Solomon West

essay

Letters to an American Friend

SECOND LETTER

I have already written to you once, and I talked about the slight distinction that separates the two of us, about the importance of the virtues of honor and justice. But I feel it is worth repeating. It is true that I have preferred disorder and tempered results rather than risk injustice. In fact, it is that very distinction that I am now paying for: the bitter joy of living in agreement with myself. It is my insistence on only financially supporting what I can also morally support that I have been paying for these last six months. But at the same time, it is that detour, that lengthened path, that gives me strength in these dark times. For it is a strength of honesty, and I know it leads to the only victory worth achieving, one devoid of hypocrisy. 

Another five months have passed since I last wrote you. Five months of captivity and restriction. Five months of waking up at 6 and going to bed at 11:30, with counts at midnight, 3, 5, 4, and 9:30. Five months of being told what to do, of being made to submit. Five months of rumination and contemplation. And in these past five months, I have had to come to terms with the fact that it is you, a man I once counted as one of my closest friends, you who used to talk so flippantly of virtue, that have done this to me. At this very moment, I am experiencing the concrete results of your disregard for honor and justice.  

I have already responded to your remark — “You don’t love your country” — that you hurled at me like an insult, the memory of which I have been unable to shake. Now, however, I simply want to respond to that impatient smile of yours whenever I used the words ‘honor’ and ‘justice.’ “You can’t fill a hungry man’s stomach with honor,” you told me, “and you can’t use justice to pay a sick child’s medical bills. America is forsaking itself, and your virtues are of no use to it; they provide no amelioration. In your pursuit for an improbable truth you would accept despair for your country if such is what’s required, whereas I put America beyond despair by putting her before your intangible notion of truth. What is important is the practical, the real, the substantial. What this country needs is pragmatism.” But, as I readily admitted, if at times I seemed to prefer justice and honor over the unconditional betterment of our country, it was simply because I wanted to be able to love my country in justice and honor, not in spite of its lack of either.  

Let me tell you this story. Before dawn, in an American prison, a group of men are standing outside in the cold. Among this group, many have been convicted of what could be considered violent crimes; however, a few of the men are only guilty of drug-related violations. Among this latter group is a young man of not more than twenty-two. He is standing there in the cold, shivering, dominated by fear. He thinks about how he ended up here. His first arrest was for drug possession, we’ll call it heroin, although it could just as easily be any number of other substances deemed illegal by people he has never met and who have never met him. Following his arrest, he was placed on probation. However, subsequent arrests occurred, again for drug possession, and eventually to avoid prison time he agreed to live in a halfway house where his behavior could be regulated. Despite its obvious prohibition, drug use was not uncommon among the residents of this halfway house, and on one occasion this young man joined another resident in such activity. Unfortunately for him, he was caught, had his probation revoked, and was consequently sent to prison. For the sake of brevity, we will not get into the driving force behind the pattern of behavior that led to this outcome, nor whether addiction was a factor and perhaps medical and psychological treatment would have been more fitting reactions than a prison sentence. I do feel it is worth mentioning, however, that this young man was of moderate means and was able to support his drug habit without ever having to resort to theft. In fact, he was a very morally minded individual, and beyond his drug use could not be said to have committed any significant crimes. 

Nevertheless, this boy was placed in a prison among men who have committed some of the worst, most violent crimes imaginable. And now he finds himself on this cold morning; it is so early that it’s still dark out. The group of prisoners have their official orders, the jobs they have been assigned by the prison, but they also have their unofficial orders, passed down to them through the inmate hierarchy, originating from people they have never met. They stand on one side of a field, on the opposite side of which stands another group of men. The first group has been ordered to run across this field and attack the second group, with death, and as much of it, as their goal. They do not know these men personally, just as they do not know the men who have issued the orders. What they do know, though, is that if they don’t do as they’ve been told, new orders will be sent down and it will be they who are now the targets, with death, again, the ultimate goal. They also know that if they run across this field, as they have been ordered to do, the guards in the tower will start shooting. First will come the warning shots, after which they are expected to throw themselves on the ground. However, they also know that if they do so — for this has been explicitly stated to them — it will be seen as the same as them refusing to follow orders, which, again, will result in new orders coming down and them as the new targets. Our young prisoner is scared, he’s shivering, and he’s never been put in a situation like this before in his life. He has tried to reason his way out of it, but has been reminded more times than once that the only way to get out is to put that target on his own back. The morning is cold, dark, and foggy. In fact, it is so dark and so foggy that the first group of men cannot even tell for sure if the second group is on the other side of the field. And it is this fact that causes the leader of the group to call off the attack. It is this fact — and this fact alone — that saves the young man from having to violate his moral code, and from having to risk his life simply to try to ensure his future safety. 

This story was told to me by a fellow inmate here. He was the young man in the story, which occurred about a year ago, before he was transferred here. Now, there may be people out there who have such an exaggerated disdain for ‘illegal drugs’ that they see nothing wrong with putting this young man in the situation described above. However, I have to assume most, even those who feel certain substances should be deemed illegal, would see the penalty imposed on him as being disproportionate to the ‘crime,’ and this can be seen in the fact that his sentence did not stipulate that he was to risk his life or take the life of another, but rather that he was simply to be deprived of his liberty for a certain period of time. Even more so, though, I know that the story above cannot but weigh on the conscience of a man such as yourself. A man I once considered my friend and hope to consider my friend again. A man I have done so-called ‘illegal drugs’ with on numerous occasions. I know that you will see the boy’s plight as horrific, for we both agree that he, like the hundreds of thousands of other people currently imprisoned in America for non-violent drug-related crimes, should never have been deprived of his liberty in the first place. We see no inherent moral breach in drug use, and view the punishment of drug users as a puritanical affront to the individual’s innate sovereignty over his/her own body. We refuse to accept as just a policy that punishes people for doing things that we think are morally valid, for doing things that we ourselves do, that our friends and family do, we refuse to accept as just a policy that forces our morally defensible actions into hiding, into the shadows, that forces us to gamble with our freedom in order to do something that we don’t think is wrong. We do it, and we both think it is ridiculous that we just have to sit there and hope we don’t get caught. We think it is ridiculous that we are forced to play the odds, and then just sit back when one among our ranks gets caught and is then forced to face an unreasonable punishment. We think it is ridiculous that a President of the United States should acknowledge using ‘illegal drugs,’ should maintain the illegality of such drug use, and then not willingly submit himself to be punished as the law stipulates he deserves to be punished. I know you, like me, are made sick by such hypocrisy. 

I could tell you another story, about a 68-year-old woman gathering food in her family’s fields one afternoon. She lives in a remote region, dominated by rugged, hilly terrain, far from anything you or I would recognize as a city. She has likely lived in this area her entire life and received little if any formal education. Job opportunities are limited, as are medical facilities. Summer has recently ended and the weather is now starting to get cold. She is out gathering food for her family to eat later that evening, when at least two Hellfire missiles are fired at her from an unmanned aerial vehicle, a drone, operated by the United States government. It is a direct hit, a testament to the precision of American machinery, and the elderly woman is blasted into pieces. It does not end there, though, for four of her grandchildren are also injured in the blast, and when a second attack is then launched another of her grandchildren is injured as well. Or I could tell you of the 18 people killed and more than 20 others injured, all of whom locals maintained were ordinary villagers, when multiple missiles were fired at them from US drones. Most of them were laborers, gathered in a tent for their evening meal after a hard summer day’s work. Again, it was a direct hit, blasting them into pieces, followed by a second attack killing those who had come to the scene to try to help the victims from the first. 

Does it matter that both attacks occurred in Pakistan, near the Afghan border, in a region that has been proven to be a refuge for armed militant groups, including Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban? Does this matter? Does this change anything? It certainly does, as I’m sure you’ll agree. What this means is that these are people who have had their lives and livelihoods threatened by the presence and belligerence of violent insurgents, often of foreign origin. They are people who fear for their lives and are too afraid to speak out against the militants for fear of reprisals. What this means is that these are people who have had their lives turned upside down by the Pakistani military in its attempts to combat the insurgents. They are people who are almost never without fear, and if the militant groups and their own government were not terrible enough, what this means is that they also now have to fear the agents of the United States, a country that claims to pride itself on helping the weak and promoting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Or I could tell you about the 12 people killed in central-western Yemen when a US airstrike took out the vehicle they were traveling in; the victims were all civilians, and among them were three children and a pregnant woman. I could tell you of the five men killed in a US drone strike in eastern Yemen; three of them were confirmed Al-Qaeda members, but the other two were a local police officer and his cousin, a cleric who publicly preached against violent militant groups such as Al-Qaeda and had taken his cousin with him as protection when he agreed to meet with the Al-Qaeda members who were upset with him for denouncing their organization in a recent sermon. Or I could tell you about the 14 suspected Al-Qaeda members that were killed in south-western Yemen by US-launched cluster munitions, which due to the nature of the weapon also killed at least 41 civilians, among which were 21 children and nine women, five of whom were pregnant. [Since this letter’s initial publication, the two incidents in Pakistan have been addressed in an Amnesty International report, “Will I Be Next?” : US Drone Strikes in Pakistan, and the three incidents in Yemen have been addressed in a report by Human Rights Watch, “Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda” : The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen.] 

I could tell you countless stories about the hundreds of civilians killed in Yemen by the US government, the hundreds of civilians killed in Pakistan by the US government, the thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan by the US government. I could tell you innumerable stories about the horrors of American prisons: murder, rape, slavery, abuse by other inmates, abuse by guards, conditions unquestionably constituting cruel and unusual punishment, to the point where extradition has even been denied among the international community on the basis that the US prison system does not meet humanitarian standards. I could tell you countless stories, but I think you get the picture, I think you can imagine the rest. I think we can both agree that the United States government is guilty of more atrocious actions than most Americans would prefer to admit. But what I do want to tell you, the point I do want to drive home, is that these atrocities are the flip side of your concrete results. They derive from the same formula, the same mentality. When you talked about pragmatism, when you talked about the practical, the real, the substantial, when you proudly put concrete results before honor and justice, when you dispensed with honor and justice as fanciful notions with no place in the real world, you were paving the way for these atrocities. 

You have lent your support to a system of governance that demands money from you, which you willingly give, which you proudly give, even though at the end of the day you have very little control over how it’s spent. You look proudly upon the hard-fought battles of the past, such as those promoting gender equality and racial equality, and you take pride in the victories that are being won today for equality regardless of sexual orientation. And you see before you, in the machinery of the United States government, the means to address healthcare, education, global warming, sustainability, etc. You pride yourself on every little victory won, and praise the democratic process for providing you with not only the opportunity to fight in the first place, but also the framework to ultimately implement the change you have fought for, the change you worked, struggled, and toiled for, the change that you have won, democratically, fair and square. But you fail to see that the atrocities mentioned above, and countless others, are the result of that very same process. A process that gives you the opportunity to upset the status quo, to change things, to really make a difference, if you can just get enough people to agree with you, but that also forces you to accept the status quo if you can’t, also forces you to accept the changes of others whether you like them or not. You seem to think you can cherry-pick the good and disown the bad, ignoring the fact that the one is just as legitimate as the other. You seem to ignore the fact that you have bought into a system that does not allow you to differentiate. You may abhor a government policy, you may fight against it tooth and nail, but at the end of the day, if you can’t get enough people to agree with you, the money you willingly give the government still goes to fund that policy. You seem to ignore the fact that you have bought into a system that regularly forces you into hypocrisy. 

You and the system you embrace have achieved progress, undoubtedly. But all your progress is built on a foundation of dishonor and injustice, and understandably the face of your America is dotted with more moral blemishes than you can count. And you can say you didn’t know, and we can even pretend that it’s not your responsibility to find out, we can pretend that it’s not up to you to find out what your government is doing, to find out how your government is spending the money you willingly give them. You can say you didn’t know, and we can pretend that that’s a morally acceptable thing to say. But you know now. You know now what your government is doing and how they’re spending your money. Now you know. You know that the very means you have used to achieve your beneficial ends have been used as well to commit atrocity. And hopefully now you can see that this will always be a possibility when you allow the means you use to be justified by their ends and don’t demand that they be morally justifiable in themselves. As I said before, there are means that cannot be excused. And as you now see, if you still choose to employ those means, then it is you who must accept responsibility for the atrocities they result in and the lives they destroy.

December 2012