An Open Letter to the Former US Ambassador, John Godfrey

By: Dr. Al-Derdiri Mohamed Ahmed

Excellency, Ambassador John Godfrey,
My letter to your Excellency is on the occasion of the appointment of new American Jewish Envoy Tom Brillio and American Jewish Chargé d’Affairs Rubenstein.
First, in this letter, I must welcome you and wish you success in improving your country’s relations with Sudan. Improving the relationship with the host country is the noble traditional mission of any ambassador, at any time and in any place. Then I hope that you will read this open letter of mine and give it the attention it deserves. It expresses many people whom you do not care to meet. There is no way to succeed in this mission without taking their point of view into consideration.
When your predecessor, Ambassador Tim Carney, the last US ambassador, left his duty station in August 1998, he was envoy to a country very different from the one you represent today. A quarter century ago, America was the undisputed master of the world. Then its Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said about it with astonishing arrogance, “We are the country without which nothing can be done. We rise above everyone and anticipate future prospects that others do not see!” As for your country today, it is the one that President Trump is trying hard to make “great again,” as the slogan he launched in his 2016 election campaign says. Trump only launched that slogan because he knows very well that America today is no longer great at all. It is an America that is internally divided, internationally declining, economically collapsed, and morally fallen! Rather, it is America that says in the words of some of its chauvinist chants chanted by white extremists: “There is a war that must be fought in this country, against those who have dared too much.” I do not think that the ambassador of a country like yours has the right to preach as I did in my first press interview. That is why I had the pleasure of writing this letter to you to remind you of only three of the earth-shattering differences warning of inevitable (apocalyptic) ends (as you say) that have swept your country during the last quarter century. This is so that you know that your country is no longer, after these negative developments, morally qualified to preach to anyone. This reassures you of some of your exaggeration. Then I conclude this letter by pointing out one feature that distinguishes us, which I hope you will recognize and ponder carefully as you begin your mission.
We know, Your Excellency Ambassador, that you come to us from a country where the economic and social conditions of those at the bottom of the ladder have deteriorated to a terrible degree. You do not come to us from the land of opportunities and freedoms that existed and from which your predecessor came to us before. That model was lost after a very wealthy few ruled America. In an attempt to save America from the predicament into which these few have placed it, one of your most brilliant contemporary philosophers, John Rawls, presented a realistic approach. Rawls said that inequality is an inescapable reality, and absolute equality is neither required nor possible. What is required is that inequality be just. However, America failed even to fulfill this attenuated model. Today, it is considered the world’s first example of “unjust inequality.”
To measure the degree of fairness in the event of inequality, specialists divide society into two classes: the upper class is the class of the wealthiest few, who represent (1%) of society. The lower class is the poorest half, and thus they are 50% of society. If we find that the rights of those affiliated with the lower half are improved and their chances of ascending the ladder of wealth and prestige are increased, we consider this type of inequality fair. But if the fortunes of the poor are declining, and they no longer have an opportunity equal to that of the wealthy, then this type of inequality is considered unjust. Over the past quarter century, the fortunes of those at the bottom in America have deteriorated while the fortunes of those at the top have steadily improved. The average annual income of the lower half of society in America remained constant at $16,000, while the average income of the lucky few jumped during the same period from $420,000 to $1,300,000!
This economic and social imbalance has political and moral implications. It led to what was known as tyranny of money. What was spent in the 2000 presidential elections (which followed your predecessor’s departure from us) was $4 billion. As for what was spent in the 2022 elections (which preceded your presence with us), it was $14.4 billion! Martin Zunis, a professor at the University of Chicago, commented on the massive increase in the wealthy people’s spending on elections, saying: “Those who provide these billions are of course waiting for a return on their investments. And they usually get that return. Congress refrains from issuing legislation that restricts the use of weapons, and maintains support for the sugar industry to protect the owners of factories and sprawling farms, maintains certain policies towards Israel requested by Jewish financiers, maintains the drug pricing system for the benefit of major pharmaceutical companies, and maintains many other issues that express the concerns of election campaign funders and not the desires of ordinary voters or even members of Congress.” The tyranny of money has led to a decline in the American citizen’s confidence in Congress from 42% in 1973 to 7% last year. Two professors at Princeton University, Anne Case and Angus Dayton, said in a famous study that it was the tyranny of money that led to the collapse of the white working class with limited education. After they were the basis of the American dream, they have today turned into a sea of despair that produces frantic actions such as the attack on the Capitol building, the headquarters of the US Congress, in January 2021. Rather, the American citizen’s confidence in all of his country’s institutions has collapsed. Trust in the Supreme Court declined to 25%, in the press and television news to 16%, and in the justice system to 14%! This is the first difference. The second earth-shattering difference is that America no longer includes a strategic project or a comprehensive vision.
Henry Kissinger testified in many of his interviews, as did Tony Blair in his lectures on the future of the West, that America has lacked a guiding strategic project during the last two decades. This issue is considered a great danger to the progress of nations, and is a sure recipe for immediate destruction. History says that when a strong nation lacks the overall project, it turns into a tyrannical oppressor who oppresses both the right and the left. The absence of a guiding project is what turned Genghis Khan into a massive hurricane that left nothing but destruction in its wake, just as Hurricane Ian did in Florida last week. The absence of a guiding project is what caused the empire of Alexander the Great to dissipate to pieces as soon as he died. The same is true of America today, which is heavily armed and lacking a compass and a guiding vision. As a result of its loss of the strategic project, America has committed disgraceful acts over the past twenty-five years. I don’t know where to start, Mr. Ambassador. Should I start with the arbitrary investigations into the events of September 11, 2001, or with the opening of the Guantanamo camp in 2002, or with the Abu Ghraib atrocities in 2004? Because of America’s long record of torture and its ingenuity in innovating its methods, major human rights organizations came out against it after a long silence. So as not to be long for you, I ask you, Your Excellency, to read the Human Rights Watch report issued in January of this year entitled “The United States: Twenty Years of Torture and Still Counting.” It is surprising that the major Western countries, such as Germany and Britain, tremble in groups and conspire by remaining silent about what America is doing, and even cooperate with it in the rendition accused persons outside the law. America forced 54 countries around the world to violate international law and participate in this heinous crime. Extrajudicial rendition include transferring defendants to sites in those countries where they are placed at the disposal of the CIA for prolonged detention without bringing them to justice and without informing their families of their locations, in what is known as forceful disappearance. In the meantime, they are subjected to the harshest types of torture. In addition, America has not joined the Convention against Torture at all. Indeed, it has not joined the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, nor the CEDAW Convention, which its diplomats praise. It also did not accede to the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court, nor to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, nor to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It did not join the most important regional treaties at the level of the Americas, such as the American Covenant on Human Rights. All of this is so that America can avoid any restriction that prevents it from unleashing its hand in the world and prevents it from attacking right and left without supervision or accountability. After America set the stage for what it wanted, reducing commitments and concluding alliances, it unleashed destruction and killing in the Arab world to take revenge on the tyrants for what happened to it on September 11. It invaded Iraq in 2003, made NATO invade Libya in 2011, and did what it wanted in Syria through its allies starting in 2011. As if all of this was not enough, it authorized the outbreak of war in Yemen in 2015 by issuing a resolution to that effect from the Security Council. Tell me, for God’s sake, Your Excellency the Ambassador, what is the difference between America today and the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar of yesterday? He invaded ancient Palestine about six hundred years before Christ, without having any project there except to kill excessively in revenge without any hesitation, and to win for himself without deterrence.
The third consequence is that America, due to the tyranny of money and the absence of a project together, is no longer able to continue the mission of leading humanity. Here it fails to provide a model when overwhelming natural crises such as climate change strike, or devastating pandemics such as Covid-19. Big companies have hijacked the American position on these global phenomena. Compare the performance of America and China in confronting the Corona virus. One million Americans died in this pandemic, while the deaths in China did not exceed five thousand! Indeed, America was in dire need of relief, just like the third world countries. hat amused many people during the quarantine period was that they watched in amazement the landing of a plane at JFK Airport in New York coming from Shanghai carrying 12 million gloves, 130,000 N95 masks, 1.7 million medical masks, 50,000 medical gowns, 130,000 hand sterilization units, and 36,000 thermometers, humanitarian aid from China for America!!! This strange journey has the freedom to chronicle the end of a superpower that lacked justifications for survival, and the rise of another alternative that gradually takes on the reasons for good. Rather, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization at that critical time, despite being its largest funder. The United States has also lagged behind in providing leadership in multilateral organizations and activities. Look at the decline in the role of the United Nations General Assembly and its transformation into a global “Okaz” market in which rhetorical capabilities are displayed every year and nothing else. This is after this organization is the living conscience of humanity. During the Cold War, strong decisions were always issued regarding the position on the issue of Palestine, apartheid, freedom from colonialism, and so on. America also reduced the funding of many organizations, including the Atomic Energy Organization, due to its danger, and the World Trade Organization, due to its great impact, and withdrew from UNESCO, due to its desire to protect the heritage of all humanity. As for confronting climate change, despite the hurricanes and fires sweeping America and the droughts that struck Europe, the world does not receive an example and model in combating climate change from America. The leadership in this field belongs to the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which occupy the first three places on the list of best performing countries. As for America, its ranking on this list is number 55!
Excellency Ambassador,
The traditional sports that peoples have developed over generations express the spirit of the nation and its outlook on life. Allow me here to make a comparison between the two favorite traditional sports in our two countries in order to draw important conclusions that you should not miss as you begin this mission. There is no doubt that the favorite sport of the American people is American Football. It is a game that is considered one of the most violent and ferocious sports. See how the player wears a protective hood, face shield, shoulder pads, and leg guards, so he looks like a medieval warrior. Despite this, no one escapes serious injuries, including concussion, as happened to one of the top players in this sport last week. That these are your most popular sports says a lot about the American temperament. If wrestling in ancient Rome revealed a bloodthirsty mood (where the matter does not end with one of the gladiators fighting his friend, but rather killing him), then the mood that produced American football is a mood that finds it easy to attack opponents and takes pleasure in defeating them. It’s the mood of the cowboy and the wilds of the West. This is the mood in which the American Civil War was conducted, which was a great massacre in which 2% of the American people perished!
On the other hand, please know, Your Excellency the Ambassador, that our favorite traditional sport is called “Shaddat”. It is a sport played throughout the country. However, despite its beauty and enjoyment, there was no one to take care of it and set its rules and organize its competitions, as you did with American football. In this sport, a player is required to immobilize a leg and a hand before entering the field. He holds his right foot with his left hand and is not permitted to let go. In our case, the fight between friend and rival does not take place with full physical strength, but rather with half strength. The captain of the team does not announce the start of play in Sheddat by saying the word “Hara” until he is certain that all team members have stood up straight, holding one foot in the hand. If someone’s leg loosens while playing, even for a moment, he is considered “dead” and exits the field. This game is the product of the slow and gentle Sudanese mood that was formed slowly over three thousand years. If you understand, Your Excellency Ambassador, this mood, you will understand why we conducted our civil wars without excessive ferocity. Rather, we managed it without bitterness. I remember well that foreign observers of the peace negotiations would have been astonished by the embrace of the Sudanese rivals towards each other. I also remember that Elijah Maluk, the southern leader close to Dr. John Garang, was once asked, during the peace negotiations in Kenya (and shortly after the intelligence services of a European-Asian country kidnapped one of its outlaws from Nairobi), whether his movement feared that Garang would be kidnapped or killed in Nairobi. He said firmly that this will not happen, but it is impossible! Then he added that the Sudanese fight honorably in the field, but they do not stab each other in the back after the battle ends! That is why, Your Excellency Ambassador, look at the number of Sudanese who died in our wars that lasted for three decades and in which twentieth century automatic weapons were used, and compare it to the number of those who died in the American civil war that lasted for only four years and with the less lethal weapons of the nineteenth century. If 2% of the American people died in the American war, this means that at least 15% of the Sudanese people should have perished in our wars, that is, about five or six million!
Because we face each other with one hand and one foot, we did not lose any casualties in the recent change (April 2019) that our enemies were hoping for. Don’t you see, Your Excellency Ambassador, that Dr. Mohamed Taher Aila, the last prime minister of President Al-Bashir, has postponed his return for several years despite his overwhelming popularity that you saw yesterday? Then don’t you see him, Your Excellency, the ambassador returning to Port Sudan while Riad Hijab did not return to Damascus, nor Abu Bakr Al-Attas to Aden, nor Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi to Tripoli? Did you not know, Your Excellency Ambassador, that President Numeiri returned to Khartoum and was received warmly by Field Marshal Siwar Al-Dahab? Did you not know that despite the chant “You will not rest, you thug,” launched by the Communist Party in the seventies of the last century, Mohammad Ibrahim Nuqud, the secretary of that party, prayed at Nimeiry’s funeral and prayed for his forgiveness and eternal rest? Then didn’t you know that one of the people who led the worshipers at Nuqud’s funeral was Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi! I hope you do not miss watching a widely circulated video clip in which the interviewer wanted to belittle President Al-Bashir’s in front of Imam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, while he was at the peak of his opposition, referring to what he called Al-Bashir’s “dancing.” The Imam told him that this was not dancing, but rather a “display” (i.e. a manly display) called “Saqriya”!
I hope you have understood, Mr. Ambassador, that we are playing “Shaddat.” Hence, we do not even need an American football referee.
Khartoum, October 2, 2022