It is Sunday, the day I put business aside and enjoy the special moments of spare time. So I am back.  No matter what people may think or say of me I sure do enjoy what I am doing.

I am all for Amadou Dibba this week, the next, and the one after that until perhaps, we understand each other irrespective of our different opinions. However, despite Amadou’s utter unyielding argument to impress on all that identity shouldn’t be an issue, I still think it signifies a lot or everything in this debate. But this is also the week of the 8th anniversary of the September 11, World-Trade-Center attack in New York City that deserves acknowledgement especially, from those of us who were eyewitnesses to the tragedy. This year, I couldn’t for the first time attend the solemn ceremony in Lower Manhattan because of bad weather. Ground Zero is the name given to the ill-fated spot where the towering buildings once stood as impressive showcases of American capitalism as well as its technological ingenuity. You will be amazed that after all these years, the place is still a hollow ground surrounded by the same fence with nothing done to change its looks. There have been only plans upon plans, designs upon designs, stalled by what many believe is, a shameful combination of ineptitude and bureaucratic red tapes. Nevertheless, there are many more who argue that it is merely about cash shortage than anything else. But how could America in retaliation for that violence, commit billions of dollars in two wars that now cost more lives around the world than lost in the attack, finds it so hard to rebuild the source of the whole anger? Sometimes, one is inclined to surmise that the preservation of Ground zero’s dismal looks is deliberate; to be used as a symbol for legitimizing the international wars being fought across the globe. In fact, I have now come to the conclusion that mankind will just continue to fight wars despite their threat to the human race. It is inconceivable to perceive the devastating effects of ending wars to the world economy when the best part of humanity’s wealth is anchored on the production and distribution of huge quantities of expensive and cheap weapons by the industrialized countries. During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama campaigned strongly on a political platform to end wars, but it is a shame that President Obama couldn’t implement any of his plans toward that goal. Instead, he seems to be supportive of bigger troop surges for longer, expanded wars. That gives the Chinese and Russians the economic boost they also needed to distribute their arsenals to America’s enemy camps to keep the fire burning forever. But, I only hope for the need to change its ugly looks, Ground zero will be rebuilt before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

Having said that, I guess the most shocking incident of the week was the unprecedented heckling of President Obama by Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina at the middle of his address to the joint-House of Congress by shouting him down as a liar.  The only reason I think the man could act in such a silly manner is because, like most of the typical rednecks in the country, he still cannot accept the reality of a black man leading this nation. Such a disrespectful gesture has never been directed to a president and the office he represents throughout the history of the nation. But Obama, who is way more evolved than these retards, humbly accepted the man’s apology. The precedence created in failing to punish the Congressman will in the future encourage more heckling of future presidents in the middle of their speeches. I argue that such actions should be totally illegalized through retroactive legislation to punish the man who occasioned such enactment.

Sorry, I must stop myself before drifting too far from my main topic, the mysterious Mr. Amadou Dibba who believes that my failure to engage him was because I lacked alternative viewpoints to those he challenged me on. I will however, beg for Amadou Dibba’s patience to bear with me over my limitation by sticking to the simple English language I use to covey my message because, to be quite honest, I sometimes find his writings too farfetched and laborious to discern. The maestro writes in supposedly flawless jargon, not like the simple ones I enjoy reading or prefer to write-and trust me, I read a lot- but one often coded in a seductive language that if not given the scrutiny it deserves, sways the gullible who might not even understand his trend of reasoning. I don’t know anything else about this man called Amadou Dibba but he sure knows how to use his verbose tricks to denigrate his adversaries even if what he is saying doesn’t really add up and I will try to proof that later.

But I must first let him know that though I am certainly a fanatical fan of boxing sports which has nothing to do with martial arts-looking forward to the Floyd Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez fight on HBO pay per view on September 19, next Saturday-violence is anathema to my physiological constitution. As a soldier, I woke up every morning to pray to God to protect me from the necessity to take human life and to only help me when engaged in fights for self-defense if at all I had to. Today, I thank God I have been blessed in that area. But since Mr. Dibba knows me so well to sarcastically allude to my book with an obvious air of intellectual arrogance, he should be able to find Gambians who know me better especially, in the military, to tell him more about my level of commitment to peace rather than violence. If they are not frightened by his intimidating pedantic demeanor and are conscientious enough to tell the truth and not half the truth, which he claims in his conclusions, “could be more dangerous than an outright lie”, I bet they will tell him that Sarr was always for peace and the righteous path. I have saved lives, which otherwise would have been lost, helped the weak against the strong and always treat my fellow human beings as equals irrespective of race, tribe, gender, religious affiliation or national origin. And believe in me, I always enjoy the company of loved ones and will do anything to have a good laugh from humorous people.

If, however, I wanted to really, really, really get Dibba now this is what I will resort to: I just received a special “juju” from The Gambia made of a snake horn sewn in teeth hide which is the cutting edge of all “jujus”. It serves as bullet proof, could make me invisible and fly like a bird too, protects me from any human-eating witch, can make me win any wrestling bout against those dwarf bastards lurking behind termite hills at the outskirts of Serekunda Primary School and is the best armor against the dreaded jinni waiting patiently in quiet foliages just to slap humans for the fun of disfiguring them. Another great thing about the juju is its potential to overthrow governments and for everyone interested, I am pleased to say that it is marketable if the price offered is right. Oops, that might be trying to cash in again on brothers in the Diaspora.  But I guess my brother Mathew who now brands me as somebody with missing screws in his head and needs help could be interested because of his dogged intent to overthrow the Jammeh government by all means necessary and assume the responsibility of ruling the country for the first five years henceforth as the most qualified Gambian to do so. He is sure another impressive writer with courage to openly own up to his “beliefs and views”. I sure respect him for that. So Mr. Dibba, please I challenge you to provide your photo to The Echo and come out of hiding. Momodou Olly Mboge, the first to react to my piece was bold enough to send his photo to the paper and I respect him for that. 

Enough of the humor, but the man as I said, who with his unique tricks to write in a way that sometimes only helps confuse his readers with high sounding terminologies and phrases that make them almost want to believe that the English language they were taught in school was not, after all, the original one, is whom I want to show in ordinary simple English, that it was not a lack of contrary opinion to his points that prevented me from responding. On the contrary, it was a matter of honoring a principle I long ago adopted when I noticed all kinds of lies being written about me by nameless and faceless individuals on the Internet. Even the Editor of The Gambia Echo was aware of that about me and had also once assured me that he would equally take the same stance not to allow people with fake names to be insulting genuine debaters on The Gambia.  But in Mr. Dibba’s case, although he assured me that he knows of the man, I really doubt whether he does, and wouldn’t tell me anymore than that for respecting his journalistic ethics to protect sources preferring to hide their identity. I still think such people should be forbidden from publishing anything in the name of a fair debate. In my attempt to speculate his identity, the option that I left out but did appeal to me strongly is that, Dibba is merely a surrogate for the conman behind the scenes. And that conman may have been fully an employee of President Jammeh and served him with all loyalty until, like me, he got ejected from the system. That’s in fact my final view about him but will still continue to address him as Amadou Dibba.

Now let me get on to the serious issues. He argued eloquently in his usual flamboyancy over the fact that ideas take precedence over identity by giving me this analogy. It comes from his second article. This was after he thought he had convinced his readers to disregard the importance of revealing his identity, which he still protects with his life. Hear the warrior talking: “I have always held that where a person, on account of being in position of authority, will nor scruple to abuse the power and trust conferred by his position to victimize others for daring to hold dissenting opinions then individual citizens are absolutely right to resort to whatever method of protection they can conceive if it helps them to hold on to their beliefs and views. What is sauce for the aggressive goose is certainly sauce for the defenseless gander, not least because the only other alternative-to acquiesce, grin and bear the situation is-despicable!”
If this statement is not alluding to what he chided me together with the Western-educated doctors for adopting what he thought was the self-preservation instinct that I in particular believe was helpful for my survival to “hold on to my beliefs and views”, I can’t imagine what is. And who holds the barometer that measures distinctively the despicable from the genuine silent or hiding ones like undercover- militants such as Dibba?

Just allow me to reconstruct this part of his first paper for readers to judge. “…It is my opinion that the same instinct for self-preservation that impelled him (that was me and my jailhouse thoughts for freedom) to conceive of that idea is certainly the same one that dictated the so-called Western-educated doctors’ pronouncement and actions on an issue they know more than anybody else meant everything to their boss”. Brilliant contextualization! However attributing my desperate desire to beg for mercy under the harsh conditions I encountered while in custody to a self-preservation instinct consistent with that of the motive behind the Western-educated doctors’ validation of the effectiveness of Jammeh’s cure for AIDS was at best, DISINGENOUS! In my case, I will admit invoking such instinct, but as for the doctors, it’s doubtful. But by dismissively referring to the men as so-called doctors, who I am sure never at any moment, even after losing their jobs ever changed their opinion about the matter-except if they discreetly confided it to Dibba, demonstrates his utter disdain and disrespect for the men whom he perhaps, never encountered or hardly knew. The scolding equally or even more targets me in the same vein. But with his craftiness, Dibba deliberately left out the third character I mentioned along with the doctors, The Gambia-University lecturer who on national and international TV also vouched for the effectiveness of the President’s medicine. The fellow told the international media that he was successfully treated as an HIV positive patient and was now free of the infection after taking the president’s medicine. But Dibba knows that he could not dovetail the image of the man to that of the doctors’ and mine and bamboozled everyone into thinking that we were all wearing the same self-preservation cloak. So he dropped the lecturer like hot potato. Knowing what this guy is capable of, I wouldn’t bet that he will not come back with cleaver reasons for excluding the lecturer, but if he did I will be glad to know what was in it for the patient to lie about his condition. Of course, he was not in a life and death situation like me in jail to impel him to say what he said neither was Jammeh his boss to warrant his “pronouncements and actions on an issue (he) knows more than anybody else, meant everything to (his) boss,” as in his assessment of the doctors’ activities. I don’t know, but I will wait for his answer on that. That is not even what I found most annoying about his bias standpoint, but his seemingly perfect understanding of his adoption of the self-preservation instinct in the face of perceived danger while demonizing others for resorting to the same mechanism in similar situations. What an unfair apportioning of all the sauce for the hiding goose with nothing left for the gander before everyone’s eyes?

I will randomly proceed to the other issues in his paper starting with the dead Ghanaians in The Gambia. I thought he was going to give me tangible evidences or even names and addresses of the victims whom I believe could have drowned from capsized boats in the high seas, but instead, he came up with nothing but where he believed the bodies were found which contradicts the location I reported. What was his source? A faint memory of an article he read in The Point newspaper in The Gambia. I wish he could refer me to the date and the author’s name. But just wait and see how he would wriggle out of that next time with the Queen’s English. He said it was not around Ghana Town close to Brufut beach, as I reported from reliable sources in The Gambia but in a forest. There are several forests in The Gambia with the few I know in the area called Kabafita and Njambai forests. At least telling which forest it was would have been a little bit more helpful in his attempt to cast doubt to my point. So in a classic change of the position of the goal post to his advantage in the middle of the game, he astutely shifted the subject to the student’s demonstration to elicit sympathy from the emotions of the readers. Yes, he began by accusing the Jammeh government of being capable of sabotaging the efforts of any independent investigation to effectively get to the bottom of the cause of the dead Ghanaians which he summarized thus: Otherwise the government would have been only keen to dispel suspicion by commissioning a definitive and conclusive investigation.

I really feel like using my snake-horn juju and flying to England and “daa fix” Mr. Dibba as the youth used to warn their adversaries in Sukuta before busting their mouths with punches. But let me explain to him from experience how Gambians react to mysterious or violent death. Even the soldiers in the barracks supposedly trained to hold their cool when confronted by death, easily lose their calm and collection in its midst. I have witnessed situations where we were confronted with such but in the best cases, I know we utterly handled them sloppily. I even gave an example of how badly we handled the Farafenni attack in 1996 because of the eight men the mercenaries slew within twenty minutes of their killing spree. The oldest of the victims was twenty-seven and the youngest nineteen, all innocent Gambians who couldn’t hurt a fly and were perhaps serving only because their families depended on their salaries.  Gambians in general except for the psychopaths are not cold-blooded killers. That is why those I know who thought that being a warrior is incomplete without showing attributes of a heartless killer and made the stupid mistake of killing their fellow Gambians never recovered from that wave of severe panic and regret that engulfed them after their victims lay dead cold before them. Therefore, in the case of the Ghanaians, after looking at it from all angles coupled with my past experience of such bad incidents while in active duty, I concluded that the shocking situation just hit everybody in the country like a freight train, even President Jammeh. That is why the Ghanaians who must have loved their people better and acted diligently in search of the truth gave it up after exhausting every conceivable avenue of approach. The story should have clearly ended there. But Dibba had to weave in the ultimate killer phrase that after all left me dazzled over the man’s sincerity when he expressed his preference to rather be lied to than be given half the truth, which he deems more dangerous. “Has Sarr forgotten about the indemnity Clause the Jammeh government rushed through Parliament following the killings during the April 10&11 2001 so as to forestall any calls for investigations into one of the most outrageous acts of barbarity that still rankle among Gambians?”

I think it is Dibba who forgot that after the tragic incident, in an effort to redress the matter, the government actually commissioned a board that investigated the problem and submitted their findings in a report that clearly blamed some members of the security forces for the act. I was not in the country then but from what I understand, the government still in a show of regret settled with the families of the dead by compensating them with amounts of money for the great loss. Since then, the country seemed to have healed from the incident which Dibba thinks still rankles among Gambians when the rankling is all in his ever tormented head. Yes, an Indemnity Clause was subsequently passed but not in the kind of rush Dibba tries to make us believe. Sounds like half the truth being given here anyway. After all, who was Jammeh afraid of to rush the Indemnity Clause “so as to forestall any calls for investigations” as if he could have been forced by anything or anybody to do so? Are you kidding me?  Or is this just Dibba always underrating the intelligence of his readers?

If my book, Coup-d’e-tat by The Gambia National Army were not too elementary for Mr. Dibba, I would have encouraged him to read it and see how I discussed that tragic incident and how it could be avoided in the future. By the way, I also exhaustively discussed term limit there for presidents all over the world, including of course, The Gambia.  But it looks like Dibba is rather a huge colossus bestriding over everybody and therefore, will not waste his vast talent on such a book written in simple, plain English no hyperboles, devoid of pretensions to grammatical superiority, that he also thinks bore the ulterior motive of the author cashing in on the mind-set of dissident Gambians in the Diaspora. To appreciate Amadou Dibba’s academic pretensions and offensive intellectual arrogance just fancy how he complimented me over my writing achievement. He wrote, “By the way I have to say that I envy his achievement and gift as a Gambian writer in a class of his own”. Cheers maestro!

How can any Gambian with such an idiosyncrasy ever have the audacity to show his face to the public and expect to get along with anyone, who by nature is just simple, kind-hearted, respectable human? I doubt whether he even has a wife or girlfriend to put up with his crap. Just follow his harangue to place Obama’s popularity over Jammeh’s when I metaphorically compared the two. “President Jammeh’s popularity is all the more tainted with dubious and sometimes reprehensible acts that often result in drawing a mostly unthinking rabble attracted more by the pomp and pageantry, as well as few officialdom who are forced by the urge to avoid senseless victimization for failing to show up at such gathering.” What a bigot?! I had to really take my time before I could translate it to my level of English knowledge: I think he simply meant to say that Jammeh’s popularity is marred with shady and sometimes bad actions that often as a result, draw a mostly unthinking low-class people attracted by the splendid-displays (the same as pomp and pageantry) together with few class of officials impelled by the usual self-preservation instinct.

That was it, in my kind of language. The low-class crowd this time seems to be the reprehensible elements while the officials appear perfectly excusable. I think Dibba seriously needs to get off his white horse. We can trick ourselves into thinking that we are far more open-minded and big-hearted than we really are or superior to others for their looks, thoughts, behaviors or their mere difference with us. But it’s when we must walk our talk in the complex landscape of a messy life that self-righteousness ideals whittle down into the honest truth.

I always try to share this short verse from a great thinker: “We are all bozos on the bus contrary to the self-assured image we usually work so hard to present to each other on daily basis. We are all half-baked experiments-mistake prone beings, born without an instruction book into a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior. We have betrayed and been betrayed; we have been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic, and stingy; and each one of us has occasionally awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money, love, family, food and of course death. In other words, the plot for all of us is the same: we are born; we are living; we are going to die.”     

Finally, I have noticed Mr. Dibba’s penchant for quoting and paraphrasing legal instruments as a roadmap for correcting our political, social and even economic deficiencies. I certainly wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he is educated or seeking education in that field. Anyway, I wish he could tell me what part of President Jammeh’s statement he cannot still get after sating that when it comes to national security, he cares less about the law or the Constitution. Anyway, I have news for the superior brother. That is how governments operate all over the world. You see, Mr. Dibba, you might know better than I do that laws especially, international ones were designed to provide checks and balances targeted mainly to rogue nations with the belief that there were good ones to serve as models, especially, the superpowers that would have been entitled to enforce them in nations that failed to abide by them. Mere illusion! From my understanding of the world lately, I believe that we have lost that intellectually honest world outlook that truly qualifies an ideal country that can, amid the global chaos and confusion serve as that role model that the rest will respect and follow. Even in America with all its Jeffersonian democracy hinged on a perfectly documented Constitution that for example, uncompromisingly forbids torture has in the past eight years acted in ways contradictory to its people’s beliefs and principles. They have been accused of torturing and killing, directly or indirectly, of suspects all over the world allegedly linked to behaviors or actions prejudicial to the country’s national security. Does Guantanamo Bay strike a chord to him?  Many Americans today are adamant on having those suspected of taking part in such illegal activities, especially members of the CIA, arrested and tried as soon as possible. Obama doesn’t want to buy any of that because of the greater damage it may cause to the country’s national security apparatus it is meant to protect in the first place.
So Mr. Dibba, I rest my case till next week. I appreciated his message of goodwill for the Ramadan. I wish him the same and his surrogate (s).
Cheers Brother.   

** Lt. Colonel Samsudeen Sarr is a retired Commander of The Gambia National Army and lives in Newark, New Jersey. A former Secondary School teacher of English Language and Agriculture, Sarr has an Engineering degree from Atlanta, Georgia and is author of Meet Me in Conakery (a novel) and Coup d’etat by The Gambia National Army.