Bush
At The UN: A War Criminal Lectures The World On
“Human Rights”
By Bill Van Auken
27 September, 2007
WSWS.org
George
W. Bush delivered his next to the last annual address to the United
Nations General Assembly Tuesday. Taking the same podium that he used
five years ago to condemn the world body to “irrelevance”
if it failed to rubber stamp his plans for a war of aggression against
Iraq, Bush cast his regime in Washington as the world’s greatest
champion of human rights and its most generous and selfless benefactor.
That the assembled UN delegates
could sit through and then politely applaud such a hypocritical harangue
from a man who is without rival as the world’s greatest war criminal
is testimony to the spinelessness and complicity of both the world’s
governments and the United Nations itself.
While Bush made only the
barest mention of either Iran or Iraq in his address, everyone in the
hall was well aware that he is attempting once again to utilize the
world body—much as his administration did five years ago in relation
to purported Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”—to
secure a phony pretext for another war of aggression, this time against
Iran.
No doubt Bush’s handlers
in Washington recognized that to deliver a belligerent speech demanding
action by the UN against Iran would only recall the lies and intimidation
used by the US administration in 2002-2003 to prepare its war against
Iraq.
Since then, an estimated
1 million Iraqis have been killed and nearly 4 million more turned into
refugees as a result of the unprovoked US invasion with its “shock
and awe” bombardments and the subsequent occupation that has destroyed
every aspect of Iraqi society.
So instead, Bush came before
the assembled delegates in the most improbable guise, as the apostle
of liberty, equality and the rights of man.
He began his speech by hailing
the founding document of the UN drafted more than six decades ago, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting that this formal declaration
in support of freedom, justice and peace “must guide our work
in this world.”
“When innocent people
are trapped in a life of murder and fear, the Declaration is not being
upheld,” he declared. Who does the American president think he
is kidding? Where on the face of the planet are more men, women and
children “trapped in a life of murder and fear” than in
US-occupied Iraq? The death toll for Iraqis has been estimated as high
as 1,000 a week due to US military operations, the murderous rampage
of mercenaries who kill with impunity and the sectarian violence unleashed
by the country’s devastation at the hands of Washington.
Bush declared that the UN
must work “to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and
disease, illiteracy and ignorance, and poverty and despair,” adding
that “every member of the United Nations must join in this mission
of liberation.”
In the Orwellian language
favored by the right-wing ideologues in the Bush administration, “liberation”
is continuously invoked as the description for the war to impose semi-colonial
domination by the US over Iraq and its oil wealth. And it is this “mission”
undertaken by means of an eruption of American militarism that Bush
demands the world body sanction and support.
Bush continued by invoking
the first article of the Universal Declaration, which affirms that “all
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The
greatest threat to this principle, he claimed, comes from “terrorists
and extremists.” Therefore, he argued, “all civilized nations”
must join the US in its global war on terrorism.
Bush then moved on to other
subjects, a wise move, given that a more detailed citation of the Universal
Declaration would have sounded like a war crimes indictment against
his own administration.
It includes, for example,
the injunction that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” a principle
that the Bush White House has explicitly repudiated, both by renouncing
the Geneva Conventions and subjecting those detained in the US “war
on terror” to waterboarding, beatings, sensory deprivation, sexual
humiliation and other forms of torture and degrading treatment.
The declaration affirms that
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,”
practices that the Bush administration has carried out with impunity,
through the holding of detainees without charges, not only at the infamous
detention facilities in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, but also at
secret CIA prisons around the world. It has introduced “extraordinary
rendition” into the lexicon of foreign policy, a discreet term
for kidnapping people, drugging them and then sending them in hoods
and chains to other countries so that they can be tortured.
And there is also the clause
of the declaration asserting that “No one shall be subjected to
arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.”
This is a principle that the administration has explicitly violated
in relation to the American people, not to mention the rest of the world,
through the massive illegal domestic spying operation organized through
the National Security Agency.
Given his administration’s
infamous reputation, the world’s horror over the unfolding debacle
in Iraq and the mounting fears that an even worse catastrophe is about
to be unleashed in Iran, it appeared that those who drafted Bush’s
speech thought it was a good time to change the subject.
Why Myanmar?
Thus, a major thrust of his
remarks—and the issue that garnered by far the greatest press
coverage—was the American president’s announcement that
he is ordering a tightening of economic sanctions against Myanmar (Burma).
He declared: “Americans
are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed
a 19-year reign of fear.” While no doubt the corrupt military
regime that rules the country has carried out brutal repression against
its people, the claim that “Americans are outraged” by these
practices is belied by the fact that given the virtual failure of either
the administration or the mass media to pay any attention to the developments
there, most Americans know nothing about them.
Bush’s new measures
were hardly sweeping, amounting to further restrictions on visas for
Myanmar officials and their families and financial sanctions against
the ruling junta and its backers.
The pretense that the Bush
administration’s concerns lie with the aspirations of the people
of Myanmar, who have taken to the streets in recent days in mass demonstrations,
is farcical. The US government has supported and directly installed
countless military dictatorships from Indonesia to Chile, helping them
to carry out far worse atrocities than the Burmese junta in suppressing
their own people.
Rather, under mantle of “liberation”
and “democracy,” US imperialism is once again pursuing its
own strategic interests, attempting to bring to power a pro-American
government that would open up the country to exploitation by US capital.
Given the Myanmar government’s close economic and political relations
with neighboring China, such an exercise in regime change would significantly
advance Washington’s attempts to challenge Beijing for supremacy
in the region, while steadily working to militarily encircle China.
Also invoked as targets for
the American-led “mission of liberation” were the governments
of Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Belarus, North Korea and Syria, all
of which Washington has presumably found guilty and sentenced to be
overthrown.
Continuing with his invocation
of the Universal Declaration, Bush cited a passage affirming that “everyone
has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being
of himself and of his family, including food and clothing and housing
and medical care.”
He used this clause to engage
in a round of shameless and deceptive self-congratulation, proclaiming
US benevolence in the distribution of food internationally and, in particular,
in assistance to the campaign to combat AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
The reality, as the news
agency Reuters reported earlier this month, is that “food donations
to the world’s hungry have fallen to their lowest level since
1973.” The impending crisis, which threatens starvation for sections
of the world’s 850 million people facing hunger, is driven by
the capitalist market. Food prices have soared, in no small part due
to the drive by the US to promote the production of corn-based ethanol
as an alternative to gasoline.
As for AIDS funding, Bush’s
presentation of Washington’s role obscures the fact that the US
ranks fifth among donor nations relative to the size of their national
economies. Inadequate funding for the programs—as well as restrictions
imposed on the use of US aid crafted to please the Christian right—means
that millions of Africans will be denied any treatment.
Meanwhile, US aid as a whole
amounts to a paltry sum compared to the vast wealth that Wall Street
appropriates from the rest of the world and is utilized largely as a
weapon to facilitate this global looting process. In 1970, international
donor nations signed an agreement that they would assign 0.7 percent
of their national incomes to foreign aid. While no country has come
close to donating this amount, in the US last year aid amounted to just
0.17 percent of gross national income.
Finally, Bush warmed up to
his subject, citing the Universal Declaration’s assertion of the
“right to work” and to “just and favorable conditions
of work” as an argument for free-market capitalism and the tearing
down of all barriers to the exploitation of the world’s economy
by the transnational banks and corporations.
Bush closed his remarks with
a demand that the UN reform itself, again invoking “the American
people” and their supposed disappointment with the functioning
of the world body’s Human Rights Council. In essence, Bush demanded
that the council focus on denouncing Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and
Iran and halt its criticism of Israel for killing civilians in Lebanon
and suppressing the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Behind Bush’s criticism
is the embarrassing reality that Washington has chosen for the last
two years not to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council for fear that
it would fail to get the necessary votes.
The successive revelations
over Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, extraordinary renditions and CIA
torture—not to mention the continued use of the death penalty
at home—makes the US the most fitting target for human rights
charges. Yet it presumes to dictate to the world which countries should
be investigated and which should not. Naturally those where Washington
is seeking regime change—such as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela—are
vilified, while those despotic regimes considered strategic allies of
the US—Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, Washington’s
chief ally in suppressing the Arab masses—are declared above suspicion.
Bush’s appearance before
the UN General Assembly was an entirely predictable exercise in imperialist
arrogance, rank hypocrisy and double-talk in service of American big
business. In the final analysis, his speech was probably more significant
for what it omitted than for the American president’s absurd posturing
as a crusader for human rights and universal liberation. Behind the
virtual silence on Iraq and Iran, new and more terrible crimes are being
prepared.
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