The US calls itself a great champion of democracy and human rights, but its approach to different international issues is selective, making its claim meaningless

TWO months after the horrible attacks of September 11 “which also live in infamy” I was invited to a meeting of concerned elders in the upscale borough of South Hampton in Long Island. They wanted to know the reasons for the September attacks by a group of extremist Muslims. As we began discussing the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a consequence of the war against the Soviet Union in which Pakistan acted as a conduit for the Mujahideen created with the help and support of the covert and overt aid of the CIA and the Reagan administration, one angry participant rose from his chair and shouted: “You people obviously do not like our values and system, why don’t you all just leave this country?” But before I could confront his anger someone else in the audience rose to defend all immigrants to the United States and said: “My forefathers came here from Ireland, they were allowed to make a good life here. I was born here and I am just as much American as anyone else here. I believe anyone who comes here to better his or her lot should have the same rights.”

But today, as the Muslims deal with US immigration and other law enforcement authorities, a person who can come to your defence is no longer there. Any man, woman or girl with a Muslim-sounding name is singled out for interrogation, whether or not he/she has an American passport or legal residence papers.

Why is the United States viewed with suspicion? Why do its policies evoke so much outrage? It is because they feel hurt to see a country — that prides itself in being a bastion of democracy, human rights and the rule of law — taking actions that fly in the face of the values that it boasts of.

HORRENDOUS HUBRIS: The problems that the US faces in dealing with the rest of the world stem from the fact that, except for Israel, it does not have long-range policies on political, social and economic problems. Washington’s policies change from administration to administration; in most cases even state-to-state commitments are not honoured. So how can trust develop? Another complicating factor is America’s arrogance. The way it throws its weight around in pushing and dictating to other countries on a certain course of action evokes resentment and even hatred among those at the receiving end.

Indeed, American diplomats have a lot to learn from the suave practioners of diplomacy from their closest ally — Britain.

The double standard practised by the US can create grave doubts about its sincerity and credibility. Take this into account: The United States has twice attacked Iraq to ‘implement The United Nations resolutions’. People around the world and even some American people pose the question: Why doesn’t the United States implement other UN resolutions on equally important international issues, the Middle East conflict in particular, which is described as the key to world peace?

Every faith, every society, every nationality has its share of fringe fanatics — racists or overzealous ideologues who believe they can achieve their fantasies by arbitrary use of terror. For example, extremist attacks on family planning clinics in the US. They also believe that they are doing their lord’s will and will go to heaven even if they die in the process.

Generally, Americans know, for instance, that white supremacists are morally wrong. No one goes to school to learn that. It would appear that the Bush White House has forgotten how much genuine sympathy America received from the Muslims and other nations after 9/11. No sane person supports mayhem and the killing of innocents. No cause can justify injustice.

There is always more than one side to a particular story. Israel has as much the right to exist as any Arab nation, but the moment defending Israel becomes an exercise in brutal injustice against the Palestinians, we know that a moral line has been erased and beyond that moral line wait suicide missionaries ready to sacrifice their lives. This is the crux of the matter.

The US calls itself a great champion of democracy and human rights, but its approach is selective, making its claim meaningless. It targets Iran for lacking democracy and violating human rights, but people ask whether those laudable goals are being practised by friends of the United States such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I have avoided mentioning Israel in this context because it stands condemned by the international community for its gross violation of Palestinians’ human and political rights. Even US allies often break ranks with Washington when Israeli excesses are deplored at international fora, leaving the US isolated. In such situations, what kind of message US actions send to the rest of the world? That its commitment to justice and fair play is not genuine. I have heard people say of US leadership: practise what you preach.

In a letter US presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted that while a debate on US policies in the Middle East, especially viz-a- viz Israel and Palestine, is completely absent or rather off limits because of the awesome power of American Jewish groups, the debate is very much alive in Israel itself.

He referred to a column by a New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in which the writer observed that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat under house-arrest in Ramallah (at the time Mr Arafat was confined to his home in Ramallah before his death in Paris) President Bush in “jail” in the White House, and the US congress incarcerated at the Capitol Hill. The column elicited the expected indignant and swift response from Abraham Foxman of American Israel Political Action Committee who promptly called him an “anti-Semite” in a letter published in The Washington Post. In 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the then US President George H. Bush upset over Israeli constructions in the West Bank with US aid money once implied that he would be constrained to cut off American money for such “illegal” construction. He was promptly dubbed an “anti-Semite” by members of Israeli Knesset (Israeli parliament). Mr Bush lost elections to Bill Clinton and one factor cited for it was the loss of support within the American Jewish constituency. This fact had a sobering impact on junior Bush who went on to support every illegal and intransigent Sharon act to undermine the Middle East peace process.

A PENTAGON REPORT: A Pentagon Advisory panel in a report clearly recognizes that US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have created a shared anti-American feeling among otherwise divided Muslim extremists and raised the stature of the radicals in the eyes of ordinary Muslims. The report by the Defence Science Board published in November concluded that the government must urgently change its approach to understanding and communicating with the Muslim world. It says US public diplomacy is in crisis, and neither the White House nor Congress has done enough to fix it. At the root of the problem, the report says, is a fundamental misunderstanding of why many Muslims are hostile to the United States. They “hate our policies” not our freedom, it said. The report cites a “pervasive atmosphere of hostility” towards the American government that has intensified since the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and the US responses to them. The dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars” against the United States, the report said. “American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.” Prof Hosein Askari , who teaches at George Washington University, asserts in an article that first and foremost the United States needs a good dose of humility. “The US cannot afford to be intoxicated by its military and economic power. We cannot alienate and fight the whole world. We, like other countries, have no choice but to function in this world as it is and can only change it by persuasion (and not by confrontation and invasion). Phrases such as ‘Take em on’ do nothing to further US interests but only fan the flames. Yes, we have the power to change governments, but at what cost and with what future political and economic implications? We have needlessly created enemies and terrorists with our hubris and with our use of unnecessary feel-good phrases. Humility on the part of the US will go further than anything else to win the hearts and minds of average Muslims in Iraq and around the world.”

 

The Janus-faced right-wing

THE torture of Iraqi prisoners at the US-run prison in Abu Ghraib following the occupation of Iraq touched off a moral outrage in the civilized world. The scandal, which enraged the American public in general, was brushed aside as just being an “incident in which the frustrated American troops were just blowing off steam” and it was proof of the fact that they were not “sissies”, said one right-wing radio host in the US. His views were shared by and large by most of the right-wing media that managed to spin off the prison abuse to the reality of war . This watershed event vividly demonstrates the awesome power of the right-wing conservatives and Christian fundamentalists who supported President Bush and eventually made his victory possible in the 2004 elections.

In fact, right-wing conservatives in th United States thought the baring of pop singer Janet Jackson’s breast during the halftime show at last year’s Sunday’s Super Bowl football match as the worst case of perversion as far as American moral values go, but not Abu Ghraib prisoners’ turture and abuse.

The Jackson incident became the occasion for a vast and hypocritical outpouring of official moral outrage in the US. It has given rise to demands for further censoring television airwaves and provided yet another opportunity for whipping up the indignation the Christian fundamentalist ‘base’ of the Republican Party. The guardians of American decency went up in arms, including Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell, the religious right, The Wall Street Journal and executives from corporate giants PepsiCo, America Online and the CBS.

Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Bush appointee as FCC chairman declared: “Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt.” Powell promised an investigation into the episode.

But the American right-wing political and media establishment has no difficulty accepting as “part for the course” the looting of the national economy “to the tune of trillions of dollars” by corporate criminals with the closest connections with the Bush administration, and the launching of a war in Iraq, which has already killed and maimed tens of thousands on the basis of outright lies. Here one is reminded of the Enron and Ernest and Young corporate scandals, in which millions of Americans lost their hard-earned pension and retirement funds amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was ignored, to say the least, by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld , who reportedly dismissed such an abuse as a necessary tool of war. No real sense of moral outrage was manifested by the right-wing, nor did the so-called moral guardians of American values do anything about it. Lieutenant-General William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks, was linked by US officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Lt-Gen Boykin touched off a firestorm in October 2003 after giving speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terrorism as a battle with “Satan” and said America had been targeted “because we’re a Christian nation”.

“This will be taken as proof that what happened at Abu Ghraib (prison) is evidence of a broader culture of dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims, based on American understanding of the innate superiority of Christendom,” said a journalist.

NUKES AND REBUKES: The Bush administration is pushing the United Nations Security Council to create statutes to control the spread of nuclear weapons falling in the hands of terrorists. It is pursuing Iran and North Korea to curb or kill their nuclear ambitions. It declared Iraq, Iran, North Korea as the ‘axis of evil’ . But within the ultra-right circles that play a decisive role in formulating the Bush administration’s policies, the use of nuclear weapons is seen not as an unthinkable last resort, but as a desirable option.

Consider this: In a discussion on the website of The National Review, one of the leading far-right publications, senior editors suggested that in the event of a nuclear or radiation device being used in a terrorist attack on the US, the appropriate response would be to attack selected Arab capital cities with atomic bombs.

Writing on March 7 last year, National Review editor Rich Lowry declared that among the people he spoke to there was “lots of sentiment for nuking Makkah. Moderates opt for something more along these lines: “Baghdad and Tehran would be the likeliest sites for a first strike. If we have clean enough bombs to assure a pinpoint damage area, Gaza City and Ramallah would also be on the list. Damascus, Cairo, Algiers, Tripoli and Riyadh should be put on alert that any signs of support for the attacks in their cities will bring immediate annihilation.” When another National Review writer suggested that destroying Makkah might cause permanent outrage among one billion Muslims, Lowry rejoined: “This is a tough one, and I don’t know quite what to think. Makkah seems extreme, of course, but then again, few people would die and it would send a signal.”— Masood Haider