Guardian Editorial-- Where America Can Start Its War on Tyranny

[TexasLawyer]

&category=Opinion

Where America Can Start Its War on Tyranny
Gary Younge, The Guardian

NEW YORK, 25 January 2005 —

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"While the US could liberate a place where there are flagrant human rights abuses and over which they have total control (Guantanamo), it would rather topple a sovereign state, which poses no threat, through diplomatic and economic — and possibly military — warfare that is already causing chaos and hardship.

Welcome to Bush’s foreign policy strategy for the second term. His aim is not to realign the values at Guantanamo so that they are more in line with those championed by the rest of the world. It is to try and realign the rest of the world so that it is more in keeping with the values that govern Guantanamo, where human rights and legal norms are subordinated to America’s perceived interests. Under this philosophy, the Bush administration understands the words “tyranny” and “freedom” in much the same way as it understands international law. They mean whatever the White House wants them to mean. Bush is happy to support democracy when democracy supports America, just as he is happy to dispense with it when it does not. Likewise, when tyranny is inconvenient, he will excoriate it; when it is expedient, he will excuse it.

Take Uzbekistan, one of the most repressive regimes in Central Asia. In April 2002, a special UN rapporteur concluded that torture in the country was “systematic” and “pervasive and persistent ... throughout the investigation process”. In the same year, Muzafar Avazov, an opposition leader, was boiled alive for refusing to abandon his religious convictions and attempting to practice religious rites in prison. In 2003, Bush granted a waiver to Uzbekistan when its failure to improve its human rights record should have led to its aid being slashed. In February 2004 the US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, visited the country’s dictator, Islam Karimov, and said: “The relationship (between our countries) is strong and growing stronger. We look forward to strengthening our political and economic relations.” Pan down the shopping list of tyrannical states in Rice’s in-tray (Iran, Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba) and you will find no mention of Uzbekistan. Why? Because Uzbekistan, with an estimated 10,000 political prisoners, hosts a US military base that offers easy access to Afghanistan and the rest of the region.

So for every tenet that Bush claimed last week to hold dear, it was possible to pick out a country or place he is bankrolling or controlling that is in flagrant violation, and where he could improve conditions immediately if he wished. The point here is not that the US should intervene in more places, but that it should intervene consistently and honestly or not at all.

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[LiberalVoice]

1. Amazing piece!

"Yet the idea that the US is a civilizing force endowed with benevolent intentions is still as prevalent within the US as it is rejected outside it."

The saddest and truest part of the article.

[mike_c]

2. a nation of "good Germans...."

Sadly, history has a way of repeating itself.