U.S. Policies − At Home and Abroad

What follows are some tales from recent U.S. domestic and foreign policy — tales of a government increasingly concerned neither with the will of its people nor the welfare of humans in general. A government that prefers to shortsightedly amass power unto itself, ignoring long-term realities that make such power fleeting at best.

Taking action in Darfur

Ring Them Bells by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch) sounds the alarm that the sweet-faced young up-and-comer, the United States, is poised to pop its self-interest cherry by supported mass murderers in the Sudan because they have oil. That’s right, the U.S. is finally going to Darfur, or, rather, “Gosh [top warlord in Sudan] was flown to Washington for high-level ‘consultations’ with his new partners in the CIA”. Either way, they’re hooking up.

Gosh and his armies are largely responsible for “[a]t least 400,000 people [who] have died in the carnage, with 2 million more driven into exile.” But we’re not here to judge. Largely due to this, “the Bush Regime itself officially declared the Darfur despoliation a “genocide,” and called Gosh’s gang of terrorist-coddling goons “an extraordinary threat” to America’s national security.” And the people rejoiced, for the might of the U.S. would be set in motion as a force of good, to save the repressed, starving people of the Sudan from their oppressors.

Or so goes the rhetoric in an election year. Leaving that fantasy world, one is quickly faced by the harsh realities of providing fuel for an oil-hungry nation and profits for cash-hungry political donors. In steps “Sudan’s burgeoning oil industry” to offer poor Bushie a helping hand. As hundreds of thousands continue to starve and die in “senseless and premeditated attack[s]”, our freedom-loving nation finds it easier to ignore them and work with the perpetrators of the death and destruction to make sure that they get their cut of the action.

“How is such two-faced cynicism possible? It’s easy: the Bushists don’t regard the people of Darfur as human beings, unique individuals of infinite worth and intrinsic value. They’re just counters in the game of greed and power, to be shifted or discarded as the need arises.”

Take a closer look at the domestic situation in the U.S. itself, with it’s out-of-control economy, currency, housing market, deficit, national debt and unemployment and you’ll see that the “slash and burn” strategy of the U.S. government applies equally to its own citizens. While our complicity in the destruction of nameless, faceless foreigners may not stir us to action, our funding of our own demise should.

Texas Justice

Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested by Colin Kalmbacher (CounterPunch) tells the story of a heckler at an Ann Coulter Q&A session who got to see how the police operate “deep in the heart of Texas”. Ann Coulter was holding a question and answer session in which she attempting to justify her stance against gay marriage. During this session, one man stepped up to the mic’ and asked “What about marriages where men just fuck their wife the ass?”

A provocative question to say the least, but not (yet) illegal to ask. Given the unspoken context of the gay marriage debate, it’s reasonable to bait haters and their opinions into the open with such effrontery. The question was quickly waved off, but, when the questioner tried to leave:

“Two officers grabbed him and with an undeniably excessive amount of force pushed him out of the very same auditorium that he was exiting on his own. … They led him around to the back of a van where he was pinned face down on the cold, dirty concrete, away from the eyes of his concerned compatriots and the lens of the television camera that arrived.”

Repeated pleas to the officers for justification of his arrest were ignored; the same for demands that he be released or read his rights. It’s not as if this is breaking new ground, though. Perhaps it’s simply that white people have finally found something they can do that makes the police arrest them. This story probably wouldn’t surprise too many urban blacks, who have spent their lives being arrested for no reason and with no explanation.

This is not the beginning of the end; it is a continuation of a long, slow decline − perhaps one that is inevitable where there is concentration of power and enforcers thereof. It is only shocking to whites who thought that their skin color put them into membership of the upper, protected class. Incidents like this one reveal to them that there are multiple axes along which people are split and that the ruling class prefers itself small and exclusive, thank you very much.

For those who did not know it or have forgotten, here’s a refresher:

• The police do not serve me.
• The police do not serve you.
• They are not there to serve and protect.
• They are not there to uphold law and order.
• The police are not agents of the people.
• They are agents of power.

There are individual exceptions to this rule — cops who don’t understand the program and believe the hype, in other words. They are to be heralded for trying to help us.

Outsourcing to Uzbekistan

While Chris Floyd touches briefly on how Bush has “lavished more than $500 million on Karimov’s marauding security services”, which helps keep the Uzbek leader firmly in charge of his “democratic” police state. “In return, he tortures Bush’s own abducted, uncharged, “rendered” prisoners” away from the prying eyes of international bodies and absolving the U.S. of pesky constitutional issues.

Democracy in Action by Billmon (Whiskey Bar) has a quote-fest from various members of the Bush administration about Uzbekistan. As an “important member of th[e] coalition against terrorism”, Uzbekistan enjoys a quite favored status in the Bush administration’s eyes, despite the fact that “[i]t has no independent political parties, no free and fair elections, and no independent news media”.

Is it out of line to dub him the Saddam Hussein of the 21st century? He’s got the oil connections in his country, he’s got the dictatorship and he’s got the slavering adulation of the U.S. He would do well to remember Saddam’s lesson though: step out of line and your shit will be invaded so fast, you’ll wake up in a spider hole, picking lice out of your beard. Caveat Emptor.

When the Uzbek government opens fire on demonstrators, killing an unknown number (they were not counted), Scott McClellan (a.k.a. Mouth of Sauron) gave the official U.S. reaction:

“We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison. And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time.”

The Bush administration will not use stronger words than such a mild admonishment when dealing with Uzbekistan, as long as they play ball. Again, we see how little the people of the country are worth to the U.S.; the “moral peacekeeper of the world” story is a fairy tale told and believed only at home to keep the money flowing. The rest of the world knows what the U.S. really thinks: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”