Losing the moral highground

This one incident isn't of major importance in itself. It is ashame that the U.S. has made itself vulnerable to human rights abuse charges from nations who with such poor records on human rights as China.

If we want to be a leader of the world, and champions of democracy and the modern cause we do need to lead by example.

Obviously China doesn't have the moral highground either to criticize us, but we have left ourselves open to this kind of criticism.

I miss the days when we practiced what we preached.
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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1F2FE97C-9D4E-48A0-BBFD-FF30F3635E83.htm
US, China trade human-rights barbs
By Benjamin Robertson in Beijing

Saturday 05 March 2005, 14:52 Makka Time, 11:52 GMT


Human-rights abuses are a major irritant in Sino-US relations


The annual trans-Pacific war of words was renewed this week as first Washington, and then Beijing, released their 2004 human rights reports.



Accusing each other of various human-rights abuses, China's verbal salvos carried additional venom this year after the well-publicised prisoner-abuse scandals in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

This prompted human-rights watchers to express concern that US actions have undermined its moral authority, and made it easier for authoritarian governments to justify their human-rights abuses.

Summarising China's human-rights record as "poor", the US report, issued on 28 February by the State Department as part of a yearly review on global human rights, accused China of maintaining "tight restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press".

Highlighting the lack of an independent judiciary and the arrest of several dissent writers towards the end of last year, the report said "many who openly expressed dissenting political views were harassed, detained, or imprisoned", and that the government was "quick to suppress religious, political, and social groups that they perceived as threatening to government authority or national stability".

Harsh crackdown

Covering 118 pages, it also reiterated an earlier criticism that China was using "the international war on terror as a pretext for cracking down harshly on suspected Uighur separatists expressing peaceful political dissent and on independent Muslim religious leaders", in the north-western border province of Xinjiang.

In part wary of radical Islamic influence in the region, since 1997 China has been waging an anti-separatism campaign targeting "extremism", "terrorism", and "splittism". Critics, including the State Department report, say that the campaign has not adequately differentiated between those using peaceful forms of protest and those using violence.


The Tiananmen Square massacre
of 1989 chilled ties with the West

Washington has yet to announce whether it will table a resolution against China's record at this month's UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva. Previous years' resolutions have always failed to be passed.

"It is clear that China's human-rights situation needs improving, but China's human rights are an internal issue," Shen Jiru, a political theorist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said soon after the report's publication.

In part echoing the government line, Shen questioned whether moral values are always transferable and at what point in a society's development individual human rights should be given priority.

"In China, the biggest problem is economic development as there are so many people with little money or education. Do these people's rights come before the rights of dissidents?" Shen asks.

China's appraisal

Issuing a formal response on Wednesday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said that only the Chinese people have the right to comment on their human rights and that "the Chinese government, sticking to a policy it calls 'putting people above everything else,' has made many efforts toward building a democratic country under the rule of law".

This was followed on Thursday by their own appraisal of US human-rights record.


China's reaction to Uighur Muslim
demands has sparked concern

Its flowery language contrasting with the US State Department's bureaucratic wording, the report said that "the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi PoWs exposed the dark side of human-rights performance of the United States", and that "the world people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States".

Cataloguing a list of apparent failings within America, including high levels of racial discrimination, rising number of homelessness, and curtailment of rights since 9/11, the report questioned whether the US can justifiable pose as "the world's human rights police".

"The 2004 US presidential election reported many problems, including counting errors, machine malfunctions, registration confusion, legal uncertainty, and lack of respect for voters," the report said.

Double standards

The report also listed a string of abuses carried out during the war in Iraq. Included were the killing of 45 people at a wedding party in May last year, and the shooting of seven civilians on a bus in Ramadi last November.


US army abuses have come in for
criticism from Chinese officials

"The double standards of the US on human rights and its exercise of hegemonism and power politics under the pretext of promoting human rights certainly put itself in an isolated and passive position and beget opposition from all just members of the international community," the report concluded.

Commenting on the two reports, Mickie Spiegel, China researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: "Though I believe the US report on China tries to reflect accurately what is happening, American actions (in Iraq) has made it easier for the Chinese to criticise America, and makes it easier for more abusive governments to justify their own actions.

"In terms of the US ability to speak for people's rights (Iraq) makes it very difficult for people to follow America and this worries me."

 

Since Bush's attorney general writes memos in attempt to justify those 'accidnents'. If they are being codified, and part of the administrations way of doing business, it isn't just accidents.

Furthermore, when there is a policy of sending people to country's that torture as part of policy, it isn't an accident and the creation of a pattern.

I'm not saying that most of our military and intel community torture others, or even support the torture of others, but they don't have to for it to be a pattern. When little to nothing is done to stop it, and the person who created the memo justifying it is promoted to attorney general, then actions speak louder than words.

 

I took pains to say it doesn't identify our historic military policy, or our military in general.

But it is more than mis-identification. Torturing anyone correctly or incorrectly identified is a human rights violation. We wouldn't be losing the moral highground if we hadn't occupied it in some sense in the past. It doesn't define our military history, but it is a pattern under the current administration, and their inaction, or rewarding of those who condone it, demonstrates their concern for it.

 

If all of those were misidentifications sure. There is some question as to whether the wedding party was a misidentification or not.

Actually I also disagree with you about live torturer vs. dead idealist. It is much better to die with values, and principles in tact than to live having sold them out. That is the spirit that our founding fathers had as well. 'Give me liberty or give me death' 'I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it'

Those are men who put certain values and principles above life. What kind of life is it anyway if you toss away your ideals anytime trouble rears its ugly head.

I'm tired of people claiming they love what our country stands for, but willing to sell out it's principles when they are tested.

I also don't know what you are calling lesser offenses. Is leaving a man out who freezes to death lesser than a beheading? How do you make that call?

 

I don't know. The initial reports were that gunfire was reported. After investigation the U.S. armed forces called back the planes that were going to investigate because they were informed it was a wedding. The planes returned. Then later planes went back in and wiped out the guests.

After that happened the initial identification of the gunfire as a wedding was never talked about again. Then came the various versions of who died and didn't. I don't believe it was ever conclusively solved. I wouldn't hazard to guess without more information.

When our founding fathers talked about defending to the death the rights of people they were talking about an entire nation.

Also equally as important... I never said that I would sit idly by. The choice is between torture and other means of getting information or winning the battles. It is not a choice between doing nothing and torture.

Again the scenario that there would ever be a situation where we had to torture someone to get the kind of information that would save a nation or major city is purely hypothetical. It assumes that by torturing you would get the information you wanted, and accurately. It assumes you have the one party that knows that information. It assumes that the party being tortured has a way to win the battle. It assumes that the enemies plans aren't changing, and that nobody is else is pursuing other means of winning the battle, finding the bombs etc. That scenario isnt' real.

If the rules of engagement comprimise a nation's principles, ideals and values, then that nation has already lost. However I believe it is possible, and more effective to engage the enemy while preserving morals, values, and principles.

Well if you take the most minor of offenses by the U.S. and compare it to the most heinous of the enemies then yes it is a lesser offense. But our torture involved killing of detainees.

 

What have we gained by the torture? Has it even helped with anything?

 

Yes. I know that torture never helps in the long run. The French tried it in Algiers, and failed, The Japanese in WWII and failed. I know that it only serves to breed more anti-American feelings and possible terrorism. It will encourage torture of Americans, it will weaken our stand when we try and use the idea of spreading democracy for fighting wars.

Who's going to want democracy if it only means torturing those weaker than you. Why would people aspire to that. If you want to spread democracy it would be more valuable to lead by example and show them how just and good it is.

Torture isn't a sure fire way to get accurate information. But if somehow torture is used and it saves a troop of one hundred, but the use of torture strengthens resistence, and reduces the zeal with which foreign forces buy into democracy, it could mean our troops have to stay longer over seas and perhaps another 1000 die. We thought we were saving lives, but in the end we lose them.

That kind of thing is exactly what happened when French tried using torture in Algiers.

Look at Saddam using torture. It may have kept people in fear and thus seemed like it saved Saddams life, and his government. But in the end it is what brought him down.

Not to mention people will eventually have to face the truth that by using torture we have abandoned the moral high ground, adopted the means of dictators, and terrorists, sold our our principles, and values, all while gaining nothing in the end.