Friday, November 16, 2007

Loss of International Good WIll


During the initial phases of the feigned outrage in congress over the use of torture on those in U.S. custody, then Attorny General nominee Alberto Gonzales said in responce to criticism that even if we torture people Americans can never be as bad as the terrorists. It has also been remarked with dismay that the whole way in which the Bush administration has been treating detainees is one of the main reasons we are loosing all of our good will internationally.




For example, Russia has been throwing obstructions infront of international election monitors that they had origionally invited to oversee their current round of national elections. They dont take kindly to any criticism that they might not be behaving like a democracy should and impugn the recent American human rights record and voting irregularities stating that we are not ones to talk down to them about democracy.




Pakistan is less subtle when it points out the speck in our eye to divert criticism from the plank in their own. General/President Pravez Musharrif declared a state of emergency and imprisioned political opponents, and today installed a "caretaker government." Musharrif justifies all this under his countries anti-terrorism laws and points to the U.S. when he justifies locking up dissodents. He says he is doing this to protect his country from radical islamists, but the people he is throwing in jail are the legitimately elected moderates he ousted from power in a military coup. His recent behavior and comments are reminicent of the attitudes of the types of people we have been forced to team up with in Bush's global, generational, war on terror. We have to deal with tribal warlords who see the way we behave and missapprehend it as anti-islam. They say they are also against the Islamists and say they are on our side. Once they have our support they proceed to be corrupt, violent, crime lords.





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