The "Good America" was in the Room

Daoud Hiri, an African now living in Maryland, was a translator in Darfur, Sudan. In his book he describes his trial in Sudan together with a network correspondent who was accused of spying. When he saw the faces and expressions of the US military officers sitting in the back of the court, he said he felt a sense of relief knowing that justice was at least now POSSIBLE knowing that the "good America" had entered the room.

The "good America" is our ideals that we try to practice, fight to maintain, teach our kids. A small group of thoughtful, committed people created America and I DO NOT DOUBT the influence a small, thoughtful, committed group can have now in its preservation.

Earlier this year in South America on a coastal road in a residential area, my friend and I were stopped by a military squad. These soldiers were muscular, fierce looking, heavily armed with automatic weapons and angrily searching for a fleeing murderer. My friend from this South American country was trembling. Nine years earlier we had been together in a major South American city with personal business at the American consulate. I should have gained understanding of what that trembling was about from that time. As we were leaving the consulate at noon, the commotion began, gun shots, something was going on but in the crowd and confusion, who could tell. That night it was the major news story. An off duty security guard was approached by the military police outside a bank across from the consulate. He pulled out a pistol and shooting began in the crowded noon hour streets. The guard had been acting suspicious and apparently was planning to rob this bank. He hijacked of all things a car being driven by a public defender, upon crashing American consulate guards subdued him. My friend was a native and knew how the military would ignore innocent civilians in their pursuits. So here we were being searched by angry looking commando types and my friend can hardly function. Several months earlier back in the United States, late one evening, looked out the window and she saw local police running through the side of my yard. She turned to me, her face flushed of color, she collapsed over backwards. The sound of her body and head contacting the ceramic floor shocked me and I wasn't sure if she was unconscious from fainting or from the fall. I called an ambulance 9-1-1 and since the police were obviously in the area, they were at my door within 30 seconds. The initial event was a situation that many of us, living in the Daoud Hari's good America would not have given much thought to. The officers explained they were chasing some kid who stole a motor cycle. He had abandoned it and was running through the neighborhood, the police just happened to tackle him outside my window and my foreign friend just happened to be looking out of the window at the time. So here we are back to the squad of military commandos. I'm in a foreign country and reading the situation like I'm back in the good America because good America is within me, it is part of me, its my history, and having been raised poor, I've been given the opportunity to raise myself from those beginnings. It really is not that difficult to accomplish in America as much as I'd like to credit this to my own efforts. So at the checkpoint, my friend knows we are not in good America but in her country and she knows when you are stopped by the police or police come into your home or the military start shooting at a criminal, the results could just as well be deadly.