July 07, 2010
By Tesfaye Habisso
At the opening of the 10th anniversary celebration of the
founding of the Community of Democracies in Krakow, Poland, on July 3, 2010,
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is reported to have blasted many governments across the globe for
“slowly crushing” activist and advocacy groups (civic organizations such as
unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other non-governmental
organizations) that press for social change [Robert Burns, AP National Security
Writer, “Clinton: ‘Steel vise’ crushing global activists”, Yahoo.News,
Sat, July 3, 2010]. Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.
I wish these were genuine remarks
and reflective of U.S. America’s foreign policy and geo-political
strategy pursued by successive American governments, republican and democratic
alike, so far. But they are absolutely not. Which regimes other than the
George Bush (Sr. & Jr.)-Dick Cheney Administrations paved the way
for the ‘crushing’ of social advocacy groups and the gross infringement of
human rights by spearheading the so-called ‘color-coded revolutions’ across the
globe beginning in Serbia (1999), Georgia (2003), Lebanon (2003), Ukraine
(2004), Kyrgyzstan (2005), etc.—these artificial and externally imposed
revolutions sending alarm signals to all those ‘emerging democracies’ or ‘newly
transitioning democracies’ and forcing the latter’s respective regimes to
hurriedly make laws that would constrain and control the hitherto unrestricted,
undefined and borderless activities of all advocacy groups and their external
sources of funding?
The principal reason for these
hasty measures was that U.S. America and European countries made it their
policy to send their intelligence and state agents to penetrate civil and
political society in the Third World directly or via intermediary
organizations, foundations and other ostensibly private groups to remove
unfriendly and nationalistic regimes via unconstitutional means that often took
the form of regime changes through revolutions orchestrated by Western powers
hand in glove with local actors and collaborators. And this they called
‘democracy promotion’ spending $ 1.5 billion every year.
To prevent such destabilizing and
unconstitutional measures sending their respective countries into turmoil and
anarchy and their forceful removals from state power, Third World governments
targeted by the West had no option except hastily installing appropriate legal
regimes against foreign funding and sponsoring of the numerous incipient
advocacy groups and NGOs taking shape in their respective states. This is
indeed sad because we all want to live in a free society and in a peaceful
environment where home-grown civic organizations and other NGOs mushroom and
operate peacefully and contribute toward the political, social and economic
development of our society. But which power on earth can guarantee that such freedom , peace and
development can be attained through forceful regime changes, revolutions and
short-cut strategies? This has never succeeded in any country in the world so
far. Most of the so-called color-coded revolutions have already collapsed
miserably except perhaps for the still fragile and unpredictable ‘client
regime’ in Georgia, without mentioning the immense sufferings and hardships
that the Georgians , Ossetians
and Abkhazians had to bear during the Georgia-Russia war.
Hillary Clinton’s recent lament about the ‘crushing’ of social activists
by Third World governments reminds me of a story of a boy who murdered his
parents but when found guilty of the crime in a court of law he tearfully begged
the judge for mercy because he now was an orphan. It is not my intention to
defend those countries which were condemned by the U.S. Secretary of State for
their unsavory measures against social advocacy groups but to contend that U.S.
America and Western European countries should also take their share of the
blame for the sorry state of social advocacy for change in the developing
countries and throughout the world. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton is also
reported to have criticized the aforementioned countries and others in the
Third World by saying: “Some of the countries engaging in these behaviors still
claim to be democracies…Democracies don’t fear their own people. They recognize
that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate…We must be
wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly
crushing civil society and the human spirit”. This is hypocrisy at its highest,
nothing better. Can U.S. America really
point such accusatory fingers at others today? Not at all, I believe. As Samuel Huntington, the famous American political
scientist bluntly put it, Western policy-makers’ behavior is:
“Hypocrisy, double
standards, and “but nots” are the price of universal
pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic
fundamentalists to power [Palestine, Algeria, for example]; non-proliferation
is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of
economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China,
but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively
repulsed, but not against non-oil owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice
are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle” [Samuel
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, p.
184].
Since the 18th century, the epitome of Western democracy has
always been U.S. America. Though the avowed tenet of American foreign policy,
and one that has been utilized as a pretext to advance global ambitions, has
been "making the world safe for democracy" and assisting
democratization processes throughout the world, yet this very tenet is no
longer true in the very nation that gave it birth. Successive American
governments have trampled on the democratic and human rights, civil and
political liberties of ordinary Americans (especially African-Americans,
Hispanics and other minorities) with impunity, refused to account to their
people on crucial national issues that directly affect them, and plunged the
nation again and again into senseless wars abroad without any sense of
accountability and compassion for the lives of American soldiers and the poor
masses on the receiving end, manipulated national election results at will and
even ignored the votes of American minorities. Further, the September 11
terrorist attacks have shattered the American sense of freedom and security,
casting the very idea of freedom or security in a new light, forcing Americans
to suffer from a sort of ‘siege mentality’. Civil liberties of law-abiding
citizens are deeply constricted or abridged since then, hopefully, in exchange
for security against terror. Federal agents enjoy expanded investigatory powers
in the wake of September 11 that allow them more than ever to track and verify
e-mail, poke through financial transactions, peruse library and consumer
histories, and overhear private telephone calls and conversations-- even sign
up neighbors to spy; the state runs torture chambers in Abu Ghraib
(Iraq) and in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) in utter disrespect of international law
and human dignity. The Patriot Act allows the government to indefinitely detain
immigrants--even permanent residence holders--without criminal charges.
Profiling for Middle Easterners and Arabs and those who fit their description,
and thus targeting them as potential criminals has become a major tool for U.S.
airport officials and law enforcement agencies. Thus, innocent people are
treated as if they were criminals.
Let us, for
instance, briefly examine the critical impacts of anti-terrorism legislation on
people’s rights and responsibility in US America. First, with regard to
people’s civil rights—especially the right to privacy and other freedoms from
state interference—it is observed that the anti-terrorism legislation adopted
after September 11, especially the U.S.A. PATRIOT ACT (2001), has significant
consequences, That act grants unprecedented powers to the executive branch to
conduct surveillance, including gathering sensitive personal records, tracking
e-mail and internet usage, monitoring financial transactions, practicing
sneak-and-peek searches, and using roving wiretaps [Chang 2001]. Under Section
213 of the act, the sneak-and-peek searches of physical property can be
conducted as normal criminal investigations without prior knowledge of the
property owner [Levy 2001]. Similarly, under Section 215, sensitive personal
records can be obtained by certifying their relevance to the investigation of
international terrorism. The scope of such investigations may cover American
citizens and permanent residents, and provisions can apply to non-terrorist
activities such as drug cases, tax fraud, and other federal crimes [Dempsey
2001-2].
Second, in terms of people’s political rights, critics argue that recent
anti-terrorist provisions represent a threat to any form of political protest,
movement, and activism. For example, according to Levy (2001), although the USA
PATRIOT ACT has not replaced the principle of separation of powers in America,
it has adversely affected the protection of due process under the Fifth
Amendment and the safeguards against “unreasonable searches and seizures”
guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Similarly, Chang (2001) is concerned that
Section 802 of the act compromises political freedoms (especially freedom of
speech and political association) because of its broad definition of domestic
terrorism, which may cover political dissent, civil disobedience, and
environmental activism and allow investigation and surveillance of such
political activities and groups.
Third, in relation to political rights, minority rights are also affected
in different countries in the context of the war on terrorism. In the United
States, for instance, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the
images and expressions that followed, influenced some Americans to become
intolerant and aggressive toward Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Sikh
Americans, and South Asian Americans [U.S. Department of Justice 2002]. These
minority groups experienced some violent assaults, physical attacks, death
threats, and vandalism [HRW 2002]. With regard to immigrants, according to
Chang (2001), the USA PATRIOT ACT tends to deprive some of due process and
First Amendment Rights by expanding categories of immigrants that are subject to
removal on terrorism grounds and by increasing the attorney general’s authority
to detain immigrants suspected of terrorist activities.
The question is, when and where do
the Americans stop this senseless hysteria that completely guts their
Constitution's freedoms? Under these
awry circumstances, can America and its vocal leaders claim to have any moral
authority to lambast other Third World countries and leaders in the name of
democracy and accountability, social advocacy, human rights, political and civil
liberties? I don’t think so.
Given the unlimited power and influence that corporations have today on
both national political and socio-economic affairs, any vestige of former true
democracy that may have previously existed is no longer present or possible in
American society. Representative democracy as experienced in America today is
not only NOT representative of the collective will, best interests and highest
aspirations of the vast majority of ordinary Americans, it works conveniently
as a tool of powerful corporate capitalists to ensure that the average American
has very little true freedom in determining the moral or ethical standard for
the conduct of national affairs.
Today, Americans live in a nation in which, due to the huge costs
involved in political campaigning, only the very wealthy, most powerful and
economically successful individuals can serve as their erstwhile
"elected" representatives, since they alone are able to afford the
millions of dollars it costs to run for public office in today's American
economy. As a result, American political representatives no longer effectively
represent the ordinary people (despite all the rhetoric that Americans are
constantly exposed to), but rather the corporate interests whose lavishly
funded lobbies and legal minions see to it that only agendas favorable to the
corporations are supported in Congress. Besides, contrary to the promises of
creating the "basis for decency and prosperity and democratic governments
in the underdeveloped world" by successive American governments since the
time of Woodrow Wilson, many Third World countries which came under the direct
influence of America since World War II have suffered tremendous political
instability and chaos, social and economic hardships, internecine conflicts and
bloodshed never before seen in their long political history as nations. The
Philippines, Haiti, and many Latin American nations are illustrative examples.
As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the policies of an imperial power toward the
nations within its sphere of influence reveal the character of its policies and
culture:
"... In the Caribbean and in
Central and South America, the United States has acted as an imperial power for
more than a century, and during that time U.S. political and business elites
have exerted a guiding influence in the establishment of political systems. The
portrait that comes into focus through the lens of empire reveals that the
elites who manage the U.S. foreign policy have an attachment to democracy
except as a device to legitimate their political and economic domination. For
this purpose the symbols of democracy are useful indeed, and this explains why
elections in the nations south of the U.S. border have been sponsored by the
United States both as instruments for managing client states and as a means to
influence American public opinion. Such elections are carefully-staged media
events designed to "demonstrate" the worthiness of U.S.-supported
regimes." [Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R.
Judd-Brooks, The Democratic Facade, Cole Publishing
Co., 1991]
Even democratically elected governments in
Latin America founded on principles of social justice, land reform, and
national independence faced a reign of terror from the U.S. military because of
their desire for independence from the control of international corporations
and U.S. imperial ambitions. This lesson was brought home in unmistakable terms
to the Dominican Republic in 1962 and 1965, to Guatemala in 1954 and to Chile
in 1973, where popularly elected governments were brutally toppled and replaced
by client regimes because, in these cases, popular democracy became inimical to
the interests of the American ruling class and business elites. As Tim Weiner
stated at length in the New York Times some six or so years ago, “The United
States---supported authoritarian regimes throughout Central and South America
during and after the Cold War in defense of its economic and political
interests … In tiny Guatemala, the Central Intelligence Agency mounted a coup
overthrowing the democratically elected government in 1954, and it backed
subsequent right-wing governments against small leftist rebel groups for four
decades. Roughly 200,000 civilians died…In Chile, a CIA-supported coup helped
put Gen. August Pinochet in power from 1973 to 1990. In Peru, a fragile
democratic government is still unraveling the agency’s role in a decade of
support for the now-deposed and disgraced president, Albert K. Fujimori, and
his disreputable spy chief, Vladimiro L. Montesinos… The United States had to invade Panama in 1989
to topple its narco-dictator, Manuel A. Noriega, who,
for almost 20 years, was a valued informant for American intelligence. And the
struggle to mount an armed opposition against Nicaragua’s leftists in the 1980s
by any means necessary, including selling arms to Iran for cold cash, led to
indictments against senior Reagan administration officials…Among those
investigated back then was Otto J. Reich, a veteran of Latin American
struggles. No charges were ever filed against Mr. Reich. He later became United
States Ambassador to Venezuela and now serves as assistant secretary of state
for inter-American affairs by presidential appointment…” [Tim Weiner, A Coup by Any Other Name”, New York Times, April 14, 2002].
Thus the overriding concern always remained the national interest of
America---ensuring American imperial ambitions of political and economic
domination of the world. This political strategy is not a new development in
the American foreign policy but a strategy that goes far back to the end of
WWII. Since then, U.S. political strategy has always focused on designing ways
and means of conquering the whole world and perpetuating its hegemonic control
over the resources and peoples of this planet. The highest authorities in the
U.S. government have expressed this ambition at every occasion when celebrating
their two hundred years old history as a nation. One of the first vocal
advocates of this hegemonic policy was George Kenan,
Chief Planner in the U.S. State Department, 1948. In his Strategic Report
forwarded to the U.S. government on Feb. 24, 1948, Kenan
boldly and unambiguously stated the policy content and direction in the
following words: “We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.5% of its
population.... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and
resentment. Our real task in this coming period is to devise a pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
without detriment to our national security. To do this, we will need to
dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have
to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not
deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and
world-benefaction...We should cease to talk about vague--and for the Far
East--unrealistic objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living
standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to
have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by
idealistic slogans, the better." [As quoted by Titus
Alexander, Unraveling Global Apartheid].
Exactly fifty years later, the March 28, 1998
issue of the New York Times Magazine contained an informative article on this
age-long U.S political strategy. Its content is summed up by an eloquent image
that takes up one page of the publication: a boxing glove in the colors of the
American flag, accompanied by the following caption: 'What the world needs
now--for globalization to work. America can't be afraid to act like the
ALMIGHTY SUPERPOWER it is." The reason for the announced punches is
elucidated in these terms: "The hidden hand of the market will never work
without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnel
Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world
safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the U.S. ARMY, AIR FORCE, NAVY
and MARINE CORPS.' The writer of the above words is not a provocative joker,
but none other than Thomas Friedman, Madeline Albright's advisor. Such a
political strategy has been supported and advanced by many think tanks in the
U.S. for many decades. The Project for the New American Century or PNAC, for
example, is a Washington-based think-tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC
desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to
bend the will of all nations and to bring them under the umbrella of a new
socio-economic PAX AMERICANA. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is
ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain
its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising to
challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies
alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most
powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. [Ernesto C., The USA
Democracy Facade: Who Counts Your Vote?, 2004] There
is no question of intervention in favor of democracy in the Gulf, for example,
no more than--there has never been any question of hampering Mobutu of Zaire
and Savimbi of Angola yesterday, and many others
tomorrow. Peoples' rights are sacred in certain cases (Kosovo yesterday,
perhaps Tibet today), and forgotten in others (Palestine, Somalia, Rwanda,
Sierra Leone, Iran, etc.). Even the terrible genocide in Rwanda in 1994 gave
rise to no serious investigations into the responsibility of diplomats and
French soldiers based in Rwanda who had supported the governments that were
openly advocating it. Certainly, the despicable behavior of certain
regimes--like those of Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic--makes the task
easier by offering pretexts that are easy to exploit. But the complete silence
that meets other cases deprives the discourse of democracy and peoples' rights
of any measure of credibility. It would be impossible to do a greater
disservice to the fundamental requirements of the fight for democracy and human
respect, without which no progress is possible.
The avowed goal of the U.S. strategy is not to tolerate the existence of
any powers capable of resisting Washington's orders, and therefore to seek to
dismantle all those countries deemed 'too big', as well as to create the
largest possible number of pawn states---easy prey for the establishment of
American bases guaranteeing their 'protection.' Only one state has the right to
be 'BIG,' to be 'SUPERPOWER'...the USA. While watching some of the
international news channels, U.S. Republican Senators seemed to suggest that
the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was justifiable because of that fiendish beheading
of an American citizen by an Iraqi militant group. This is an eye-opener to all
those who supported the invasion of Iraq. The only credible reason that can
still be advanced was that regime change was necessary so that the Iraqis could
enjoy their freedom. That is no longer the case. It is official; the occupiers
are not better than the old regime. The Americans should also understand that
the Iraqi groups that carry out these atrocities have never claimed to be the
good guys; they have not forced government changes because of human rights and
have not invaded another country in a quest to give freedom to its inhabitants.
We have always known that these are bad guys; yes, vitriolic terrorists.
Suggestions that America had regained the moral high ground because of the
murder carried out by the Iraqis are preposterous, to say the least. Whether it
is the beheading of an American or the despicable treatment of Iraqi prisoners,
it is all crime. As they say, fate is a great joker; it always laughs last.
United States (U.S) President George Bush stood before the American people and
the world on July 12, 2003 and announced that with the fall of Iraqi dictator,
Saddam Hussein, the dictator's "torture chambers will no longer cause
grief to Iraqis". Today, sadly, we know that Saddam's torture chambers
have been replaced by U.S. and British torture chambers in Iraq. Just to recap:
U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told Congressional Committee hearing
on May 7,2004 that the U.S. public has not yet seen
the worst pictures of torture of Iraqis by American soldiers in Iraq. He
described the unseen pictures as “sadistic, cruel and inhuman" adding that
"words cannot describe it; the pictures give a vivid realization of what
actually took place."
A CNN Pentagon correspondent said
there are even video pictures of U.S. soldiers forcing Iraqi prisoners to
masturbate before them. Reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross
even talked of an American soldier raping an Iraqi prisoner. In some instances,
the reports said, torture led to death. I am shocked, but certainly not
surprised by this. What do you expect from a pig but a grunt? What do you
expect from a colonial authority but dehumanization, torture and oppression?
Bush promised to “build democracy in Iraq" adding that Iraq would then
become the springboard for democratic movements throughout the Middle East.
With the pictures of torture in Iraqi prisons the people of Iraq and the Middle
East are certainly better off without democracy--at least not the one from
Bush. Will it be any different under Obama? I personally don’t think so. The
past one year of Obama’s reign has convincingly shown that whether Democrats or
Republicans are in power the basic U.S. foreign policy is always the same. No
better hope for the Americans in particular and humanity as a whole.
America's involvement in other
countries has always been troubling. The U.S. is a democracy that in many cases
has promoted and propped some of the most brutal and corrupt dictatorships in
other countries---the Shah of Iran, the Saudi Royal Family, President Mubarrak of Egypt, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Baby Doc
Duvalier of Haiti and Marshal Mobutu Setse Seko of former Zaire being the eminent examples. The U.S.
has also helped create, finance and arm some of the worst terrorist groups in
this world, the Mujaheedin in Afghanistan (now
ferociously resisting the same Americans who trained and armed them a few
decades ago), the Contras in Nicaragua, and UNITA in Angola being in the top of
the list. However, Bush's America was taking this game too far. Other
administrations in the U.S. have run dictatorships by proxy. Bush in his time
was running his own in Iraq directly, complete with an appointed colonial
governor in the name of the U.S. Iraq administrator. The Bush administration
run its own prisons in Iraq complete with torture chambers. The U.S. military
have powers to arrest, detain and interrogate prisoners. U.S. prisoners in Iraq
rot in jail without appearing in court to be formally charged. There was a
reported instance where a 19-year-old American soldier pulled out his gun and
shot an Iraqi whose only crime was to ask why they were searching him up to his
underwear. In this case, the person who was killed was a member of the
U.S.-appointed governing council for some city in Iraq, a clear case of
impunity. Bush's America was even more troubling because it has had created a
legal regime that threatened civilized jurisprudence like categorizing some
prisoners as "illegal combatants." These "illegal
combatants" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are detained without trial for years
on end and without access to attorneys. Although these people are primarily
civilians from different countries across the globe suspected of being
terrorists, the U.S. says it will try them before a military court. The choice
of detaining people without trial and of categorizing them as "illegal
combatants" carries a strong undercurrent. Why? Because U.S. citizens
arrested under such circumstances like John Walker Lindh
were not detained in Guantanamo Bay, would not be tried by military courts,
have had access to an attorney, etc. What is the United States telling the
world? That its citizens are more human than other human beings and therefore
deserve to be treated under more civilized legal regimes?
If you have read Prof. Mahmoud Mamdani's book, Citizen
and Subject, Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, then you
get to see the rolling American imperial and colonial project in Guantanamo
Bay. Mamdani's thesis is that late colonialism was
defined by the creation of a bifurcated state with two legal regimes: one civil
and governing the colonizing race who were considered
“civilized;" the other customary, governing the natives considered
barbaric. Those governed under the civil law enjoyed civil rights; the right to
an attorney, right of appeal, etc. while those governed under customary law
faced administratively driven justice-- the chief who administered the
customary law was the judge, the prosecutor and the person who executed the
sentence in Mamdani's words, customary law was a
"decentralized despotism." That is the system of justice, President
Bush introduced first in Guantanamo Bay, and now in Iraq--i.e. colonial
justice.
As William
Blum in his book, Rogue State, explains: "Most Americans find it difficult
in the extreme to accept the proposition that terrorists' act against the
United States can be viewed as revenge for Washington's policies abroad. They believe
that the U.S. is targeted because of its freedom, its democracy, and its
wealth. The Bush administration, like its predecessors following other
terrorist acts, has pushed this as the official line ever since the
attacks." But how misguided the American public is can easily be deduced
from the above innocent and shallow contention. American government officials
know better about their sinister policy of " global
apartheid," as Alexander Titus dubs it Or, as Howard Zinn
sarcastically puts it: "In the United States today, the Declaration of
Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows
Machiavelli."
Former president Jimmy Carter,
some years after he left the White House, was unambiguous in his agreement with
this: "We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to
Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people
for the United states because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed
totally innocent villagers--women and children and farmers and housewives-- in
those villages around Beirut--- As a result of that ---we became kind of a
Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful..." Not only Lebanon,
Syria or Jordan but countless nations such as Viet Nam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile,
Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, Colombia, Honduras, Laos, Afghanistan, Korea,
Cambodia, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, etc. faced the same wrath of American
power. This is what the American current regime is also threatening the
peaceful people and government of the Republic of Iran today. Let us, for
instance, cite what befell Laos in the 1970s. From 1964 through 1973, the United
States flew 580, 000 bombing runs over Laos--one every p minutes for 10 years.
The United States dropped 80 million cluster bomb lets on Laos. Ten percent to
30% did not explode, leaving 8 million to 24 million scattered across the
country; 15 of Laos's 18 provinces are contaminated with UXO. Three decades
after the bombing stopped, two or three Laotians are killed every month and
another six or seven are maimed by unexploded ordnance, called UXO, left over
from the war. The presence of unexploded cluster bomb lets and other ordnance
limits economic development in Laos, one of the poorest countries in Asia. Savannakhet (1 of 18 provinces) is the most heavily bombed
province in the one of the most bombed countries in the history of warfare.
"Certainly, on a per capita basis, Laos remains the most heavily bombed
nation in the history of warfare," says Martin Stuart-Fox, a historian at
Queensland University in Australia and author of "
A History of Laos. Cluster bombs, known as "bombies,"
account for about half the unexploded ordnance on the ground and most of the
casualties. Since the bombing ended in 1973, 5,700 Laotians have been killed
and 5,600 have been injured by UXO. Through the end of August, 14 of the 30
Laotians reported killed this year and 33 of the 58 injured by UXO have been
children. The situation in Laos is worse than in Iraq, where U.S. forces used
far fewer cluster bombs with much lower dud rates than the ones used in the
Vietnam war[USA Today].
And what are American soldiers
doing in Iraq today? Bringing peace, democracy and prosperity to the Iraqi
people as often trumpeted by the occupiers, or dehumanization, exploitation of
oil and other natural resources, mass destruction and havoc upon millions and
millions of innocent civilians day in, day out, since they invaded Iraq? The
U.S. public should know that the rest of the world does not hate Americans and
America (as people from the whole world ardently yearn to immigrate to the USA,
the land of freedom and great opportunities) but the arrogant and satanic
policies of successive U.S. governments.
As correctly observed by a Vietnam veteran, Robert Bowman,
"We are not hated because we
practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because
our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose
resources are coveted by our multi-national corporations. That hatred we have
sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism and in the future,
nuclear terrorism" (Robert Bowman, Vietnam Veteran, presently bishop of
the United Catholic Church in Melbourne Beach, FL., from The National Catholic
Reporter, October 2, 1998) The U.S. public has a great challenge, but also a
duty and opportunity because America is a democracy. Whatever its flaws,
American democracy gives U.S. citizens power to challenge crimes against
humanity committed by its armed forces abroad, ostensibly on behalf of "
the American people." Humiliating people, after conquering their state and
occupying their territory, can only build resentment against Americans as a
people. Yet the American people are as appalled by the behavior of their armed
forces as the victims of these acts. Equally so, when elections in a democratic
country are openly rigged in Florida, and the government that comes to power
through such fraud, arrests prisoners without trial in military detention
centers, invades other countries in complete disregard to international law,
establishes a naked colonial administration over another sovereign country, has
its military torturing and killing prisoners in the conquered country, then
such a government becomes a shining example of dictatorships everywhere and,
surely, not democracy.
Finally, the purpose of this manuscript is not to lecture the world
renowned U.S. Secretary of State about democracy ,
human rights and social advocacy but to make an important point on collective
responsibility as global citizens. There is a saying that when you point a
finger in blame at another person, you have three or four fingers pointing back
at yourself. In fact it is impossible to point a finger of blame at anything or
anyone else without pointing three or four fingers at yourself. There is an
important lesson to be learned here.. It is easy to
point the finger at others, but far too often we fail to recognize that we
ourselves may be partially (or even wholly) responsible for the circumstances
we are unhappy with. This can be a bitter pill to swallow, but we are almost
always accountable in some way or another for our situation in life and the
results (or lack thereof) that we achieve. My intention here is not to make the
US Secretary of State feel bad about what her insincere remarks, but rather to
shed light on the fact that every time we blame or condemn someone or something
else, we are in some way responsible for that which we are frustrated with.
What this exercise is all about is personal accountability and taking
responsibility for our actions and looking for ways to improve our current
situations together. It all boils down to the questions we ask ourselves and if
these questions are focused on blaming others or making things better for
humanity in this fast globalizing world.