America's Hypocrisy

When it comes to the War on Terror, the Bush administration is cynical almost beyond measure, but it would be difficult to accuse them of hypocrisy, at this point.  They obfuscate, exaggerate, and flat-out lie to further their agenda, whether they be justifying the prosecution of the Iraq War, illegally surveilling American citizens or torturing "enemy combatants" that may or may not be guilty (I hesitate to say, "as charged" -- many prisoners are still waiting, years after they were detained, to learn of their supposed offenses). 

But, if you accept the definition of hypocrisy as, "feigning to be what one is not," then it would be unfair to so insult Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley et al.  They're absolutely up front about who they are and what they're doing.  Bush has his worldview and he's not about to let facts cloud the lenses of his blood red-colored glasses.  As the civil war in Iraq boiled over this past week, he stood in front of an uneasy nation and did his best Richard Pryor imitation, asking, "Who you gonna believe?  Me or your lying eyes?  The surge is working."  Well, he didn't actually face the nation -- he delegated the job to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.  In their hearings in front of the Senate and House committees, they came across as honorable and competent men tasked with an impossible mission.  Make that two impossible missions.  One, to secure Iraq.  And two, to explain and defend current policy to the pack of mangy jackals that is a congressional hearing committee.  How many times can you say, "It will be over when it's over?"  I thought I was listening to "Revolution #9" off the Beatles "White Album."

When the facts or the laws don't fit, the Bushies change them:  

1. Al-Quaida in Iraq, an organization born of our invasion and occupation of the country, is shortened to Al-Quaida, thereby advancing the fiction that it's Bin Laden's group we're battling in Iraq.  (Interestingly, John McCain may be giving a preview of things to come with his repeated "mis-statements" that Al-Quaida is being trained in Iran.  I wouldn't put it past him to be intentionally repeating this lie in an effort to get the country fired up for the War on Terror II.  I don't buy the confusion line.  McCain is old but he's not stupid.)

2. Bush was supposedly unaware until recently that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, thereby clearing him to sound the drums for, wait for it, a second war based on false intelligence.  The prospect is so outrageous that he's even losing the conservatives over it, but if you're expecting a change of W's heart before he leaves office to await history's judgment, I wouldn't hold my breath.  

3. The administration picks and chooses which sections of the Geneva Convention to honor.  Prisoners of war become unlawful enemy combatants and, just like that, the Convention no longer applies.  Torture becomes "enhanced interrogation."  CIA operatives are excepted from the spirit and the rule of the Geneva Convention.  Guantanamo Bay has been ruled to not be US territory and, therefore, not bound by US law.  When, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court found that the Bush military commissions were illegal as they didn't meet the standards of "civilized peoples," Bush sent legislation legalizing his prerogatives to a spineless Congress, who passed it as the Military Commissions Law 2006.  In his article, "The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture," Alfred McCoy details how Bush then transferred top Al-Quaida captives from various CIA prisons to Gitmo where the law "strips detainees of their habeas corpus rights, sanctions endless detention without trial, and allows use of tortured testimony before Guantanamo Military Commissions."  This is in blatant disregard of our own 5th Amendment to the Constitution which reads, in part, "No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law..."  As if tortured testimony could ever be admissible in a legitimate court of law.

The Bush administration does not even pretend to submit to the same principles and laws expected of the rest of the world.  And, in truth, it's hard to blame them.  They are so rarely held to account for their transgressions by either the media or the American people themselves.  Glenn Greenwald put it succinctly last October when he wrote:

"As a country, we've known undeniably for almost two years now that we have a lawless government and a President who routinely orders our laws to be violated.  His top officials have repeatedly been caught lying outright to Congress on the most critical questions we face.  They have argued out in the open that the "constitutional duty" to defend the country means that nothing -- including our "laws" -- can limit what the President does.

It has long been known that we are torturing, holding detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of law and civilization, sending detainees to the worst human rights abusers to be tortured, and subjecting them ourselves to all sorts of treatment which both our own laws and the treaties to which we are party plainly prohibit.  None of this is new.

And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that."

Nothing, indeed.  And yet, as the Olympic torch arrives upon our shores, we rush to line the streets of San Francisco, along the Embarcadero, in protest of the human rights abuses by the host country of China.  To voice our outrage that we are extending a hand of friendship to the imperial fist that is slowly crushing peace-loving Tibet.  To follow up Paris and London's protests with a little Yankee smackdown of our own.

All fine and good -- the Chinese should be held accountable.  They seem like pretty bad guys, given half a chance.  But where's the public uproar against our own government?  Where is the outcry against the way we present ourselves to the world?  I've written about this before and received many comments to the effect that we're not even in the same league as China and it's ridiculous to compare the two countries.

Really?  The reason for our collective silence is that we're not as bad as China?  Talk about lowering the bar.  Americans, unlike the current administration, are born with the gene of hypocrisy.  Born with it and then our culture nourishes it on a daily basis throughout our lives.  We preach freedom of choice and justice for all, as long as we're designing the menu and manning the scales.  As nearly as I can figure it, because we ended World War Two, landed on the moon and invented cable TV, we believe we really are superior to . . . well, everybody else.  That we should be showered with deference, gratitude and love by the rest of the world.  Like a citizen of the Roman Empire, free to walk the face of the earth without fear of molestation.   

The truth is, that hasn't been the case for some time.  Bush has spent whatever goodwill capital we had remaining over the past few years, running roughshod over international appeals for reason.  Meanwhile, Europe is using America as their own personal Filene's Basement, China continues to collect our IOU's and we send a billion dollars a day to the middle-east for oil to run our country.  The chickens may not be roosting yet, but they're on their way home.

All of which is why Barack Obama is the only candidate who makes sense as our next president.  It's going to take an extraordinary effort by an exceptional leader to rejoin the international community and repair our reputation, savaged by Team Bush.  It will require withdrawing our troops from Iraq, engaging in the fight to save the planet from global warming, strengthening the dollar so we regain our worldwide shopping privileges, righting the trade imbalances that are threatening our domestic productivity and, perhaps most importantly, earning back our position as one of the legitimate  voices for human rights around the world.

We can no longer afford to pick and choose who we will or won't talk with.  Iraq must be stabilized.  Iran must be brought into the international community of nations.  North Korea must be persuaded not to share its nuclear technology with anyone who comes knocking with a blank check in hand.  Cuba is back in play.  Chavez has threatened to stop shipping Venezualian oil to the U.S.

This is no time to be demanding preconditions before we will negotiate with troublesome nations.  For much of the rest of the world, we're a troublesome nation.  We need to sit down at as many tables as we can find a chair to and start convincing the international community that we are back.  We went a little crazy there for awhile but we feel better now and we're ready to get to work.  McCain can't do that.  You know what they say.  You can take the pilot out of the navy but you can't take the navy out of the pilot.  He'll always be a cold-war cowboy.  I could see him staring down Krushchev but I can't picture him at a table with Ahmadinejad  and Al-Assad negotiating America's role in Iraq's future.  And Clinton is adamant in her refusal to lend the prestige of the office to dicey negotiations, too (never mind that the prestige level is at an all-time low).  Desperate times call for a new approach. 

Obama has, from day one, promised to take JFK's advice, "never fear to negotiate," to heart.  He preaches his willingness to sit down with any and all of our adversaries in an attempt to find some common ground.  It's a harbinger of how he views America's role in the future.  We can again lead by example, not solely through coercion and might.  It's no longer possible to walk around with a big stick as the world's policeman.  Bush had nothing but contempt for the United Nations (hence his nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador the the UN).  As the world's sole remaining super-power he believed we should answer to no one.  

Well, we've tried it his way.  How'd that work out?   

Maybe answering to the international community is exactly what is called for right about now.  Thanks, W.  You may go now.  History is waiting.

Just Say No To A Boycott

I'm thinking about visiting Lake George, in upstate New York, this summer.  To do so, I will have to pass through the state capitol of Albany.  Home of the New York State Assembly which just rejected Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for New York City.  It was a lousy, cowardly move on the legislature's part and they need to be held accountable.  

For my part, I intend to boycott the lunch counter of the Miss Albany Diner on my way through the city.  I'll pack a sandwich instead.  I was inspired to act by the growing clamor against participation in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, highlighted by Hillary Clinton's call yesterday for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies in protest of China's miserable record on human rights.  

The theory goes that, if China wants to be treated like a big-time, international power, they need to clean up their act and start respecting the rights of their own citizens, as well as Tibetans and Sudanese and anyone else they've dissed over the past six months.  In other words, they need to meet our human rights standards before we will legitimize their government with our presence at the party they're planning.

You've got to be kidding.  That deafening silence you hear coming out of the White House is Bush and his lackeys trying to come up with a response that won't bring down the house over at the United Nations.  Laugh?  It would be greeted like the stateroom scene from "Night At The Opera."  

America demanding respect for civil rights and calling for a government to take responsibility for it's actions?  America, with her history of supporting Somoza in Nicaragua, Mobutu in Zaire, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who killed 1.5 million in Cambodia, Amin in Uganda, Batista in Cuba, Botha in South Africa, the Duvaliers, who slaughtered 40,000 in Haiti, Doe in Liberia, Franco in Spain, Diehm in South Vietnam, and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, our best friend in the region despite his regime which hangs onto power through the use of torture, amputation and public hangings.  Who punishes female adultry with death by stoning.  That America?

America who financed Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, Trujillo, Suharto and the Shah of Iran?  Who greased the wheels for Ford, GM and Studebaker to sell trucks to Franco's Spain and ITT to provide the phone and radio systems for Nazi Germany?  That America?

The America that brought the world the images of Abu Ghraib, the stories of wrongful detention and torture in Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons we've set up in Thailand, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe to deal with the really tough nuts to crack?  Well, not to deal with them so much as to disappear them.  

The America that stands with Iran and the Congo as countries who execute juveniles and the mentally ill?  That openly mocked the ideals set forth in her own Constitution by passing the Patriot Act, thereby giving the government the right to spy on its own citizens without demonstrating probable cause?  That responded ( with positively glacial alacrity) to Hurricane Katrina's ravaging of the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with police brutality, racial profiling and discrimination?  

The America who showed her respect for the international community and her sense of responsibility for producing 36% of the world's greenhouse emissions while only representing 4.6% of the global population by opting out of the Kyoto Protocol immediately upon George Bush taking office?  Thereby proudly joining Kazakhstan as the only two nations not to ratify the treaty.  That America?

And finally, the America that invaded Iraq to exterminate a tinhorn dictator and settle a family debt and is still there, thousands of lives and millions of refugees and trillions in treasure later?  

Is that really the resume we're supposed to bring with us to the table when we sit down with the Chinese and lecture them on human rights?

George Bush probably doesn't think so.  Tough to sell, globally, that is.  We need to think smaller.  The Opening Ceremonies might be a little awkward.  There was a story in the Times Online a few weeks ago that just might fit the bill.  It seems the US athletes are planning to bring their own food to Beijing, rather than risk trusting the local cuisine.  The Chinese aren't pleased but they're finding it hard to defend their home-cooking, given all the recent public health scares they've endured.  

Yeah, that's right.  It's an Olympic food boycott, similar in many ways to the protest I've planned for my Albany visit.  I think Dana Perino needs to clip that article and trot it right into the Oval Office for the president to see.  Give him something to hang his cowboy hat on here.  

Because, for once, I'm with the administration.  We're in no position to make a big deal out of this human rights thing.