Human Rights And Propaganda

Tomorrow is a Day of Long Knives for the US at the UN Human Rights Council.  The Obama administration, in an overly deep genuflection before the alter of international institutions, turned in a twenty-nine page document constituting the Universal Periodic Review of human rights in the US.  In turn, a consortium of human rights advocacy groups headed by Human Rights Watch whipped out a four hundred page indictment of the US as a very grave violator of human rights.

On Friday, the speakers list in the Human Rights corral is oversubscribed by countries such as Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and China.  Each is licking its metaphorical lips as it gets ready to get in its licks against Uncle Sam and the legions of human rights abusers currently running the slaughter house of liberty and justice known as the USA.  For its part, the Obama administration has sent a thirty person delegation which it has been said, "will welcome all useful comments" but will actually serve as the designated flak catcher.

We the People are justifiably proud of our record in human rights.  Not only have we been zealous, some would say too zealous, in pursuit of guaranteeing human, civil, and political rights to all resident within our borders, we are quite willing to acknowledge that perfection has not yet been reached.  We should be equally proud of our political traditions--including one honored very much only in the breech by those countries so eager to tear a strip off our collective hind end.  That particular tradition is freedom of expression which leads to white hot debate over contentious issues of rights such as a woman's right to control her own reproductive destiny or of two people of the same sex to enjoy a status equal in all respects to heterosexual marriage or just what constitutes pornography.  Or what our immigration policy should be.  The list goes on and on.

The citizens and residents of very, very few countries have the basic right to live in a social and political environment of free for all expression.  The citizens and residents of very, very few countries understand that the consequences of the almost-anything-goes approach practiced in the US does, must, lead to social and political dynamics which are difficult to understand from the outside.  As the media treatment in so many European media outlets made clear in their coverage of the recently concluded midterm elections, our methods of politics and expression seem not only disordered but dangerously chaotic when viewed from more staid, that is, more repressed venues.

It is the wide chasm separating the American approach to defining and solving collective problems from the methods employed in other states which makes the upcoming slice-and-dice session in Geneva more than a routine exercise in anti-Americanism.  The countries already signed up on the Let's-Bash-The-US list for tomorrow are intent on inflicting a propaganda defeat on the US.  The governments of Cuba, Iran, China, and the others understand that simple, simplistic attacks on the US are easy to understand throughout the world while the realities of American political and social discourse and practice are totally opaque to all but the most sophisticated and widely experienced (and not even all of those).

An example: Iran intends to excoriate the US, or more accurately, some American states, for having executed less than fifty people in the past year.  The Iranians will portray the US not only as barbaric for its judicial killing fields but as a hypocrite for its criticism of other countries.  There is no doubt but the Iranian delegation will not mention that Iran is second only to China in the number of executions or that Iran, unlike China but like other Muslim majority states, allows death by stoning for some crimes, most notably adultery.

Cuba intends to take the US to task for its immigration policies--using the Obama administration's characterization of the current system as "broken" as well as the four hundred page indictment referenced above as proof beyond rebuttal that the US is xenophobic, racist, and given to violating the presumed human rights of illegal immigrants beyond count.  This from a country which has used force to prevent its citizens from leaving the Island Paradise Of Workers And Peasants.

Other states will aver that the pervasive racism of We the People condemns all people of color to perpetual poverty, systemic discrimination, and a fast track passage to prison.  These states will take sections of the human rights consortium's four hundred page diatribe as well as words from the Obama administration review to substantiate the attack.  No one will mention that the US has made massive strides toward eliminating the effects of past prejudice--often to the pronounced disadvantage of white males.  Nor will it be mentioned that these strides were taken by We the People organically without any guidance from the "international community."

It goes almost without mention that none of those casting stones at Uncle Sam live in fragile glass houses.  In the weird world of the UN Human Rights Council, those who sin most get to cast the first stone.

The problem, the danger, comes not from the fact that We the People cannot withstand baseless and evil criticism for nonexistent sins, but rather from the high likelihood that the malicious, malignant charges will be read and believed, heard and heeded in areas of the world where the interests of the US are both in play and at stake.  The charges mouthed in Geneva will be repeated and magnified in most, if not all, the Arab-Muslim world.  The same will happen in the three amigos of the Bolivarian Revolution.  And, no surprise here, in China and Russia.

Whether from simple naivete or over subscription to an ideology celebrating the moral supremacy of international institutions, the Obama administration made a grave mistake by agreeing not only to join the Human Rights Council but to engage in the Universal Periodic Review process.  No rational person well oriented in time and place could assume that any useful outcome would ensue.  This hypothetical rational person could only conclude that the US handed a public diplomacy victory to hostile states.

In a completely unnecessary move, the Obama administration has compromised the status of the US in areas of the world where the key component of the war with advocates of violent political Islam is underway.  The key component is, of course, the conflict of perceptions and images in the minds of the millions who have not yet firmly chosen a side.

In a basic way, the struggle for survival and supremacy between the US and other civilized states and the practitioners of violent political Islam focuses on the minds of the uncommitted majority.  That's right, it is counterinsurgency writ large.  It is in the short and long-term interest of the US to mobilize support from the uncommitted majority of Muslims so as, at the least, to deny their support to the perpetrators of jihad.  It is not that the US wants or should want the majority of the world's Muslims to embrace our set of world views but, it is necessary that the same minds be convinced to add their voices to the struggle against the advocates of violent political Islam.

Consider in this context what a great victory it would be for the civilized states if a crowd of angry Muslims took to the street in one or another Muslim majority state to demand their government suppress quickly and resolutely Muslims who killed or terrorized Christian fellow citizens.  The day that happens somewhere--Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia--the West could begin to breathe easily.  Muslims would be publicly and vocally denouncing Muslims who crossed the line separating acceptable religion from unacceptable political action.

To achieve this end, it is not necessary (nor possible) to convince Muslims that we are the last, best hope of humankind.  It is essential that we do not aid those hostile to us in branding the US as a violator of human rights, as a foul den of abusive inequity.  The Day of Long Knives tomorrow does nothing to aid in achieving this essential.

The president and his "team" deserve a severe down check for having made such a major strategic blunder as the execution of a Universal Periodic Review.  It was not an exercise in transparency or an illustration of our willingness to subject ourselves to the scrutiny of the world.  It was a gesture of self-mutilation.  A giving of an easy win to our mortal enemies.

Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" Award V

This time around the highly coveted What A Maroon! Award goes to both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. The Award is presented to these two Deep Thinking exponents of High Minded, Lofty Thinking Global Institutions for their joint decision not only to submit a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on the state of human rights in the US to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) but to include in the UPR a specific reference condemning the State of Arizona's affront known as SB 1070.

The UPR presented by the administration to the UNHRC last week is totally unremarkable in most respects. Much of it is a hosanna onto the American history of pushing the limits of human rights which is both relatively accurate and totally justified. A second chorus of praise centers on the Obama administration and, (cue the trumpets) the president himself as totally dedicated to yet further perfection of human rights defined in the broadest conceivable sense within the US.

So far, so good. Propaganda on behalf of the US is never out of line--provided it is based on reality. And, propaganda on behalf of a politician and his "Team" are a normal part of government. If the grandiose proponents of the multi-cultural, moral equivalence, post-modern view of the universe now occupying the Oval and the big office in Foggy Bottom had limited themselves to business-as-usual hyperbole, the UPR would have slipped by unnoticed and fallen into the Great Tomb of Official Documents quite unmourned.

But, no, the Dynamic Duo had to go a bridge or two too far. They felt an obligation to set up the progressive folks of the Obama administration in sharp contrast with and in legal opposition to the benighted, pitchfork and torch waving xenophobic racists of Arizona. This gratuitous insult may play well with the self-appointed hoi oligoi of both coasts, but it does so at the general expense of the US.

The UNHRC is the epitome of hypocrisy. As the successor to the terminally discredited UN Commission on Human Rights it would have been legitimate to posit a radical break with the past. But, as the UN General Assembly is predicated upon the one-nation, one-vote concept, that was not to be. And, indeed, never should have been hoped for.

As anyone well oriented in time and place knows, the UNHRC is a comprised of forty-seven members elected by majority vote of the 192 countries represented in the UN General Assembly. When the criteria for election were being drafted, the US plumped for requiring the human rights records of contenders to be evaluated. This sensible proposition was defeated. No surprise in that.

As a result, the entity, the UNHRC as currently constituted which will review, comment upon, and make recommendations concerning the UPR includes states notable for their suppression or even rejection of basic human rights. Among others, China, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will have the authority to evaluate the American record in human rights and offer suggestions for improvement or chastisement as they see fit.

There is another country in the roster with a special interest in immigration matters as such obtain to the US generally and Arizona in specific. That country (drum roll, please) is Mexico.

Mexico's record in human rights generally is, shall we say, checkered. With regard to immigration policy specifically, the right word is duplicitous.

The dichotomy between the moaning, groaning, bitching, and whining coming from the politicians and media of Mexico over the horrid behavior of the Yanquis on the one hand the True Tails Of Terror And Murder inflicted by Mexicans on illegal immigrants from south of their border has reached a vividness that at least some courageous Mexicans are challenging the myth. The real deal in Mexico is finally leaking around the false image of victimization painted by self-serving politicians, self-interested public intellectuals, and hyper-ambitious advocates.

The mass murder of seventy-two "migrants" (to use the favorite Mexican term for illegal aliens) by criminal smugglers of human beings last week in Tamaulipas exposed the charade in all its grotesque ignominy. The blossom of gore exposed by a wounded survivor of the mass murder stands atop the bloody peak of a mountain of kidnappings, robberies, murders, and general shaking down of people of all ages and both sexes who seek to transit Mexico en route to the Land Of The Big BX.

In the six months between September 2008 and February 2009, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission documented 9,758 identified kidnappings which yielded an average of 2,500 USD per victim. Unfortunately, there was no break down between kidnappings executed by police officers or other officials as contrasted with the informal acts of criminals. Nonetheless, the Mexican Human Rights Commission specifically holds the central government as well as those of the states responsible for the offenses.

Ironically the Mexican federal government whose representative on the UNHRC will soon sit in judgement of the US received a chastening letter from the same body for the sins of both commission and omission which resulted in harm to aliens from Central and South America. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Presumably, both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton had access to information regarding the actual situation in Mexico. It is also to be presumed that both knew the general anti-American stance within the UNHRC. One might be so bold as to assume that both understood and understand how the UPR can and will provide ammunition aplenty for those governments which seek to harm the interests of the US.

In their defense, both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton undoubtedly believe that the openness of the US to the scrutiny and criticism of hostile or guilty states offsets completely any anti-American commentary which will ensue. That may be true, but the realities of global politics require that countries which live in glass houses not invite the throwing of stones.

In this case, the President and his Secretary of State have not only invited the heaving of rocks at Uncle Sam's residence, they have passed out the stones gratis.

For that they merit the What A Maroon! Award.

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