Specks
And Beams In U.S. Foreign Policy
11 February 2010By Jacob G. Hornberger
John Limbert, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state
for Iran, is asking the UN to investigate human-rights
abuses in Iran by that country’s dictatorial regime.
Ever since protests against Iran’s fraudulent
presidential elections broke out, the Iranian
dictators have been rounding up people, torturing and
raping them, and even executing them.
But I wonder if Limbert is going to seek the same type
of inquiry with respect to his own government, which
for years has engaged in a spree of kidnapping,
torture, rendition, rape, sex abuse, indefinite
detention, assassination, and execution.
Yes, I know, Limbert would respond that the people
that the U.S. government has done these things to are
Terrorists while the victims in Iran are Dissidents.
But doesn’t the Iranian government also consider its
targets to be Terrorists who are using violence to
bring down the government?
Moreover, isn’t it the position of both the U.S.
government and the Iranian government that all that is
needed to go after a Terrorist is a governmental
accusation rather than a trial?
Those who claim that U.S. officials can only exercise
their war-on-terror powers against foreigners abroad
forget the U.S. government’s claim that in the war on
terror, the entire world, including the United States,
is the battlefield.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of the UN and
actually believe that the United States would be
better off exiting that corrupt political and
bureaucratic body. But I do think it’s important to
point out the hypocrisy of people like Limbert, who
spend their time pointing a finger at brutal foreign
regimes while remaining mute about the three fingers
pointing back at them. In fact, that sort of hypocrisy
is one of the principal reasons that so many
foreigners dislike the U.S. government.
It’s amusing that Limbert also remained mute about the
Iranian dictator who was in power prior to the 1979
Iranian revolution that succeeded in installing the
extremist Islamic regime into power. That would be the
Shah of Iran, who was doing the same things that
Limbert wants the UN to investigate the current regime
for.
The most likely reason that Limbert remains mute on
that subject is threefold:
One, the Shah was installed into power by the CIA,
thanks to a coup in 1953 that succeeded in ousting the
democratically elected prime minister of Iran,
Mohammad Mossadegh, from power. Why did the CIA do
that, especially given the commitment to democracy
that purportedly characterizes the U.S. government? To
restore oil rights to the British Empire, after
Mossadegh had nationalized the industry.
Two, Limbert was working in Iran for the U.S.
government during the 1979 coup, when he was one of
the U.S. officials taken hostage by Iranian
revolutionaries. Limbert obviously wishes to remain
mute on the reasons for that revolution because it
would entail explaining why the Iranian people were so
angry at not only the Shah but also the United States
— that is, because it was the U.S. government that
supported the brutality that the Shah inflicted on the
Iranian people, the same type of brutality that
Limbert now wants the UN to investigate in Iran.
Three, confronting the issue of the 1953 coup and the
1979 revolution it ultimately produced might cause
Americans to see that it was the U.S. government’s
foreign policy of interventionism that was responsible
for the destruction of democracy in Iran and the rise
of the extremist Islamic regime that is now one of the
principal targets of the U.S. Empire.
So, when the U.S. government does bad things to
people, U.S. officials are supposed to remain mute.
And when U.S.-supported dictators (e.g., the Shah of
Iran, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, etc) do bad
things to people, it’s also important for them to
remain mute. But when a dictatorship that is out of
favor with the U.S. Empire does these things, it
becomes time to investigate.
As diplomat Limbert is showing us, it’s always easier
to pull the speck out of someone else’s eye rather
than the beam out of one’s own eye.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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