Jacob, it'll be a few years before the USA will dare harangue China about human rights. Laughter would be the response. Sure, they didn't pour acid in ears or torture children in front of parents [well, not many children, though rumour has it a son was used to help soften up a father].
But although a lot of Americans act all shocked about the photos and revelations, the rest of the world isn't so naive and gullible. We are not the slightest surprised that Americans are no more moral and ethical, and actually a lot less so than many of us.
The powerful and especially those with unbridled power, are notoriously barbaric in their treatment of lesser humans. That principle is as old as the hills and part of the constitutional basis for the USA = checks and balances to avoid megalomaniacs taking over with unbridled power, which we are seeing is an excellent idea. Look at how Americans used to treat negroes as an excellent demon-stration of their demonic pedigree. Look at how Americans dealt with Vietnamese; the vaunted body counts were absurd to me, way back then. They never seemed to get civilians, but had lots of dead Vietcong, until the truth about My Lai and the like oozed out. Strings of ears!! Barbarism in living memory.
The USA hasn't lost a great reputation, because they never had it, other than in their own mythology. Too many of us have seen too much for too long.
Did I hear on CNN today that the USA is getting into the human rights abuses by other countries too? That's good. While cleaning up their own act, they are going to harass other evil-doers as well. Pointing at the other kid who also did wrong is an old trick too. Prisoners often try to implicate their former partner in the crime to distract attention from themselves.
<Our government has made, in practice, no distinction between any of the people we captured in Afghanistan. All of them, whether Taliban or Al Queda or unknown, were called illegal combatants. None have been called POWs. The only real distinctions the U.S. government makes, is based on their nationality. Taliban with U.S. passports get a trial. Taliban with British passports get released after a couple of years. If you don't have a government to speak for you, or if that government has no influence in Washington, you get a life sentence in a cage, with periodic torture (since the techniques used in Iraq were taught by people with experience at Guantanamo, it is reasonable to assume the same things are happening there).>
The USA purports to be a Christian society, but a Christian's primary belief is the universality of humanity founded in love, not through dominance hierarchy and killing, which was the way of the Roman Empire [which killed our old buddy Jesus]. Yet the PNAC and Rabid Republican Right are seeking a pre-eminent USA rather than leading the world in a PNUN based on civilization, rather than militaristic power.
Hypocrisy is a 21st century value, alive and well.
Mqurice |
