‘We are not doing something different than what the United States is doing’

October 24, 2006

When critics of the Bush White House talk about the president having undermined our national prestige and moral authority, this is exactly what we’re talking about.

Several governments around the world have tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they are only following the U.S. example in fighting terrorism, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture said Monday.

Manfred Nowak said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that if the United States does something, it must be all right. He would not name any countries except Jordan.

“The United States has been the pioneer . . . of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world,” Nowak said at a news conference. “Today, many other governments are kind of saying: ‘But why are you criticizing us? We are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.’ “

Up until fairly recently — say, before Bush took office — the United States held itself out as a global leader, if not the leader, on human rights. We would sometimes falter, but we set high standards for ourselves. We strived to meet those standards, and encouraged others to follow our lead.

And now, well, we have the Bush administration.

Nowak said that because of its prominence, the United States has a greater responsibility to uphold international standards for its prisoners.

State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said Monday night that he had not seen Nowak’s comments and had no response.

Nowak has chastised the United States over detainee policy and for maintaining secret prisons.

Nowak did say that the U.S. had made some progress, particularly in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib scandal. That, of course, is encouraging, but it comes before broad new powers Congress has given the president in this area, including the suspension of habeas corpus, a broad ability to define “illegal enemy combatant,” a repudiation of the Geneva Conventions, the ability to use “coerced” and secret evidence, and presenting the administration with a tragically narrow definition of “torture.”

We are, of course, a “pioneer” no more. Other countries — those we used to be able to repudiate with a straight face — are using the U.S. to justify conduct we used to deplore.

In an entirely different context, Kevin Drum recent wrote:

I wonder how long it will take America to recover from George Bush’s uniquely blinkered and self-righteous brand of ineptitude? … So how long will it take — after George Bush has left office — for our power and influence on the world stage to return to the level it was at in 2001? When I’m in a good mood, I figure five years. Realistically, ten years is probably more like it. And when I’m in a bad mood? Don’t ask. It’s really all very depressing.

After considering how other countries are using our misconduct to justify their own, it’s even more depressing.

One cannot begin to recover a lost reputation until one changes one’s behavior. If we still have a Republican Congress which passes laws abridging habeas corpus and allowing “aggressive” questioning techniques, then we will never regain our reputation. The first step is repealing and repudiating the offensive laws and practices. When will that happen?

  • To which BushWit would reply: “Hey, we’ve never been justice, liberty and democracy, Manny.”

    I wish I could say I’m surprised but that would make me as stupid and/or dishonest as ShrubCo.

  • Drum’s road to recovery for America’s prestige can start as early as November 2006, provided everyone does what they can to turn out every Republican officeholder possible and return the Dems to power in Congress.

    That’s Bush for you … continually working to set new lows in the standards this nation holds for itself.

  • Someone can check, but it seems to me that when the US was criticized for its human rights record in the past, it was mainly due to relations with other countries with bad records. It was never for anything the US did itself, except possibly for using the death penalty. So if the US is catching more heat for human rights abuses now, it’s a qualitative shift from previous criticism.

  • I agree with Coop, we can’t start the recovery until we stop the descent. Bush still has a ways to go downwards. Our human rights record is going to get really horrible after the next terrorist attack (yes, there will inevitably be another one, there are more people willing to throw away their lives to hurt us now than there were before 9/11).

  • Duh! A leader has to do it better and be more diciplined that the people they are leading. It is a cop out by other countries to say “you do it, so why can’t we” but their poor choices are not the cause of our poor choices.

    Leaing the free world is HARD WORK, heh heh..

  • Reputations take time to build but are destroyed in an instant. Thanks, to Dubya, the US is back to square one.

  • Unfortunately it is a lot easier to trash a reputation than it is to rebuild one. We have a lot of work to do as a nation, and I think five years is wishful thinking. I’m afraid we are looking at a generation of honest work, and then, there will be many who will never forgive our wrongdoing. I do agree that our rebuilding process can begin as soon as the election in November, but the process will be a long and difficult one.

  • It was only a matter of time, and it won’t be long before other governments start violating the Geneva Conventions with our soldiers in ways we’ve already done with others, especially if Bush attacks another country. (*cough*Iran*cough*) You reap what you sow. Unfortunately, it seems it’s more like the rest of America reaps what Bush sows, and Bush gets away scot-free. Will we ever see justice?

  • It will take an American Gandhi to overcome a Bush.
    We as a people have been so easily brought to the outskirts of Hiter/Stalin’s dark territory of state sponsored human rights abuses. Perhaps history will provide us with a visionary leader to bring us back.
    We are a nation of sleepy sheep and are rapidly losing our sense of what our tradition of freedom means. We seem to need to be dazzled by a charismatic leader and then led by our noses. Our best hope is for individual voters to wake up and engage in critical thinking.

  • We will never get our reputation back. It’s obvious to the rest of the world that our reputation is only as good as that of the office of the president. Since we can potentially change the president every four years…we will always have a president who can potentially be as bad as this one.

  • 2Manchu nailed it.

    When you’re on a mission from God, all your enemies will always torture your troops, no matter what you do to their troops, and if you do occasionally engage in torture, it’s not because you’re bad it’s because sometimes good people have to torture bad people. After all, God tortures more people than anyone else, and he gets away with it. (How many millions are in hell right now being tortured?)

    Bush has repeatedly referred to a higher power, would someone please ask him if it would be wrong to obey “a higher law” if it conflicted with the Constitution?

  • Grumpy, the US has been criticized over the huge prison population and treatment of prisoners, as well as the use of excessive force by law enforcement, among other things.

    Together with the death penalty, this gives us a window into the vindictive nature of the justice system here.

  • US imperialism has been around for at least 50 years and for the US population to view itself as the beacon of democracy or justice is a sick joke that most of the world understood before Bush. The US and Israel are the number 1 and number 2 in the world terrorism stakes. Israel has been blatantly violating international law and lowering the standards of human decency for 60 years in their quest to wipe out the Palestinian people and to remove Palestine from the map.

    Reagan’s War on Terror was a brutal and bloody exercise in the suppression of democracy and economic progress in Central America on a scale not unlike what we are seeing in Iraq right now, and it is the same war criminals behind it.

    Until the population learns the truth behind US efforts to thwart peace in the middle east and demands a stop to it and ceases funding of Israels atrocities and ethnic cleansing, then your reputation in the global community will remain as the number 1 object of hate.

    Bush is the worst president ever, yes, but he is only so because of his extraordinary stupidity and incomptence, and the sheer brazen arrogance of the people behind him pushing the policies. Don’t forget that over a million Iraqis died under Clinton’s disgraceful sanctions too.

    US links with the right wing of Likud and indeed, the Likudniks within the neocon cabal of foreign policy makers are only doing what Israel has done for years albeit on a grander scale.

    International terrorism would be greatly diminished if the US and Israel stopped participating in it. International law has to be for all nations to respect, always.

    • Comments are closed.