Watching the Watchers: America and Human Rights

It Has Come to This

How many Americans, even, or, perhaps, especially the most ardent supporters of Mister Bush and Vice-President Cheney's comprehensive torture program could have ever dreamed that the Chinese and American governments would deservedly share the same lowly reputation on the issue of human rights? The answer, of course, is nobody would have ever dreamed such a circumstance could ever be possible. Yet, it is a reality.

One wonders though, can the Americans who support the administration's torture policy the most see that it is no better than torture being committed by the Chinese government? Somehow, it seems they can't make the connection.

Nicholas D. Kristof's latest column touches on America's recent freefall into the ranks of the world's worst human rights abusers and its ramifications:

I’d meant to focus this column on a Chinese woman whose battle for justice has led the police to arrest her more than 30 times, lock her in an insane asylum, humiliate her sexually, shock her with cattle prods, beat her until she is crippled and, worst of all, take away her young daughter.

The case of Li Guirong, a graying 50-year-old who now hobbles on crutches, reflects China at its worst — government by thuggery. But each time I start this column, I feel that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have pulled the rug out from under me. Do I really have the right to complain about torture or extra-legal detentions in China when we Americans do the same in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba?

More importantly, do Americans, especially those most supportive of the Bush administration's torture policies, understand that on the issue of human rights the United States no longer possesses the moral authority with which to address the abuses committed by others?

Kristof helps make the connection between America's newfound affair with torture and its moral impact:

Our extrajudicial detentions and mistreatment of prisoners are wrong in and of themselves. But they also undercut our own ability to speak against oppression and torture around the world.

The question now, of course, is whether or not anybody is paying attention and if so, do they care?

Here We Go Again

Paul Krugman takes on the media's absurd coverage of American politics. Regarding the latest Republican debate he writes:

Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?

Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.

Ouch! Some in the media might interpret that analysis as being harsh, but Krugman has a point. The media has turned everything, even our democracy, into a Paris Hilton tabloid moment. To prove his point Krugman highlights an earlier media malfunction:

You may not remember the presidential debate of Oct. 3, 2000, or how it was covered, but you should. It was one of the worst moments in an election marked by news media failure as serious, in its way, as the later failure to question Bush administration claims about Iraq.

Throughout that debate, George W. Bush made blatantly misleading statements, including some outright lies — for example, when he declared of his tax cut that “the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.” That should have told us, right then and there, that he was not a man to be trusted.

But few news reports pointed out the lie. Instead, many news analysts chose to critique the candidates’ acting skills. Al Gore was declared the loser because he sighed and rolled his eyes — failing to conceal his justified disgust at Mr. Bush’s dishonesty. And that’s how Mr. Bush got within chad-and-butterfly range of the presidency.

Krugman then returns to the recent Republican debate and Mitt Romney's misleading Iraq comments:

Now fast forward to last Tuesday. Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.”

Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? When those inspectors failed to find nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush ordered them out so that he could invade. Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.

It is this all-too-frequent nonsensical media reporting that allowed the American people to be led into Iraq in the first place and Krugman is onto something. He has figured out that the public is slowly coming to grips with how the game is played - - the media, however, remains clueless.