- Jun 24, 2007
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The American Empire
Article Here
With all the self-congratulation about what a humanitarian nation America is [...] a little investigation into our humanitarian record is warranted.
Our justification for the Iraqi genocide (harboring chemical/biological weapons, whose ingredients were largely purchased from the United States and its allies) looks a little odd compared to our voting record on chemical and biological weapon proliferation, and other weapons of mass destruction.
The United States abstained voting on the resolution regarding the rights of children, the world's only nation to do so. In all of the above UN vote tallies, the United States was the lone "no" vote.[337] The American media rarely informs the American public of those votes.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was held, and one of its resolutions was banning the death penalty for people who commit crimes as children, and banning child soldiers. Only two nations have not ratified the treaty. Somalia did not, because it does not have a functioning government. The other was the United States, the only nation on earth that still executes children. How could Bill Clinton keep a straight face while talking about "rogue states"?
That litany of lone "no" votes can keep going, such as regarding resolutions condemning Israel's horrendous human-rights violations of the Palestinians, or the apartheid government of South Africa's treatment of the blacks there. The United States has a lengthy record of installing and/or propping up some of the most brutal regimes on earth, such Suharto's Indonesia, Pinochet's Chile, the Shah's Iran, the death-squad regimes of El Salvador and Guatemala, its support for Pol Pot's Cambodia and so on. The United States regularly stands alone on the world stage, rejecting principles of decency and humanity that the rest of the world has embraced. In that light, the sudden professed humanitarian concern for the Albanians should be viewed with a skeptical eye.
Indeed, try as one might, there is probably not one “humanitarian” military intervention to be found in world history.[338] Violence is not, has never been, and never will be, a humanitarian undertaking. Somebody is always violated, and invading armies have never inflicted violence out of humanitarian intent. It has always been self-serving on the part of those who created the armies and the situations they are used in, and they will always concoct a reasonable and seemingly noble rationale for their violence, and it is never the real reason. If America’s activities happen to benefit Albanians or Kuwaitis or Iraqi Kurds, it is incidental, and our leaders will always look for a good cover story to sell to the masses, so minor population elements benefiting from America’s interventions become the story of the day, not the majority’s suffering. If the Albanians or Kuwaitis get in the way or become expendable, they will share the same fate as the Iraqi children.
Whenever people begin analyzing whether the Serbs are worse than the Croatians, or if the Albanians deserve to be “free” in Kosovo, or how murderously the Muslims were treated, they usually have already made assumptions that I reject, which is that the United States government really cares about any of those people, and that we have a God-given right to intervene. The only right being exercised is the right of might, which America exercises regularly, accompanied each time with lies to justify it, just as Hitler and Mussolini did when they invaded Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia.
Full Article Here
Article Here
With all the self-congratulation about what a humanitarian nation America is [...] a little investigation into our humanitarian record is warranted.
Our justification for the Iraqi genocide (harboring chemical/biological weapons, whose ingredients were largely purchased from the United States and its allies) looks a little odd compared to our voting record on chemical and biological weapon proliferation, and other weapons of mass destruction.
The United States abstained voting on the resolution regarding the rights of children, the world's only nation to do so. In all of the above UN vote tallies, the United States was the lone "no" vote.[337] The American media rarely informs the American public of those votes.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was held, and one of its resolutions was banning the death penalty for people who commit crimes as children, and banning child soldiers. Only two nations have not ratified the treaty. Somalia did not, because it does not have a functioning government. The other was the United States, the only nation on earth that still executes children. How could Bill Clinton keep a straight face while talking about "rogue states"?
That litany of lone "no" votes can keep going, such as regarding resolutions condemning Israel's horrendous human-rights violations of the Palestinians, or the apartheid government of South Africa's treatment of the blacks there. The United States has a lengthy record of installing and/or propping up some of the most brutal regimes on earth, such Suharto's Indonesia, Pinochet's Chile, the Shah's Iran, the death-squad regimes of El Salvador and Guatemala, its support for Pol Pot's Cambodia and so on. The United States regularly stands alone on the world stage, rejecting principles of decency and humanity that the rest of the world has embraced. In that light, the sudden professed humanitarian concern for the Albanians should be viewed with a skeptical eye.
Indeed, try as one might, there is probably not one “humanitarian” military intervention to be found in world history.[338] Violence is not, has never been, and never will be, a humanitarian undertaking. Somebody is always violated, and invading armies have never inflicted violence out of humanitarian intent. It has always been self-serving on the part of those who created the armies and the situations they are used in, and they will always concoct a reasonable and seemingly noble rationale for their violence, and it is never the real reason. If America’s activities happen to benefit Albanians or Kuwaitis or Iraqi Kurds, it is incidental, and our leaders will always look for a good cover story to sell to the masses, so minor population elements benefiting from America’s interventions become the story of the day, not the majority’s suffering. If the Albanians or Kuwaitis get in the way or become expendable, they will share the same fate as the Iraqi children.
Whenever people begin analyzing whether the Serbs are worse than the Croatians, or if the Albanians deserve to be “free” in Kosovo, or how murderously the Muslims were treated, they usually have already made assumptions that I reject, which is that the United States government really cares about any of those people, and that we have a God-given right to intervene. The only right being exercised is the right of might, which America exercises regularly, accompanied each time with lies to justify it, just as Hitler and Mussolini did when they invaded Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia.
Full Article Here
