Bloggers Unite: What America Brings the World
Today is the day that many bloggers who do not usually spend their time writing about human rights issues make the choice to do so. The idea is that by spending this one day writing about human rights, they will reach many people with the issues who don't normally read about them. I only heard about it this morning, but having heard about it, I think it's an amazing idea.
There are many issues I could choose to write about. Ever met a blogger from China on Vox, for instance? My understanding is that Vox is banned there. Freedom of speech is an important issue for me, and it's one of the areas where my country excels. Yes, we do have a strong tradition of protecting free speech.
Then again, I could be more topical. The fact that the government of Myanmar isn't allowing international aid through to its own people is certainly a travesty that is drawing a lot of attention. That fact, however, means that other human rights violations are slipping from our attention while we focus our outrage at the junta in Myanmar.
But I also feel uncomfortable attacking another country's human rights abuses while my own country's recent record is so poor. And yet, there is a perfect topic that combines the two, and that is the exporting of human rights abuses.
Our current administration's stated foreign policy is that they wish to spread freedom and democracy around the world. It's called the Freedom Agenda, and the White House is very proud of it. It's also a complete and total lie that anyone who is familiar at all with the human rights abuses of this administration cannot help but to be insulted by.
We cannot hold people in the U.S. indefinitely without charging them, so we set up a special prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so we could do so and claim that it's not being done in the U.S. Of course it is U.S. soil, as it is being done on a U.S. military base. Irony is indeed dead if most people don't even blink at the fact that our government criticizes Cuba for its human rights abuses while sending our own war prisoners to an unwelcome base on their own soil so that we can violate their rights more conveniently.
But while the stated foreign policy agenda of the Bush administration is to export democracy and freedom, the actual agenda, as is clear from their actions, is to export human rights abuses. While the White House doesn't have a problem with violating U.S. law on our own soil, such as conducting illegal wiretaps on its own citizens, it's often just inconvenient to do so. They seem to know just how far they can push the line, and having torture camps set up on U.S. soil would be far enough that the Supreme Court would actually do their job and shut them down. So, instead, we let other countries do our dirty work for us.
Secret prisons established in foreign countries to allow the U.S. government to hold terror suspects indefinitely and treat them how they wish without having to deal with any of those pesky human rights laws we have back home. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's well documented, making it a conspiracy fact, and not a well-kept conspiracy at that.
Our government admits to using torture techniques, won't rule out using them in the future, and still has the unmitigated gall to take the moral high ground in criticizing other country's human rights abuses, claiming that we are spreading democracy and freedom around the world. The insanity of it is maddening. Make no mistake, waterboarding is torture, and is by no means the only torture technique that we know has been used.
Every time our government commits one of these acts, it gives up more of the moral high ground that it so self-righteously thinks it has. We are becoming not the saviors of the world, but its most prominent hypocrites.
What can you do? The administration has made it extremely clear that it doesn't care in the slightest what the American people think.
It's obvious that sending letter won't do a whole lot. Donate to Amnesty International, by all means. And yet, the most effective thing an American citizen can do is elect a new President who doesn't believe in torture. And our current choices?
John McCain supports allowing the President the power to authorize torture.
Hillary Clinton used to support the use of torture, and now doesn't, similar in a way to how she used to support the war, and now doesn't.
Barack Obama has stated unequivocally that he does not support either the use of torture or sending suspects abroad so that other countries can do our torturing for us.
Make your choice accordingly!
Comments
you have posted an important topic, one that most people choose not to pay attention to and don't think about. i agree with you that our track record as a country is not a good one of late, and i sincerely hope that our next president does a much better job.
that said, i don't think that barack obama can say yet what he does and does not support. neither can hillary or mccain. i hate to say this, but until each one of them walks in the shoes of the president (which, i suppose, one of them will), it's hard for them to know exactly what each would do. do i think that any of them would brag about their position on torture? no, of course not. but like the rest of us, we never know how we'll react until we are forced to.
You're right, in that what they say now is not necessarily what they will do, later. One has to look at their record of doing what they say. If they tend to change position a lot, then you can't take what they say at face value. If they tend to stick to their principles, what they say can be taken more seriously. If you like what they say and they tend to adhere to their own stated principles, making decisions based on what they say is more reliable.
Besides, if we can't make our decisions based on what they say, we might as well just flip a coin.
sometimes, that's exactly how i feel! (okay, maybe that's how i feel OFTEN.) shame.
It's too bad the U.N. doesn't step up more often on these issues. I think donating to AI is a good choice. There must be other orgs as well, is the ACLU doing any good? We'll see if Obama steps up to the plate, but as you pointed out, we need a world leader for the world's bullies.
According to Wikipedia, Kennedy's amendment would have outlawed waterboarding, and an amendment from Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy would have preserved habeus corpus. Robert Byrd tried to put in a sunset clause. None of the amendments passed.
Most of the Republicans voted for it, and most of the Democrats voted against it, but there were a few that crossed party lines both ways. How any of them could have voted for it is truly beyond me.
People are really and truly' terrified 'of terrorists. No joke- that scare campaign worked well, even on people I consider intelligent. then there are those senators who vote as their constituents want at the moment. if that had been put to the American people at the time it was passed, there is a good chance most would have believed we were 'safer' with it. (some still do)There are also the groups who believe their politicians in the same way they believe in their religion. They can't seem to differentiate between a belief in God, where the only possibiity is to have faith (or not) and a belief in a politician or a political party.To put the same kind of faith in a pollie it can be fatal. So this is mind-boggling to me that people do it all the time.
Anyway, I hope you and Stix enjoyed your holiday.
Your system of voting encourages many millions of people not to vote. That, in turn, paves the way for the relatively small number of people who care and have a social and moral compass, to make themselves heard. However, it also pits them against the extreme factions of the Left and Right, both of whom are menaces to peace. The extreme Left will not be satisfied until America has been run roughshod over by every petty dictator with a whim, and the extreme Right seem hell-bent [ :-) ] on speeding up a nuclear Armageddon and fulfilling what they mis-characterise as biblical prophesy.
The extreme Left are smart enough to make insidious headway; the extreme Right appear incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together unless it's "We got bombs". Both are intellectual and moral cripples and are not only the sleeping enemies embedded inside America, they are the destroyers of peace. "We have seen the enemy and it is us" [Walt Kelly - Pogo] could well have been penned as a warning to all truly patriotic Americans about extreme factions.
Here's what a rather famous Republican had to say:
"Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."
I think it's a call to real American patriots to protect yourselves, to use another famous term, "against all foes, foreign and domestic". Debate is often hijacked and twisted to support hatred of Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, name-your-prejudice, when a better warning might be issued against the real menaces who constantly stir up hatred. Your media is full of daily examples of their arrant nonsense; so full, it's easy to blind the true and reasonable American patriot into believing your own home-grown extreme factions are somehow saviours when observably, they are the opposite.
Similarly, the sheer volume of unsupported pop-psychology weakens the individual and collective ability to take responsibility and consider consequences. The real America is being throttled by your own extreme factions. Please deal with them while there are still countries in the world who respect and support America.
"The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to "loving and faithfully serving his country," at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting."
"What is the rule of honor to be observed by a power so strongly and so advantageously situated as this Republic is? Of course I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it. But, surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, shaking its fist in everybody's face. Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights. But, surely, it should not, whenever its own notions of right or interest collide with the notions of others, fall into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its own security and its very independence.As a true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his dignity, it should be slow to take offense. In its dealings with other nations it should have scrupulous regard, not only for their rights, but also for their self-respect. With all its latent resources for war, it should be the great peace power of the world. It should never forget what a proud privilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not to need and not to have big armies or navies to support. It should seek to influence mankind, not by heavy artillery, but by good example and wise counsel. It should see its highest glory, not in battles won, but in wars prevented. It should be so invariably just and fair, so trustworthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that other nations would instinctively turn to it as their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of their differences, thus making it the greatest preserver of the world's peace. This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the natural position of this great republic among the nations of the earth. It is its noblest vocation, and it will be a glorious day for the United States when the good sense and the self-respect of the American people see in this their "manifest destiny." It all rests upon peace. Is not this peace with honor? There has, of late, been much loose speech about "Americanism." Is not this good Americanism? It is surely today the Americanism of those who love their country most. And I fervently hope that it will be and ever remain the Americanism of our children and our children's children."
– Carl Schurz, The True Americanism, April 18, 1859
13th United States Secretary of the Interior – Republican.