If a Palestinian teenager thought about the upcoming school prom, borrowing the family Honda, playing Nintendo, and attending college; he would not be anxious to strap TNT to his torso and blow up a bus in Israel. Imagine if 10% of our defense budget, say $40 billion went to assist developing world in this manner; doubtless, in the long term, the global benefits would equal ten times that amount.

This last part really embodies 'draining of the swamp' of the short-term terrorism problem. Ameliorating the conditions that breed hopelessness and soften ears to the voices of extremism and intolerance, the siren song of violence and terrorism.

This cannot be accomplished overnight. This may take more like 25 years - a REAL long-term objective. Sadly, the US and the West tends to do poorly in these type of long-tailed undertakings. In our attention deficit world, we prefer those problems quickly and easily solved with an application of political, economic, or military power.

The Pepsi Challenge

This problem lies in the lap of our generation. That's us, the post baby boomers, Gen-X, Why and Zee; and maybe AA. The world we shape will be the world that surrounds us for the next quarter century.

Do we bury our heads in the sand and hope for a dot-com resurrection so we can continue consuming away and the other 94% of the world's population can suck our heel dust? Or do we step up to the plate and take up the mantle of this monumental task?

We are by far the most pluralistic and open-minded generation thus far; comfortable with hetero, homo, black, white, brown, Christmas, Haunakah, Kwanza. Yet we are stuck in pluralism and its shadow, a divisive tribalism. You can see it in the streets, the inability to integrate and synthesize a new order from all the parts. Instead, each special interest group clamors for its 'due,' each group feels owed or entitled to something.

Our challenge is to rise above such pettiness. We've made the tent bigger, the first step. But can we now get everyone singing the same tune, or at least pulling in the same direction.

Can we see the new potential whole of all these beautiful parts, unique in individual identity, but with similar needs, and with much in common below the surface. All these parts complementary and with the potential to form a whole which exceeds the sum of its parts.

A grand transcendence.