Letter from America (or yes, virginia, there really are Marxists left in Chicago)

Bonnie Greer examines the rift between America and the Muslim world from the perspective of ordinary Americans. She is passionate in her defence of America as a country of opportunity and liberalism which is as much misunderstood as it is ignorant of the outside world. She challenges the notion of America as "The Great Arrogance". There is that old saying you never can go home again. I have lived in the UK now for over 15 years. I have been a UK citizen for four. In every sense of the word, my home is here in Britain.

When asked to return to the town I was born in, Chicago, and then on to New York where I had lived for almost a decade, to make a film about 11 September, I knew that I had to do it.

I was working on a BBC radio play when the first plane struck. My producer rang me, but like everyone else, I thought it was a tragic accident.

My brother, who is stationed in Frankfurt for the United States Air Force, rang me to tell me that New York was under attack.

To say it seemed like something out of a movie is a cliché now, but it's true. I watched like everyone else, shocked, disbelieving.

By chance, a friend I've known since university days in Chicago over a quarter of a century ago was in town, and he came over. We sat hugging one another, not speaking.

I wanted to go home, immediately like every American expat wanted to go home. I felt useless.

Being one of the "media Americans" wheeled around from studio to studio to talk about what had happened, I was shocked to hear the anti-American sentiments expressed, some of them from my own friends.

I could not and still can not understand why anyone would justify murder, no religion condones the taking of innocent lives, or the taking of one's own.

What I said on the television and radio to everyone who would listen was that America had been bombed into the world, ready to become a true world citizen. But what I found during the making of "Letter from America" was something completely different.

We were told here in Britain that America was afraid. But instead I found an America that was not especially afraid, certainly not just because of what happened to the Twin Towers.

The America I found was ethnic America, a place where fear exists 24 hours a day, both inside and outside the community.

For ethnic minorities, for women, for gays, lesbians, the disabled, the elderly, in other words, those of us out of the mainstream business continued as usual, the business of survival in America.

After all this, I had to go searching for the jokes - was not America laughing? I caught Andy, a Chicago comic, at a comedy club doing his "CBS" routine. "CBS was the crying network", he said, "Anybody crying got on CBS." Another comic held up a badge and said "This America's attitude right now - Go get 'em!'"

My last stop had to be Ground Zero. There are still fires burning underground, there is still paper from the disintegrated offices fluttering around. It is eerie there and unbelievably sad.

A stranger sang a song for me, more of a wail than anything else: "I want the old New York." So do I. I used to live there. 11 September has made the United States more isolated, more inward-looking. My trip home made me realise that the nation has become more suspicious, more wary, more "America First" than ever.

It had not been bombed into the world, as I had thought before I left. It had been bombed out of it. I will never quite engage with it again. Not in my lifetime.

Reporter: Bonnie Greer
Producer: Charlotte Metcalfe
Deputy Editor: Farah Durrani
Editor: Fiona Murch

I would appreciate if you guys would flame the BBC for this anti American nonsense, especially if you are "ethnic minorities, for women, for gays, lesbians, the disabled, the elderly, in other words, those of us out of the mainstream". please note this in your letter.

11 September has made the United States more isolated, more inward-looking.
More inward looking? High-school educated Starbucks baristas suddenly talk of Kandahar and Jalalabad and know the distinction between the Mujahedeen and the Taleban and the author wants to say we are more inward looking? The Muslim gentleman who addressed our church began to cry when we rose to our feet to applaud him, and the author wants to say we are more inward looking? After years of Clinton and months of Condit our talking heads now tell us of India and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union, of dissent students in Iran and detestable mullahs among the Saudis, and the author wants to say we are more inward looking? Our allegedly "unilateralist" National Shepherd has assembled international coalitions broader and more committed than the Gulf War coalition and the author wants to say that we are more inward looking?

How many different ways can I say BULLSH*T!

Speaking as a black American, I don't feel especially marginalized. And as a plain-old American, I don't feel the slightest desire to retreat from the world. Nor do I think my fellow citizens feel that way. Instead, we feel a growing need to go out into the world, find the people who did this, and kill the $h!t out of them.

Americans who leave this country and adopt another as their permanent home, as she has, have already lost touch with this country. This chick is really out of touch---and she has absorbed the elitist European world-view already. The BBC needs real Americans to gauge what's going on here.

It had not been bombed into the world, as I had thought before I left. It had been bombed out of it. I will never quite engage with it again. Not in my lifetime.

We have neither been bombed into the world or bombed out of it. We ARE the world, as far as I'm concerned, and on September 11, the whole world was bombed. I don't say that to be arrogant, but she's got it backwards. People like her would like to think that Europe is the center of the world. But what goes on over there doesn't affect America nearly as much as what goes on over here affects the rest of the world. When the U.S. sneezes, Europe and most of the rest of the world catch a cold.

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