Human Rights Industry Reaps What It Sows; Humanity Loses
If I had to pick one single moment when the Human Rights Industry lost its focus on the objective measurement of evil, this statement by Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan may be it:
“A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture,” said Ms Khan.
She said the US claimed to be promoting freedom in Iraq, yet its troops had committed appalling torture and had ill-treated detainees. She described Guantánamo Bay as “the gulag of our time”.
She said: “The US administration attempted to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak such as ‘environmental manipulation’, ‘stress positions’, and ‘sensory manipulation’.”
As the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, the US sets the tone for governments’ behaviour worldwide, said Ms Khan. “When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity,” she said. “From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and ‘counter-terrorism’.” [The Guardian]
Let’s unpack all that is implicit in this statement:
(1) Guantanamo, which Amnesty frequently and visibly campaigns against, is at least the moral equivalent of the Laogai or North Korea’s death camps, which Amnesty almost never visibly campaigns against;
(2) the “fear and insecurity” of many Americans is an illusion of the state, or in any event, deserves no place in the making of national policy;
(3) The greater truth of Iraq is Abu Ghraib, not the end of endless Anfals and invasions, or the fresh bloom of peace, prosperity, love, and even some semblance of freedom (Iraq now scores the third-highest freedom index in the Middle East, excluding Israel);
(4) there is no moral difference between waterboarding a grand total of three terrorists to foil their plans to blow up skyscrapers (all filled with Little Eichmanns, no doubt) and Uzbekistan torturing the aspirations out of an opposition activist, China shooting a Falun Gong practitioner for his kidneys … or North Korea slowly destroying 200,000 innocents in a living hell that seems unmarked on Amnesty’s globe;
(5) states torture dissidents not because it suits their interests or because they think they’ll get away with it, but because America issued them “licenses” when it waterboarded a man who murdered thousands of civilians on its own soil, and was plotting to murder thousands more. (Let me suggest another theory: if anyone has granted a license to commit abuse with impunity, it’s a Human Rights Industry that was too preoccupied with Gitmo to take up the causes dissidents in distant dungeons, or to recall that real gulags still exist, unmourned by Amnesty. This is not to suggest that America is above licensing evil, though Amnesty is just as guilty of moral default in the case of the world’s worst ongoing atrocities, which are happening in North Korea today. If there is a perfect word to describe the amount of attention Amnesty pays to the people of North Korea, that word is “token.”)
There is, however, a problem with throwing away your objective standards: you never know when you’ll miss them.
Paying her first visit to Asia as the top US diplomat, Clinton said the United States would continue to press China on long-standing US concerns over human rights such as its rule over Tibet.
“But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis,” Clinton told reporters in Seoul just before leaving for Beijing. [Agence France-Presse]
But — other than thinking beings with powers of reason and judgment — who are we to say that one is different than the other? Who are we to say that America has any moral authority to accuse anyone else?
T. Kumar of Amnesty International USA said the global rights lobby was “shocked and extremely disappointed” by Clinton’s remarks.
“The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues,” he said.
“But by commenting that human rights will not interfere with other priorities, Secretary Clinton damages future US initiatives to protect those rights in China,” he said.
Students for a Free Tibet said Clinton’s remarks sent the wrong signal to China at a sensitive time.
“The US government cannot afford to let Beijing set the agenda,” said Tenzin Dorjee, deputy director of the New York-based advocacy group.
The wisdom, effectiveness, and morality of the means by which America fights terrorists are matters legitimately subject to debate by people of conscience. I would expect classically liberal human rights activists, who are usually distinguishable from the angry nihilists who sometimes ally with them, to take a vigorous part in that debate. But the suggestion of moral equivalence between the gulags of totalitarian states, on one hand, and the detention and “aggressive” interrogation of terrorists — when the alternative is the death of innocent people — does not so much prove the truth of the matter asserted as suggest that the nihilists have hijacked the moral rudder of classically liberal values. To equate Guantanamo with atrocities on every scale (Pravda, no less, recently compared it to Auschwitz) has now become a popular device of tyrants and those who enable them, and of the intellectually and morally lazy. The result is a blurring of the world’s conscience, the loss of any ability to make moral and numerical distinctions and assign our priorities accordingly. That is exactly what plenty of those who blurred these standards must have intended, but I suspect that a much larger number just followed the bleating herd.
The temptation of this moral laziness may result, in part, from the complexity of the questions Guantanamo raises, and the relative infrequency with which those questions are plausibly answered: What are we willing to do to one man to save thousands from him? Can a clear line be drawn to limit the state’s power to torture? How effective are tactics such as waterboarding? What judicial procedure is appropriate for people who hide in lawless places, operate clandestinely, and respect no standard of civilization? What better alternatives should we consider? (I posit that it is the height of hypocrisy to excoriate Gitmo and America from a place that is safer because Gitmo’s occupants are there, and yet to slink away when the discussion shifts to who else will keep these people out of the world’s schools and subways. I ask again: what else is to be done with them? We’ve heard Amnesty’s answer, and we now know the result of heeding it.)
As for Mrs. Clinton, perhaps they’re being too hard on her. She has only the meager ration of conscience that God gave her, and she knows how her bread is buttered. What else did we expect?
I have no doubt that Amnesty’s hyperbolic rhetoric pleased many of its members and raised a lot of money at that time. It may even have played some part in making Hillary Clinton the standard-bearer of America’s interests and values. It’s also why I cannot take Amnesty seriously anymore — I am a former member — and I know I’m not alone in this belief. Amnesty’s decline into irrelevance will probably take many years, but the real victims of its moral retardation are only starting to feel the lash on their backs.
Related: Greetings, lurkers! Being loved is still overrated:
– Canadians love Barack Obama so much they’re pulling out of Afghanistan.
– Europe loves Obama so much it won’t send more troops.
– Russia loves Obama so much it got us kicked out of a key logistical base for Afghanistan.
– Iran loves Obama so much it turned away his ping-pong emissaries.
– North Korea loves Obama so much, it’s honoring him with a fireworks display.
– The wacky left does not love Obama anymore. It’s already calling him a war criminal. Sigh.
I wonder if Clinton’s statement on the interference of human rights is representative of another administration that has foreign policy generated from the Office of the Vice President.
You were almost too subtle there, though I question the degree to which the Vice President ran foreign policy in the last administration or this one. As little as I can say in defense of the Bush Administration’s defense of human rights in Asia, Cheney was less culpable than his boss or the Secretary of State in that regard. It wasn’t Cheney who was soft-peddling those issues, it was the State Department. Really, what we see from Rice to Clinton is a remarkable degree of continuity.
Mrs. Clinton is right not to press China publicly. As you noted in the previous post, the Chinese government has done a remarkable job turning sour foreign criticism lemons into sweet patriotic lemonade. China tosses a few bones our way by releasing dissidents once in awhile, but for the most part, it manages either to ignore or harness foreign human rights pressure to strengthen its internal control. We should monitor closely human rights in China and call China on its abuses, but this is best done by NGOs, not the government, and by domestic media not beholden to the Chinese government.
Here’s who is being abused at Gitmo: American MPs and Medics.
Watch SF retired Colonel Gordon Culcullo who has been to Gitmo 5x and reports US guards are attacked more than 400 times a year:
http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerId=videolandingpage&streamingFormat=FLASH&referralObject=3686201&referralPlaylistId=playlist
Accepting your point as true, is Mrs. Clinton right to publicly diminish the importance of human rights? There’s a fair argument that her words were not meant to diminish, but let’s parse her words very carefully:
So she’ll “continue to press” — or so she’s paraphrased — but never at the expense of a sweeping array economic, climate change, and security issues. This is a such a broad range of higher priorities that it’s fair to ask what other issues the discussion of human rights will be allowed to interfere with.
Mrs. Clinton’s error was to raise human rights in a comparative context, something that was both inartful and unnecessary. Whether you agree with her or not about the relative importance of those priorities, her words (to borrow from Ms. Khan’s lexicon) “grant a license.” Far better not to have made any public mention of human rights at all!
The point of my post, of course, is that America’s moral authority can’t be sacrificed to the hyperbole of the moment and then magically switched back on in some unforeseen hour of need.
I agree with you that human rights is a completely separate issue from the global economic crisis, and the two should not be linked.
Public statements are heard by many audiences. If the US government remains silent publicly about human rights, genuine human rights advocates and China-haters will think the US government doesn’t care. The Chinese know that criticisms of it play very well in the US, so it ignores meaningless statements from visiting US officials like Clinton as a sort of ritual gesture. Other than pressure, I don’t know what the US government can do to improve human rights in China, and pressure is most effective done privately. Standing up to the US increases public support for the regime in China (something you’ve acknowledged) while making concessions would make the Chinese government look weak.
What can we do to pressure China? Encourage free markets in labor and information, which will ultimately create liberating pressure from within. Use China’s need to tap into U.S. markets to disincentivize barriers to the development of freer markets.
1. Incrementally increase our insistence that Chinese manufacturers comply with free and fair labor standards, and increase our vigilance against the import of slave made goods.
2. Host and sponsor broadcasting into China by dissident and religious groups that the regime won’t allow to broadcast from inside China. Generally, however, we would be wise to focus less on ethnic and religious disputes and more on local affairs — land disputes, strikes and labor disputes, pollution, and especially corruption — which is where the people’s most heartfelt grievances are.
3. Prohibit U.S. corporations from helping the Chinese to censor and filter the internet and broadcasting.
4. Sanction Chinese companies involved in censorship, land expropriations, proliferation, and human rights abuses. Prohibit them from doing business with the United States, or from keeping correspondent accounts in U.S. financial institutions.
We’re going to do all that to our largest lender? Suggestion 2 is feasible since it can be done by NGOs. The other suggestions are government actions, and our government dare not get tough with its largest lender, whose continued generosity is needed to finance the federal deficit. Would you like to see the US leave Iraq to give Uncle Sam one less reason to hold out a hat and panhandle for spare change from Uncle Hu?
Kudos for the excellent sustained volley between our OFK host and Sonagi. Regrettably, our USA’s financial recklessness at least since Nine-Eleven (when the “War against Terror” opened the doors of the U.S. Treasury wide to every pleader with a war angle and K-Street representation) has ruined our ability to sustain the suggested morally-based policies in confrontation with the PRC government or lackeys thereof. The new administration’s policies and proclivities in combination with the current Congress are only likely to put the financial ship of state much more firmly on the rocks and very soon at that. The habit of global moral mission this country developed when it was the world’s greatest creditor nation seems now eerily out of place as Federal government policy, though hopefully never out of our prayers and of our efforts through NGOs. (Even now, the Korean Church Coalition is redoubling its efforts for the salvation of some 22 million Koreans in thrall to the Kim family regime.) Even when the great affairs of states seem darkest, the valiant efforts of morally-guided individuals light a way forward and offer real hope.
Human rights is often brushed aside when economic interests get in the way. But it makes no sense for the US Sec of State to say so publicly. That kind of preemptive concession is useful neither for advancing economic nor human rights interests and should be relegated to the domain of academics. It’s a good thing that Mrs. Clinton didn’t got to Seoul and say, “North Korean human rights is important and the United States will continue to press Pyongyang on it. But our pressing on that issue cannot interfere with the nuclear issue.”
Uncle Hu may be Uncle Sam’s largest lender, but the former is no altruist and remains beholden to the latter’s generous market. Make money matter, and the US will have considerable leverage across a variety of issues it intends to advance. Banco Delta Asia was in Chinese territory. All the international focus on that small bank in Macao also put intense pressure on Beijing, with many banks of its own involved in shady dealings with Pyongyang.
Public condemnation of human rights records may only tighten Beijing’s grip on dissidents. But it also leads to the release of political prisoners and softening of crackdowns, temporary and disingenuous such shifts in policy may be. The presumption that Washington’s silence on human rights is more effective than its public criticism and that such criticisms should be made only by NGOs seems to presume that Beijing takes NGOs more seriously than Washington. Such has been Seoul’s misguided position vis-a-vis Pyongyang the past decade, made all the more tragic by the degree and scope of repression north of the 38//, not to mention that oft-touted common ethnic bond.
As this WSJ editorial calls for, Mrs. Clinton should issue a disclaimer. What’s there to fear? Beijing may be displeased, but it will understand and come to dismiss any such disclaimer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123531938406542341.html
As much as you would, but not so quickly that a promising situation becomes the next Afghanistan. Can you explain to me why decades of genocide and terror would be cheaper than leaving the troops there for another year or two as things continue to stabilize?
“What can we do to pressure China?”
One thing we can do is focus on China’s relationship with North Korea and its locking-out of the international community to access in Manchuria and North Korean refugees.
Openly criticizing China about treatment of its own people might be fairly hopeless and useful as internal propaganda for the Chinese government — but we would stand a much better chance of successful outcomes if we focused —– much needed attention to the plight of North Korean refugees and China’s help to the regime in Pyongyang.
But, to do that, we’d have to also make human rights abuse in North Korea a high profile / highly publicized priority —— and our government has actually decided the exact opposite policy is better.
If the United States government were to join in, with its resources, into the cause of Tibet – the Chinese government could be pressured into reforms there — though certainly never into giving up Tibet as a region of China.
My point — even though China considers Tibet to be a part of its nation – like say we do Hawaii or Alaska (or South Korea does Tokdo) —– there is enough about China’s relationship with Tibet that — the US could use along with NGOs already in the game — to rally enough world-wide pressure – to persuade the Chinese government to implement some reforms there.
— With North Korea — China doesn’t consider it a part of the nation — it is simply a close ally.
And the abuses in North Korea are so much more mammoth than in Tibet —
—- so much more easily presented in a compelling light to a world audience — if the US government wanted to make human rights in North Korea a priority and wanted to pressure China into changes that might influence Pyongyang.
We could at least get China to recognize North Korean refugees as refugees and allow the UN and other multinational and NGO groups to help the refugees in China.
That is something China could be pressured into allowing.
But, the US has no stomach for such an effort and actually believes – it appears – that it can handle things like North Korea’s nukes and ICBMs — by not bringing up the subject of Human Rights at all….
Which certainly assures that no reform inside North Korea or with China’s handling of North Korean refugees will take place….
“cheaper than leaving the troops there for another year or two as things continue to stabilize”
I’ll go for more than a year or two — if need be:
We left troops in Germany, Japan, Italy, and South Korea for decade after decade, as they took the twists and turns into becoming world economic and democractic leaders – and we still pay to keep troops there.
In the process, we also prevented Germany, Japan, and Italy from reverting back to expansionistic fascism and South Korea from being gobbled up by the North or producing its own full-fledged, Stalin-Mao-Kim Il-Sung-type dictatorship.
Even though I think the time has come for the US to stop spending billions of dollars to station troops in a South Korean society that is stable, democratic, and fully capable of defending itself against its only primary military threat —
— I do not begrudge the amount of resources spent in South Korea (or Germany or Japan or Italy or for that matter elsewhere in Western Europe during the Cold War (and the Marshall Plan)) that went to help those nations become prosperous democratic nations.
So, I firmly believe, if we keep pumping money into Iraq, and it becomes a gem in the Middle East — a free, democratic, and wealthy nation that is a pride to the international community —— I won’t cry about it as a big government waste.
In the developing debate about military commitments in excess of financial capacity, it may be worthwhile to consider that the logistical cost of each serviceman in Afghanistan is far in excess of that of his counterpart in Iraq. Adjusting your goals to means may also be appropriate. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, your primary enemies are not the Hazara, Tajiks, and others of the northern and western part of Afghanistan, nor the Punjabis and Sindhis and (arguably not) the Baluchis of Pakistan. Rather, the regressive cultural nature of the Pashto people on either side of the Afghan/Pakistan border is the breeding ground of the problem we continue to imagine is primarily for us to solve. The Pashto are on par with the Highlanders of Scotland of the early 18th Century, people who though primitive in technique and small in numbers gave the English a nasty shock in 1745 (at Prestonpans etc). When the Highlander formations were defeated in pitched battle at Culloden in 1746, the London government then executed a very harsh policy against the entirety of the Highlander population, one that would not survive human rights scrutiny today but which was very effective in solving for the English the problem of security threats emanating from Scotland once and for all. A similar approach was used by the U.S. military in the Philippines in the early year of the 20th Century, again, with decisive results. But gearing up to do it in Pashtunistan would require a very severe financial commitment from this strapped USA, to say nothing of impossible supply lines and of contemplating genocidal issues. And is it truly necessary? With such military means as are our forte, in 2001 we handily deposed the Taliban government when they so unwisely gave shelter to al-Qaeda. Were they ever to resume power in Kabul, it is unlikely they would wish to do anything to precipitate being sent on their travels once more. What is more to the point, there are major powers much closer to Afghanistan than the USA, with a correspondingly greater stake in what happens in Afghanistan, and for their varying reasons none of them wish to see the Taliban or similar back in Kabul: Russia, China, India, and Iran (and Turkey, for that matter). If the USA is not in the way carrying their water for them, it seems reasonable to believe that some or all of these powers will step forward to attend to their common interest in the matter, which should give an acceptable result for this country.
“If the USA is not in the way carrying their water for them, it seems reasonable to believe that some or all of these powers will step forward to attend to their common interest in the matter, which should give an acceptable result for this country.”
Bosnia…