Is US losing moral authority on human rights?

Experts say prisoner abuses, war in Iraq undermine effectiveness of State Department human rights report.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

<snip> The Washington Post ... reports that Jose Luis Soberanes, president of Mexico's Human Rights Commission, citing the "treatment of Mexicans who sneak across the border" into the US, referred to the US report as "the donkey talking about long ears" – the Spanish-language equivalent of "the pot calling the kettle black" – "because the United States violates human rights, especially those of our countrymen." <snip>

The chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission, Jody Kollapen, said, 'We are doing much better than the United States in many respects. We conduct elections better than them and deal with terrorism better than them.' <snip>

The US record on human rights took other hits last week. Al Jazeera also reported that Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, told a press conference in Baghdad that his department's investigation in the conflict in Fallujah show that US forces used "internationally banned weapons" during its offensive last November, including napalm and jet fuel. The United States has never signed the treaty that banned the use of napalm against civilians. <snip>

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the CIA regularly flies "suspects" to countries like "Morocco, Egypt, Libya ... and even some former Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, which, the State Department says, regularly uses torture in its prisons and detention centers." <snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0307/dailyUpdate.html

The United States no longer has ANY ground to stand on and when we criticize other states human rights records we are just being complete hypocrites.

should be LOST.

if not long before.

Amerika is a BushPutinist State. The only nations with ANY moral authority (given that every nation does bad things, but only Free Nations try to avoid or rectify it) are the ever-dwindling Free World.

And Amerika AIN'T in it.

If BushCo isn't targeting journalists the fact that we are even suspected of doing such shows how low they have driven the U.S. brand name. BushCo offing reporters would be the ultimate in anti-humanism in stopping the free flow of reporting.

...decades ago. U.S. citizens, by and large, are just beginning to come to this realization.

that all of Europe is gobbling up the Italian journalist story with fervor and it won't matter what we say about it, they won't believe it...I remember J. Bidon at he torture hearings saying "there's a reason why we don't do this type of thing"...it all comes back to bite us in the end....just an other major * screw-up

don't we all wish that Clinton had shot down Osama's plane when he had a chance. There has always been a little bit of human rights violations in covert policy. Now it is just more in the open and talked about by you guys. Also, your current leaders are RAVING ******* LUNATICS.

But seriously - yes. The ideal of human rights as a new basis of living as human beings in not a Utopia. Human beings have lived at times where burning preteens alive or drowning them was considered "cool" and even "smart".

It is not impossible for the norms of humanity to be raised one more time. And then raised up to a higher ideal. After all - America is only an IDEA too.

And neocon Richard Perle talks openly about reducing the norms to 19th Century times. And he is a monster for that. Yes human rights are loosing ground and it is intentional and planned that that would happen. Apparently we will all become exhausted/apathetic soon, and then it is only a short drive to us becoming very relaxed about the whole thing.

I cannot wait for Bush & Co to be bitch-slapped a few more times by reality. And then, once they are not in power, they can all be dissected.

Gee, It wouldn't have occurred to me.

last week it was reported that the US State Dept. was getting on Iraq's case because of the torture there. And getting on the cases of countries we send people to be tortured because they are torturing people. :crazy:

Trying to keep the American public deluded as usual.

Maybe for a brief period during WW II and up and until, say the early 50's. Maybe for a brief period in the late 1970's.

Aside from that, I don't think the US has much to crow about....

WE Torture People

WE have an Attorney General who ADVOCATES TORTURE

WE have a Secretary of State who ADVOCATES TORTURE

and WE have a SOLID BLOC of NAZI SENATORS and CONGRESSMEN who see nothing wrong with the ends justifying the means.

It's the old idol with clay feet phenomenon.

A moral authority must be perfect, without foibles or faults. Otherwise he's a wretched sinner, and why should I waste 2 seconds listening to that bastard?

I've watched it with political leaders and religious leaders. Even scholars can be elevated to godhood ... and when they make a mistake, well, why should we believe anything *they* say? Our heroes must be without blemish or stain, otherwise they're complete and utter trash. How absurdly immature.

This attitude makes life a lot harder, though. It's not like NGOs are perfect, either--it's just a question of which sins are judged venal and which are judged mortal; but they want power that nation-states have traditionally had (yes, it's just power-grubbing, they're not saints either); they refuse to concede any vestige of morality to their particular "other" that they're phobic about and must paint as black as possible.

The downside: with left that can nobody throw moral weight around, there's nobody left to condemn really egregious acts. Therefore we breathe a sigh of relief when Niger cancels a slave-freeing ceremony, saying "nope ... can't be done, no slavery here", and whine but do nothing when the UN denies genocide in Sudan (for the second time). After all, either would require more than moral outrage and bitching at our morning coffee ... and since nobody's without sin, nobody is moral enough to act on their moral outrage.

The upside: we make governments like Sudan and Burma very, very happy, as we castrate any criticism of their actions.

To do things better, and we took a stab at it, but lacked the
spine to do a decent job of it, to be fair and honest when the
chips were down, there was too much money to be made, too much
power to be wielded, and now it is much too late.

not being perfect. Any imperfection is grounds for dismissal out of hand, for many people.

I don't know of a single perfect person or organization (which, after all, would have to be made up of perfect people).

Any difference between what one says and what one does either invalidates the truth of the assertions or makes the person/group logically unable make the assertions. Therefore I know of nobody that can serve as a moral authority.

On those terms, at least. For me, "good enough" is good enough, and the truth value of the assertions doesn't depend on the moral rectitude of the speaker.

I said nothing about being perfect. I said be fair and honest
when the chips are down. Any effective moral compass must be
practical in its application. There is no such thing as
"moderate extremism" or "rigid pragmatism" and there is no set
of rules that encompasses wisdom.

You are perfectly correct, of course, that statements do not depend
on who uttered them for their value or lack of it.

Edit: I suspect I have not understood you well, it's not that
I disagree with your comment about the flawed nature of humans or
their attraction to simple-minded descriptions of the world, I do
agree.

What is with this Administration and torture? What a bunch of sexually tormented latter-day Mengeles they are.

Individuals can have moral authority; states cannot. Nearly all nation-states have extremely dark chapters in their respective histories, the US included. A centralized government represents concentrated power, and we know damn well what concentrated power represents to those who thirst for power and control.

The US never lost any moral authority. It never had it to begin with, and it didn't when it actively and passively worked to exterminate the original inhabitants of this continent or worked to keep the Africans in bondage or kept them segregated and weak throughout this nation's history.

It never had it when it bombed my blood-kin back in Vietnam, and it doesn't now with what is happening in Iraq or any of the brutal, authoritarian regimes the government has supported in the past.

The US took any moral authority it had and obliterated it almost the instant the country was founded. That's where the hell it went.