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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (60895)	12/10/2002 12:30:25 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

We won't talk about the missing data points in the left bashing. Rather we will talk about Amnesty International. OK. Jonah Goldberg was talking most specifically about Amnesty Interntational, Anti-war types were furious with the "timing" of the report. "This . . . is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists," declared Irene Khan, the head of Amnesty International. Other critics, mostly British, joined in. Tam Dalyell, the longest-serving member of the British parliament, dismissed the report as nothing but "cranking up for war." so it's hardly a change of subject. The problem with that argument is that (a) we know the Bush folk do not care a whit about human rights in Iraq--that has zero to do with their agenda--else they would be addressing human rights issues around the globe; (b) because they do not the successor regime is unlikely to so care--evidence for that is the number of regimes which abuse human rights which the US has supported in the past and still supports. So, I would gather, the Amnesty International folk concluded a US invasion of Iraq was not likely to improve the human rights issue in Iraq. Thus, they could not support it. Not only is this argument bogus, it was never made. Amnesty only protested the "political use" of their data; they could hardly protest that a post-Saddam Iraq wouldn't be an improvement, since Saddam's Iraq is SO bad that any US-led occupation is sure to be a big improvement. Our de-facto occupation of Northern Iraq has certainly been a big improvement for the Kurds. Furthermore, by what stretch of logic can you say Bush folk do not care a whit about human rights in Iraq--that has zero to do with their agenda--else they would be addressing human rights issues around the globe Do you mean they must preach about human rights all over like Jimmy Carter did? Whose human rights did he actually improve? In fact, Bush mentions human rights frequently - "freedom" is his favorite, and you have regarded the speeches as patently false. Bush just can't win by you. Now, I happen to think that the Bush administration has decided to care about human rights, not for any moralizing reasons, but from the realpolitik notion that leaving the Mideast to stew in its illegitimate and radical dictatorships has become very dangerous for the US and Europe. Thus he decided to start doing something about it in Iraq, where we have unfinished business. So unlike Carter, he is likely to achieve some significant human rights improvements, while you complain that he doesn't "care" about human rights the right way. I found Ken Pollack's argument that it's all about oil fairly persuasive Not ceding hegemoney of the Gulf to a scarcely rational megalomaniac with nukes, which is Ken Pollack's rationale, is hardly what the anti-war types mean by "it's all about ooooiiiiillll!", and you know it perfectly well. They just mean that Dick Cheney's friends will enrich themselves, an argument that doesn't stand up to ten minute's scrutiny.