Correspondent: Letter to America Tx Date: 9th December 2001 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Music 00.00.09 Aston 18 October 2001 00.00.09 Tony Benn Since 1945, I've brought the list, the Americans have bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, The Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. How humanitarian can you get? 00.00.27 Applause 00.00.33 Siren music 00.00.37 Rana Kabbani The horrifying sound of US bombs falling on Arab and Muslim cities has found expression in the popular culture of our region. 00.00.44 Siren music 00.00.50 Rana Kabbani In this letter to America, I want to describe how Muslims have come to view the United States. 00.01.01 Correspondent Theme Music 00.01.10 Title Page LETTER TO AMERICA 00.01.21 President George Bush Americans are asking; 'why do they hate us?' They hate what they see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. 00.01.46 Applause 00.01.50 Music 00.01.57 Rana Kabbani President Bush's glib and dishonest explanation fails to acknowledge America's record in the Muslim world, where it represents neither democracy nor liberty but brute repression and economic exploitation. 00.02.10 Music 00.02.14 Rana Kabbani I wanted to discover how people really felt about America, so I travelled to the Middle East, where I was born, to find out. 00.02.22 Music 00.02.30 Rana Kabbani For my parents' generation, Egypt was the political heart of the Arab world, where hopes for independence from Western control had first been forged. 00.02.40 Rana Kabbani My generation had seen those hopes crushed by military force, first by the old colonial powers and then by the United States. 00.02.53 Rana Kabbani In Cairo I found that the backlash against America was not only amongst the poor but amongst the wealthy too and the intellectuals. While I was there I met the Booker nominated Egyptian novelist, Ahdaf Soueif. 00.03.08 Ahdaf Soueif How great to see you here in Cairo. 00.03.12 Rana Kabbani She now lives in London and has been watching the growing divide in her two worlds with concern. 00.03.18 Rana Kabbani She was struck by how differently the present crisis was being interpreted in the West, compared with the Muslim world. 00.03.25 Aston AHDAF SOUEIF Novelist As far as everybody is concerned here this is not Islam versus the West, it's not a clash of civilisations, it's got nothing to do with hating America or hating the West. It's all to do with foreign policy, with real politic, with ugly ambitions and strategic aims of the United States in this part of the world. And this is what's being discussed. And the, the huge distance between, you know, what is perceived on each side as, as the area of discourse is enormous. 00.04.05 Ahdaf Soueif Language has been hijacked and it's very, it was very interesting to see, in fact, the similarities between the discourse of President Bush and the discourse of Osama bin Laden, when you had them, sort of one after the other on television. And this insistence on painting the world in black and white and the absolute certainty that this is good and that is evil. 00.04.34 Rana Kabbani For me one of the most extraordinary things revealed by this crisis is the way language is a form of terror. So how you're described does make you into a terrorist rather than what your actions are because it strips you of any context. 00.04.53 Ahdaf Soueif This business of being for us or against us, that if you attempted to understand why eleventh of September happened. If you attempted to place it within a context, then that was tantamount to approving of it, to somehow sort of saying; yes, we're on the side of terror, you know was just ridiculous. And then on the other hand you've got Islam being sort of constantly scrutinised, turned over this way and that way, attacked and so, you know, what do you do. You're being put in a position of defending it but you really and truly do not believe that it's the issue. It is not the issue and so why should it be, you know, dragged out and dissected and you know people sort of having opinions about it as though it were informing anything. 00.05.40 Rana Kabbani Current propaganda is to talk of a clash of civilisations. But the world is made up of an intermingling of cultures. 00.05.48 Rana Kabbani The West as we know it has been heavily influenced by Islamic knowledge and innovation and Muslim societies have been deeply affected by Western ideas. They have also been penetrated by an unstoppable flight of Western goods. 00.06.02 Music 00.06.08 Rana Kabbani So much so that countries like Egypt find themselves economically enslaved to Western powers. A problem not unique to Arabs and Muslims but critical for the entire developing world. 00.06.19 Music 00.06.33 Ahdaf Soueif In the last month we've seen this anti-globalisation movement growing, you know, Seattle, Genoa and so on and I, I hope that there is really a feeling among, among the people of the world that, that things are spinning out of their control and that even in democracies they are perhaps not governed as they would wish to be governed. How far do the actions of their governments represent them and that, you know, it's a question of, of, to sound very romantic, it's a question of the people of the world kind of making contact with each other, communicating with each other. 00.07.17 Rana Kabbani Recently the Arab street has become angrily aware that it is under virtual American occupation – political, economic as well as military. 00.07.31 Rana Kabbani In Egypt, during my visit, there were twenty-seven thousand American servicemen, leading the world's largest military manoeuvres after NATO's. 00.07.44 Rana Kabbani In a journalist convoy, I made my way to watch this US military circus in the Egyptian desert, with its ludicrously inappropriate name – 'Bright Star'. 00.07.54 Music 00.08.07 Bombing 00.08.17 Rana Kabbani I must confess that I did not find this indignity on Arab soil easy to watch. 00.08.22 Rana Kabbani I felt it was an obscene desecration of a desert graveyard where some ten thousand Egyptian soldiers were killed in the October war of 1973. Some of them murdered after they had surrendered by an Israel that was occupying their land with American arms and financial backing, exactly as it continues to occupy Palestinian and Syrian land with extensive and overwhelming US military aid. 00.08.56 Soldier Allow me to welcome the presence of General Tommy Franks... 00.09.00 Rana Kabbani The US general, Tommy Franks, who was at that moment in charge of wreaking terror on Afghanistan civilians, came in for a flying visit, apparently glowing with a sense of imperial power. It was not an edifying spectacle. 00.09.19 Rana Kabbani For now, all I could do was say a prayer for our dead, sadly aware as I watched, that the Muslim world had become either a collection of US military bases, countries who were targets of US military aggressions or compliant markets for the sale of utterly useless and cripplingly expensive US armaments. 00.09.40 Rana Kabbani We are under occupation – no doubt about it. But no occupation lasts forever, when people decide they've had enough. As the Americans would do well to remember. 00.09.52 Rana Kabbani With a vengeful war against Afghanistan then taking place, enraging Muslims worldwide, I was stunned by the arrogant and unabashed bravado of the American servicemen. 00.10.05 American soldier We loaded a lot of rounds, we fired, we showed that, we showed the world something here, we showed the world that the coalition force can come together and can meet any enemy on any battlefield and several nations can work together and overcome and destroy any enemy out there. I love to shoot, we love making lots of noise, we love scaring people, I think this is, this is great. 00.10.34 Siren music 00.10.48 Rana Kabbani An Iraqi musician now living in Egypt, was so disturbed by one of the most horrific tragedies during the Gulf War that he composed a piece about it, in which he recreated the haunting sounds of the air raid sirens and war planes attacking. 00.11.08 Rana Kabbani In February 1991, during the attack on Iraq, US bombs destroyed a civilian shelter in Baghdad. More than five hundred innocent civilians were burnt alive, mainly women and children who had gone there for refuge. 00.11.24 Rana Kabbani For the Arab world and for many concerned people in the West, the bombing of Iraq, during and since the Gulf War and the criminally punitive sanctions which have been kept in place by the US for twelve years is the deepest source of fury as well as sorrow. 00.11.45 Aston NASEER SHAMMA Musician Voice over I heard that the Alamiriya shelter, which was the safest civilian shelter in Iraq, full of women, children and elderly people, had been hit. When I heard it was hit I was in Baghdad and since the shelter was there too I went there at once. Not in my capacity as a soldier serving in the army but as a person who had friends there. 00.12.05 Naseer Shamma Voice over The shelter was made up of three stories, all underground. One of the US rockets penetrated the shelter through an air vent; the second went right through to the bottom and exploded, raising the temperature so dramatically that everything reached melting point. It was just like the attack on the World Trade Centre; the whole shelter collapsed, everyone there was cindered. 00.12.33 Naseer Shamma Voice over At Alamiriya not a single mother was able to identify her son, not a single man was able to identify his child. Some women lost six or seven children they had left there. Whole families, sometimes up to thirteen of them, were wiped out. 00.12.57 Naseer Shamma Voice over When the burnt remains of bodies were lifted out and after the mass funerals had taken place, I started going to the shelter just before sunrise. I'd take my chair with me and play music on my lute and weep. I'd play music and weep. I was trying to picture the children whose limbs were scattered in the place, whose smell was still in the shelter, whose spirits could still be felt there. 00.13.28 Music 00.13.39 Aston 'The Storm' 00.13.45 Rana Kabbani Anger with the United States is now reflected widely in our culture. 00.13.50 Rana Kabbani Egyptian director Khaled Youssef's first film, The Storm, was about America's pernicious role in the Gulf War and its effect on the Arab street. 00.13.58 Music 00.14.04 Aston KHALED YOUSSEF Egyptian filmmaker Voice over America's political history is full of crimes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki where people were mass murdered by US nuclear bombs; Iraq where the economic blockade has killed one million two hundred thousand people; in El Salvador a hundred and eighty thousand people were killed. In Iran with the coup against Mossadegh, seventy thousand were killed; in Indonesia eight hundred thousand were killed during the coup against Sukarno. This is the criminal record of American foreign policy. 00.14.40 Rana Kabbani In the West people can afford to ignore history. In the Muslim world they are constantly pursued by history and baffled by American ignorance of it. 00.14.55 Khaled Youssef Voice over I think the American people are not aware of the enormity of the crimes committed by their politicians in the past fifty years, which have resulted in the death of millions. 00.15.09 Khaled Youssef Voice over Burning the American flag expresses the hatred felt by Arab citizens as a result of America's biased support for Israel. I did not invent this image as a cinematic device; it was actually set alight during the Gulf War. Don't we notice that not one day passes without the American flag being set alight somewhere in the world? What makes them the only country to have its flag burnt over such a long period? There must be something wrong. In my film I burnt the American flag which had a slogan on it – 'The American is not a friend'. That's the slogan, which we used to recite during the Gulf War. 00.15.49 Khaled Youssef Voice over The Americans were not coming to liberate Kuwait but to colonise the Arab world, to establish military bases so that they could control the sources of oil, to manipulate Arab political decisions and to further protect Israel. These were their aims and not the defence of a just cause or because Saddam was a fascist who had occupied Kuwait. They certainly did not come as heavenly saviours who would rid us of Saddam's tyranny. No, that's not right. 00.16.19 Students singing 00.16.31 Rana Kabbani How little ordinary Americans are allowed to know became clear to me when I met a group of Christian American students on a study tour of the Middle East. Their views, after only a short exposure to the region, were remarkable. 00.16.46 Student 1 I was hoping that when this attack happened I was, I was horrified by it but I was hoping that perhaps America would wake up and really examine itself and wonder why, why this was happening. And I don't think that happened and I don't know what will make America really examine itself, if this didn't. And it just kind of shocked me that even this horrible tragedy wouldn't make America examine itself in a responsible way. 00.17.15 Student 2 America and the people in America haven't had any real experience and they've never, they've never sought that experience, you know. I mean, all my life, you know growing up, I hear about the Gulf War and you watch things about Saddam Hussein and things like that and I've had never had anything positive coming through the media, through the movies, through anything that has given me understanding of the Muslim people or this part of the world. And I, I think we are drowning in our ignorance and we're hiding behind our ignorance. 00.17.43 Student 3 We are getting an Arab perspective. In America we truly only see the Israel side, it's very difficult to see a Palestinian Arab point of view. And here we are, open to seeing videos and reading articles that are from a Palestinian view and it, it's really changing the way we look at the world and being here and understanding Islam and meeting the people here helps us to sympathise with them and to understand that there is another point of view besides simply the Israel side. 00.18.15 Student 2 No one's going to be able to shut me up when I get home and if they want to hear about my time here they need to be ready to be challenged because it's just, I'm ready to tell people about it. How could anyone who sees what's going on not want to do that? 00.18.31 Music 00.18.35 Rana Kabbani If meaningful information is being censored in the US, then misconceptions about Islam can only grow and be manipulated, causing America to believe itself engaged in a latter day crusade. 00.18.47 Rana Kabbani For people here, however, the burning issues are political ones and not religious. 00.18.52 Music 00.18.56 Rana Kabbani What was said to me in Cairo was echoed across the Arab world, most surprisingly in the usually conservative Gulf states. 00.19.04 Music 00.19.10 Rana Kabbani The United Arab Emirates, where I travelled next, has traditionally been pro-American. It is an economic success story, with a standard of living that far exceeds that of the rest of the Muslim world. But wealth has not cushioned people from political realities and here too opinion has been radicalised. 00.19.28 Music 00.19.29 Rana Kabbani Crucially no one approves of how the US has conducted itself in the Middle East, especially over Palestine. 00.19.36 Music 00.19.38 Rana Kabbani The Palestinian Diaspora is widely scattered across the world and all over the Middle East. Many refugees came to the UAE and with skill and energy helped make it what it is today. 00.19.52 Rana Kabbani In Abu Dhabi, I met a Palestinian journalist, Atef Helwa from Safad in Palestine. He had been shunted around many times since 1948. 00.20.05 Atef Helwa Who is that? Who is that? 00.20.07 Rana Kabbani He had first fled to Damascus where he had found a job in broadcasting, working with my father in setting up Syrian television in 1958. 00.20.17 Rana Kabbani This was the first day… 00.20.18 Atef Helwa In television, television Damascus, in control there but under the, the, you know, all the overall direction of… 00.20.31 Rana Kabbani But this was taken in 1949; you had already left Palestine, you were a refugee in that photograph. 00.20.36 Atef Helwa Correct, correct, this is a child refugee Atef, a few months after leaving Safad. 00.20.51 Rana Kabbani It reminds me of pictures of young Jewish refugees. 00.20.56 Atef Helwa Well, it shows that perhaps people are not that much different from each other, doesn't it? 00.21.05 Rana Kabbani His simple answer touched me deeply, a generous and humane response from someone who had lost so much. 00.21.20 Aston ATEF HELWA Palestinian journalist Whatever happens to you as a child, you will never forget it. I am what I was on that particular day, when I had to leave everything that I loved in my little town and walk in the mud, under the rain, hearing all these explosions and looking up the sky, seeing two small aeroplanes hovering around. Being afraid that they will kill us somehow and then after that long walk, know that here you are. You are called a refugee. 00.22.08 Atef Helwa This is a picture that shows my house, which was overlooking a valley here and opposite us, a mountainous place. Now, of course all this has been taken out by the Israelis, all these houses are destroyed and the new highway instead of it. Still, I would love to go there. I hope I'll be lucky to go back to Safad, to live even a few days before one leaves this world. Just a few days – that's a dream. 00.22.51 Rana Kabbani A dream that has been destroyed and still nothing to put in its place. 00.23.04 Rana Kabbani If there was one thing you could say to the Americans, what would that be? 00.23.11 Atef Helwa America, we feel your pain, isn't it time you feel ours. 00.23.22 Rana Kabbani Everyone I spoke to expressed anger at America's shocking hypocrisy and double standards. 00.23.32 Rana Kabbani This was the moment, a year ago, when Palestinians hoped America would finally see their suffering. A defenceless child dies in his father's arms, shot by Israeli soldiers. 00.23.48 Aston Dr EBTISAM AL-KITBI Asst Professor, Emirates University Voice over Why is it considered terrorism when Arabs resist occupation and defend themselves, whereas what the Israelis do to Palestinians everyday in the Occupied Territories is not considered terror? This double standard is what the Arab street is at a loss to understand and it is what I cannot comprehend myself. What's more, President Bush then pontificates that whoever is not with us is siding with terrorism. This is unacceptable arm- twisting. 00.24.29 Rana Kabbani Throughout the Middle East the coverage of the conflict offers very different words and pictures from those available in America, where despite its claims to freedom, it seems the media allows itself to be censored. 00.24.48 Rana Kabbani Pictures of a dead Afghani little girl and the Pentagon calls on Americans to be patient in this war. 00.25.00 Rana Kabbani Israel refuses to withdraw from Bethlehem. 00.25.07 Rana Kabbani Americans don't seem to grasp the horrific human cost of their wars or acknowledge the mess they create. 00.25.17 Aston DONALD RUMSFELD US Secretary of Defence Every time General Myers and I stand before you at this podium we're asked to respond to Taliban accusations about civilian casualties; much of it unsubstantiated propaganda. On the other hand there are instances where in fact there are unintended effects of this conflict and ordinance ends up where it should it not. 00.25.40 Rana Kabbani These are the images that Arabs see on their television screens, which the US grotesquely dismisses as collateral damage. 00.25.48 Rana Kabbani Knowing the US record only too well, Arabs suspect there are undisclosed motives to such wars. 00.26.00 Dr Ebtisam Al-Kitbi Voice over This war aims at changing the current power balance in the region as a whole. As happened during the Gulf War, this war is being waged in order to give the US military bases in central Asia, to have its army occupy that region as it did the Gulf under the convenient banner of 'war against terrorism'. 00.26.26 Music 00.26.34 Rana Kabbani US foreign policy on Israel and Iraq has earned America enemies. But although they hold the US responsible for many crimes, Arabs are now engaged in a process of self- examination too. 00.26.49 Rana Kabbani They are seeking to understand the roots of the extremism that flourishes in the region and are concluding that it's the product of political repression and social injustice. 00.27.01 Aston HISHAM KASSEM Publisher, Cairo Times This is definitely a war between the haves and the have- nots. A lot of focus, a lot of reporting has gone on it being the war between Islam and Christianity, which could have catastrophic consequences, you know. When you look back in history, nobody ever fought a war for religion. Under the pretext of religion, under religious banners but it was all for political motivations or economic objectives. Unfortunately it is being showed as a show down between Islam and Christianity. 00.27.33 Music 00.27.44 Rana Kabbani America has contributed to extremism by financing Islamist groups to fight its dirty wars by proxy, most obviously in Afghanistan. 00.27.56 Rana Kabbani The fall out has been terrible for us all. But these groups, once created, were politically motivated and used religion as an expedient cover. Many Muslim countries dealt with these radicals by exploiting them, thereby compounding the problem. 00.28.12 Hisham Kassem The Arab governments were sending people to Afghanistan, we used to have ads here in the official press about going to Afghanistan or donating your money for that cause. 00.28.24 Hisham Kassem The government, when people came from the south of Egypt to move into Cairo were told you either go back or you go to Afghanistan, you can't stay in the city, they just did not, they wanted to pretend they did not exist, you see. That's one level. On the other, most of those people grew up feeling a sense of injustice, unemployment, high unemployment. I remember once talking to somebody who was the head of the militant faction of the Gama Islamia (phon) behind bars and I had the impression he's a very bright young man. Later when I went to his home town, Mallawi, I found that the last factory built there was in 1920. He didn't find a job and went militant. 00.29.11 Hisham Kassem Add to that, when these boys began to feel a sense of injustice there were no public libraries for them to read Voltaire or … Hassein or …or whoever. There was just a sheikh in a mosque talking about injustice. They joined the first voice of dissent they heard. 00.29.33 Rana Kabbani Throughout my journey people sought to explain but never to applaud the terrorist acts against the US. 00.29.48 Rana Kabbani Even once militant voices of dissent such as the Muslim Brothers denounced them. 00.29.54 Aston ESSAM AL-ARYAN Muslim Brotherhood spokesman There were big sympathy with victims of the terrible instance in eleven of September. Hezbollah and Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are fighting for liberation of their land and this is, it is a just fighting but which has happened, what's happened in New York of course is terrorism, is terrible instance. It's against Islam and all religions. 00.30.25 Rana Kabbani But these groups wonder what cold-blooded strategy leads America to only give support to undemocratic regimes; regimes which suppress political freedoms. 00.30.40 Essam Al-Aryan We argue that if the support of the Americans to these autocratic regimes is lifted, the people can change themselves as it happened in many places in the world. And when the people here compare what the Americans do in Eastern Europe and which are they doing here, they know that the Americans don't need democracy in this region. 00.31.08 Rana Kabbani It seems that it better suits American interests in the Middle East to support compliant and undemocratic regimes, rather than risk the emergence of independent governments that might oppose US domination of the sources of wealth. 00.31.23 Gunfire 00.31.28 Rana Kabbani The Americans are obsessed with regional security rather than democracy. It's in their interest to keep cheap oil from the Gulf flowing to the US in order to maintain their own economy. 00.31.43 Rana Kabbani At Al-Ain University, a professor of political science who like me, had studied at Georgetown in Washington DC, offered this warning. 00.31.53 Aston Dr ABDULKHALEQ ABDULLA Professor, Emirates University The Arab world is probably one of the least democratic region in the world and we don't need more totalitarian and more oppressive government around. So I hope the American do not, you know do not pressure our government, do not pressure us into that kind of a stand, which is not going to be very healthy for us or for the American. 00.32.21 Rana Kabbani Even Arab governments are beginning to examine themselves. In Abu Dhabi I heard a very surprising opinion from one of the ruling elite. 00.32.31 Rana Kabbani He thought extremism was the result of oppressive rule not economic deprivation. 00.32.39 Aston Sheikh NAHYAN BIN MUBARAK Minister for Higher Education I think the growth of this movement is not particularly because they are poor. We have poor people in other countries as well, much poorer than the Arab world, look at India, look at other countries; they do not produce extremism. I think the way this been ruled is a source of this problem. 00.33.04 Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdulla We think that we are out of touch with the age of democratisation and many of our problems stems from the fact that we have not yet catch up with the age of transparency and age of political participation. 00.33.19 Rana Kabbani Many Arab countries have acquired an endless variety of American consumer products but have been reluctant to seek pluralism in politics. Now they admit that change is necessary. 00.33.32 Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak We have a long way to go. There are signs. The world has changed and we have to change with it if we want to be part of it. And we see signs but not as we like. We ought to be, a giant step has to be taken to change the political life in the Arab world. 00.33.55 Music 00.34.00 Rana Kabbani In Iran, the history of relations with America has been particularly bitter. It was here that the term of the 'Great Satan' was coined. 00.34.08 Music 00.34.10 Rana Kabbani Iranians have never forgotten the role played by America in overthrowing their most popular Prime Minister in 1953. The house where he lived is now a shrine to his memory, looked after by an old friend. 00.34.34 Aston HUSSEIN SHAH-HOSSEINI This is Dr Mossadegh's resting place, where he was laid to rest after he died in Tehran. 00.34.44 Rana Kabbani Mossadegh was a reformer and a democrat who wanted real independence for his country. To achieve this he nationalised the oil company, which up until then was providing the US with cheap oil. But nationalisation was an unthinkable act of independence and the US immediately toppled Mossadegh - an act that sparked years of upheaval for Iran and hostility against the West which had put in place a repressive but compliant Shah. 00.34.19 Hussein Shah-Hosseini Voice over If you look at Iranian history before the coup d'etat, Iranians had a very positive attitude towards the Americans way of thinking and their policies in Iran. They had given Americans an opportunity to open many schools, a college and many hospitals. They also had many officials here. 00.35.39 Hussein Shah-Hosseini Voice over Unfortunately from the moment the oil industry was nationalised, American policies changed completely. They took over the British role in Iran because they were after oil. When the Americans realised that Iran was defending its national interests and was not prepared to sacrifice those interests, they colluded with the British and engineered the coup d'etat. The result of this coup d'etat was that Iranians developed a severe suspicion of Americans. 00.36.22 Rana Kabbani These anti-American feelings erupted during the revolution of 1979. A popular chant for years was 'Death to America'. 00.36.38 Crowds chanting 00.36.44 Rana Kabbani Even this year, on the anniversary of the take over of the US Embassy, there was a small demonstration with the now ritualistic burning of the US flag. 00.36.55 Crowds shouting 00.37.03 Aston 18 September 2001 00.37.03 Rana Kabbani But there was also a spontaneous gathering of five thousand Iranians who held a candlelit vigil after September eleventh, which lasted for weeks, to express human sympathy for the victims of the attacks. 00.37.17 Rana Kabbani Yet these pictures were hardly seen in the Western media, nor this reaction reported. 00.37.33 Crowd shouting Subtitles America, condolences… America, condolences… 00.37.49 Aston BIJAN KHAJEPOUR Political Analyst The hostility that actually has emerged after the Iranian revolution, at least from an Iranian perspective, is very much connected to the fact that Iran dared to develop what Iran believes is an independent agenda. Basically the, this is I think again one of the gaps in the US world view, is the feeling that, you know, there is no such thing as an independent developing country. But there is, Iran proved that there can be an independent state that can even survive through a long list of challenges and problems, whether it has been sanctions or war or reconstruction and so on. 00.38.34 Rana Kabbani The guardian of Mossadegh's legacy has seen the fall-out of America's interventions in his country's politics. 00.38.41 Rana Kabbani In his lifetime he saw Iran lose independence for many years and then saw it being punished with isolation and sanctions by the United States when an American backed war with Iraq failed to break it. 00.38.59 Rana Kabbani In November, the American Embassy re-opened after twenty-two years with a new name. 00.39.05 Rana Kabbani It is now called the Museum of Arrogance. 00.39.12 Rana Kabbani This was the building where in 1979 the big stand-off between Iran and the US took place. Fifty-two American hostages were held for fifteen months, which led to the toppling of Carter. 00.39.26 Rana Kabbani It made an ironic change for an American president to be overthrown by Iran. 00.39.43 Rana Kabbani Ordinary people flooded into the building to be reminded by the exhibits of how America behaves in the rest of the world. 00.39.52 Rana Kabbani Iranians know to their cost how lacking in principles US foreign policy can be. 00.40.02 Aston Dr ATAOLLAH MOHAJERANI Centre for Dialogue of Civilization Voice over It seems that Americans do not believe in history or that in the future history will judge them. If they believed in history their behaviour might possibly be different. Sometimes the changes in their foreign policy take place very quickly. 00.40.18 Dr Ataollah Mohajerani Voice over I'll give you three examples in relation to Pakistan, which took place in less than a year. During the American elections Mr Bush didn't know the name of General Musharraf. When he was asked he didn't know who was in charge of Pakistan. In the second example he called General Musharraf a dictator. And thirdly, where we are today, we see that General Musharraf has become America's sweetheart. I even saw an interview with the American ambassador in Pakistan on TV, praising General Musharraf highly as a democratic leader. 00.41.02 Rana Kabbani Each room in this museum is a testament to a different American misadventure, which has cost some country somewhere very dearly. 00.41.13 Rana Kabbani What is clear is that the relationship between America and the rest of the world needs to change; to be based on mutual respect. No such respect is evident from the sad record of America's recent political history, as illustrated, rather crudely perhaps, in the length and breadth of these rooms. 00.41.34 Bijan Khajepour This is interesting that Iran, whenever Iran voices its view about foreign relations, the first, the first notion that Iranian leaders use and is actually ingrained in the Iranian constitution is the notion of dignity. We say, we will have relations with countries that respect our dignity. Now the notion of dignity is something that has been missing in Iran US relations. 00.41.59 Bijan Khajepour Basically, Iranians feel that they have not been given respect for their own dignity, their own, you know their own set of values and so on. So I think what Iran is trying to achieve is really this independence. And as long as the feeling is that a relationship with the US would undermine the concept of independence, Iranians are going to be hostile to it. 00.42.26 Music 00.42.30 Rana Kabbani Like other Muslims, Iranians have had to fight hard to defend their integrity in their dealings with America. 00.42.37 Rana Kabbani America in turn needs to acknowledge that other countries will only stop resenting it when they are free from its intolerable interference and domination. 00.42.48 Music 00.43.05 Voice over Rana Kabbani will be live on-line tomorrow at three thirty. You can e-mail her your questions now at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.21 Voice over I'm Bonnie Greer; I was born in Chicago. My country has been attacked twice; once physically and now for being arrogant. Next week in Letter From America, I'm going home to defend it. 00.43.05 Credits Reporter RANA KABBANI Camera DAVID SCOTT HADI POUYAN Dubbing Mixer MICHAEL NARDUZZO VT Editor JASPAL BANGA Graphic Design NICOLA OWEN Production Team ALEXANDRA CAMERON EMMA CASHMORE SARAH EVA ANJANA SHARMA Film Research NICK DODD Research LAWRENCE JOFFE Assistant Producer CECILIA HUE Picture Editor DAVID HOWELL Series Producer SIMON FINCH Produced & Directed by AMIR AMIRANI Deputy Editor FARAH DURRANI 00.43.34 Editor FIONA MURCH BBC © BBC MMI 00.43.39 End BBC Correspondent 1 18