Marcel Berlins (The Guardian): The double standards of the United States

The double standards of the United States

I fear there has been a brutal shift of morality in the 'new normal' US - and it may never be the same again

Marcel Berlins
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian (London)

Last Thursday, the general assembly of the United Nations voted to set up a new human rights council, to actively promote, monitor and supervise the delivery of human rights in the member states. Only four countries voted against. The US was one. The others were Israel, the Marshall Islands (population 59,000) and Palau (population 20,000).

Last month, the report of a UN inquiry into Guantánamo Bay called on the US administration to shut the prison down, because of its constant flouting of all the international laws and human rights principles governing prisoners, not least the prohibition of torture. The report was immediately, contemptuously and curtly rubbished by the US authorities, who pointed out that the five UN envoys had not spoken to any of the Guantánamo detainees, so how could their conclusions be accorded any validity? The reason why the envoys had not interviewed any prisoners was that the authorities had denied them access. (Instead, they spoke at length to freed prisoners, and to doctors and lawyers who had been there.)

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Occupations of foreign countries come to an end, and one day even Guantánamo Bay will be emptied. Political, military, legal and financial priorities and policies will change. But what I fear is that the brutalised morality of the country will take far longer to heal.


Read the full column here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1736502,00.html

Kick

"What I believe may be happening is not just a proportionate adjustment to new circumstances, but a shift in a nation's fundamental morality. The changes started with the US government and have trickled down insidiously to the people.

"It isn't just the disdainful way the administration treats its critics, whether they be the UN, other governments, or individuals. Nor is it the actual legal and administrative measures taken in the name of the so-called war against terrorism. Bad laws, after all, can always be reversed. What worries me more is attitudes. There is an awful description in use about the present situation - the "new normal". It means that life after 9/11 is not the same as before and, by implication, can never be the same again. The new normal encompasses a diminution of human rights, the relegation of the rule of law, not caring whether or not individuals against whom state action is taken are innocent, and the acceptance of personal restrictions and impositions that were once the hallmark of less civilised nations. Anything goes and everything is permissible - in the cause of war."

I might add that the same brutalisation is evident in the UK, where Blair's authoritarian new terror laws and associated push for ID demonstrate the same reckless indifference to human rights and the rule of law.

And the UN is being sucked in as well. Supported by the US when it is bullied into compromising its initial principles (to prevent war), scorned and ignored when it tries to uphold international law, the UN too is being dragged into the current moral maelstrom which has grown as military interventions for "humanitarian purposes" (how humanitarian bombing civilians might be escapes me) together with the "war on terror" have provided excuses for exercises in projecting American imperial power.