With friends like this, who needs enemies?

One of my biggest problems with the Bush foreign policy is its inconsistency and shortsightedness. In their efforts to fight terrorism they have aligned themselves with brutal dictators who serve their short-term goals. Have they learned nothing from history? Although the press refuses to drudge up the past, it bears repeating. After their failure to find any semblance of actual WMDs, and in an effort to justify their War, the Bush administration has rattled off various human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein committed against his people. What they’ve failed to mention, was that a vast majority of these heinous crimes were committed, ironically enough, during the 1980’s when the United States provided aid and weapons worth billions of dollars, as well as communication and industrial technology to the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward reported on (12/15/86), that in 1984 the CIA began giving Iraq intelligence which it used to "calibrate" its mustard gas attacks against Iranian troops. A decade later the Bush Administration uses these gross human rights violations that the United States helped facilitate, as justification for invading Iraq. There’s a great picture of Rummy and Saddam that I think says it all. I digress; America supported Iraq in the war against Iran, to stem the threat of Khomeini, but in doing so, we propped up an evil dictator who has now come back to haunt us. You’d think we might have learned something from our foreign policy blunders during the cold war, but we are repeating the very same mistakes today.

The latest issue of the Economist details some of the Bush Administration’s current missteps.

“EXPLOSIONS and gunfire echoed through a suburb of Tashkent on Tuesday March 30th, as Uzbekistan's security forces attacked what they said was the hideout of an Islamist militant group. The government said 20 “terrorists” and three policemen were killed. The crackdown came a day after 19 people were reportedly killed in a series of bomb attacks—some by female suicide bombers—in the Uzbek capital and in the ancient city of Bukhara. The country’s authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, was almost killed in a wave of bombings by Islamists in Tashkent five years ago and, as he did last time, he is likely to respond to the latest attacks with a wave of brutal repression. His government has been vilified for its appalling record on human rights and political freedom—while being praised by America for its co-operation in the war on terrorism.

There are an estimated 6,500 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and the United Nations’ rapporteur on torture, Theo van Boven, concluded after a visit in 2002 that torture was “institutionalised, systematic and rampant” there…

...The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) says that, in spite of the lifting of official censorship, Uzbekistan still has no press freedom to speak of, and there has been no substantial progress over the past year. Genuine opposition parties have been unable to register and operate, while those non-governmental organisations which had been allowed to register have now been asked to reapply. Human-rights activists are still harrassed or arrested, and Muslims trying to practise their faith outside the state-endorsed religious entities are labelled as terrorists and persecuted. Last August, a court sentenced Ruslan Sharipov, an independent human-rights activist and journalist, to five-and-a-half years in prison for “homosexual conduct”…

Despite the government’s claims to the contrary, human-rights groups say torture is still widespread, and that none of the UN rapporteur’s recommendations has been fully implemented—though the government has issued an action plan. The death of a prisoner in 2002, who appeared to have died after being immersed in boiling water, shocked many other countries. Last month, his mother was jailed for six years for “religious extremism”, after having campaigned for a formal inquiry into her son’s death. She was released, and her penalty reduced to a fine, just before a visit to Tashkent by Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary.

As Mr Rumsfeld noted during his visit, since America’s military intervention in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan has become a key ally in George Bush’s war on terror. It now hosts an American military base. On Tuesday, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, telephoned his Uzbek counterpart to offer American help in investigating the latest terrorist attacks in the country.

It seems that, in its desire to keep Mr Karimov onside in the war on terror, the Bush administration still holds to the maxim said to have been used by President Franklin Roosevelt to describe an American-backed dictator in Nicaragua: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

Sound strikingly familiar, Rummy meeting with a brutal dictator that has an abominable record on human rights in hopes of promoting shortsighted goals. Is this Déjà vu? So let me get this straight, one of our key allies in the war on terror, systematically deprives his people of democratic freedoms, crushes any dissent, imprisons men and women at will, and brutally tortures them. Including and not limited to boiling them alive. What kind of message does this send to the rest of the world? We claim to be promoting democracy in Iraq, making it a beacon of freedom for the rest of the Arab world. BUT WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING IN UZBEKISTAN?

The brutal oppression against Muslims in Uzbekistan is exactly what fosters the resentment and humiliation in young Arab men that spawns suicide bombers and breeds terrorism. We should be condemning this wicked leader for his acts of brutality and rallying the international community against such a man. Instead, we are giving him huge amounts of financial and military aid because he permitted the use of military bases in Uzbekistan for the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

If we are ever going to win this war on terrorism, we must be steadfast in our commitment to the promotion of democratic ideals. We must not succumb to shortcuts or easy quick-fix solutions that are contradictory to the values we stand for. We cannot continue to support countries that stifle democratic expression and repress the will of their people. If we show to the world, that only those countries who demonstrate a true commitment to democracy will earn the full support of the United States both militarily and financially, then maybe we can begin to fight terrorism at it roots. But if we continue to repeat the mistakes of the past, then we are doomed to reap the carnage that we sew.

update 4-1-04: The lead editorial in the Washington Post today, boasts similiar claims as what I stated yesterday.