Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) US and the making and breaking global rules

US and the making and breaking global rules
Editorial
Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:02:00 +0000

IN the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States and Britain and their allies led the world in the making of a new law-based international order, outlawing war and its excesses and effects, protecting human rights and promoting free trade.

Sixty plus years later, these two countries are at the forefront of undermining and breaking those same rules.

The President-elect of the United States of America, Barack Obama has indicated that he will close Guantanamo Bay – one of the prisons where America today uses torture and other degrading forms in the treatment of prisoners.

In proposing to close Guantanamo Bay, Obama said: “We want to show the world that America does not torture and reduce the risk of terrorism.”

This is slightly late. The record suggests that America does torture, and through extra-ordinary rendition, does send people to places where they are tortured.

In recent years, America has abandoned the Kyoto Protocol – actually former US President Bill Clinton signed the Protocol; and the incoming President George W. Bush unsigned it.

America has also failed to ratify the statute of the International Criminal Court, an effort critics say was intended to protect their servicemen and military officials from ever appearing before the ICC.

US has an appalling record of abuse, torture, sodomy and homicide of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Britain has turned a blind eye to the very graphic images that have come out of that prison.

These two countries today are at the forefront of endangering international justice, yet ironically are themselves champions of human rights elsewhere.

The “Legal Black Hole” created in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib has made it impossible for the two countries (UK, US) to be the leaders in advancing a solid case for human rights elsewhere in the world. The waning popularity of the leaders of these two countries globally cannot be overstated.

A visit to Zimbabwe by the “Elders” whose supposed intention is to provide humanitarian assistance to Zimbabwe is against this backdrop.

The countries they represent are not themselves solid examples of the message they attempt to preach, hence the brick wall they faced in Zimbabwe.

Former Secretary General, Kofi Annan’s “softly softly” approach to human rights violations by US servicemen and women in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba (at Guantanamo) does not augur well with African people (and African leadership) and the rest of the developing world.

His failure to denounce these violations when he was at the helm is one reason why he, today, finds it extremely difficult to be an influential “Elder” in these lands.

Most of us remember the then Secretary General Annan delivering his swan song in December 2006 at the Truman Presidential Library in Missouri.

Seething with self-righteous indignation and resentment, Annan said of the US: “When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends are naturally troubled and confused.” If the US’s friends are “naturally troubled and confuded”, how about its enemies?

Indeed a rich and powerful country that imposes sanctions on a small landlocked country cannot be taken seriously when it expresses “humanitarian concerns” through a former President and “Elders” who do not represent any world body.

Why not a sitting President? Surely today President G.W. Bush has more influence than former President James “Jimmy” Earl Carter in changing the image of the US.

The US cannot expect the world community to take it seriously when it calls a government illegitimate and then expects that “illegitimate” government to act sympathetically to it in diplomacy.

The treatment afforded to the “Elders” is a reaction to a waning popularity of the US in relation to the rest of the developing world. Why not try to send the same group to meet President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or President Ahmadinejad in Iran?

The world has become a dangerous place since President Bill Clinton left office.

One of the messages implicit in then Senator, Barack Obama’s election campaign was that the US has to mend its international persona and its international relations.

The making and breaking of global rules by the US has made the world a more dangerous place than it was before the Republicans came into power.

The hope of a better future that US President-elect Obama talked about is highly anticipated in the rest of the world.

America simply cannot continue on this bullying trajectory, whether it’s through an “eminent group of ‘Americanised’ or ‘Westernised’ Elders” or any other group for that matter.

info@talkzimbabwe.com

Labels: GW BUSH, HUMAN RIGHTS, NEOLIBERALISM

posted by MrK @ 3:13 PM