If you ask Melvin Goodman, the U.S. remains unsure of its role in
the post-Cold War world.
This week's Issue of the Week: Be Careful What You Predict
Pope John Paul II rose to the balcony of St. Peters last week to
celebrate World Peace Day. "I wanted to remember that the secret
to true peace lies in the respect for human rights," he reminded
the assembled multitudes. "The recognition of the innate dignity
of all the members of the human family ... is the foundation of
liberty, justice and peace in the world."
Alas, as we enter the final year of the 20th century, it would
appear that the greatest levels of human achievement are not in
science, medicine, the arts or industry, but in political hypocrisy.
Not to pick on the Pope per se, but in his World Peace Day speech, he
did find a moment to ask, "How can one forget the death camps,
the sons of Israel who were cruelly exterminated and the martyrs?"
Yet he could hardly find a moment to examine the Catholic Church's
own morally deficient record when called upon to take a stand on that
cruel extermination.
Who among us shall cast the first stone? During the past two
decades, we in the West have stood by as genocide no less cruel has been
perpetrated on the peoples of Cambodia, Rwanda and to a lesser extent,
the nations of the former Yugoslavia. In each case, we had what we
considered to be sound strategic reasons for allowing the slaughter to
continue, but not once did we stop thinking of ourselves as the kinds of
people who would not abide genocide.
No leader of any great power has entirely clean hands, but as the
world's only remaining superpower, the United States also is the
world's greatest hypocrite. While we reserve the right to lecture
other nations, we have been slow to abide by important international
and regional human-rights treaties. The United States is one of only
two countries that has failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the
Rights of the Child. (The other is Somalia.)
Even when the United States has ratified human-rights treaties it
often has done so only halfheartedly, with major reservations. For
example, it has reserved the right to use the death penalty against
juveniles, expressly forbidden by the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR). Moreover, we dominate the global market
for arms and security equipment exports, supplying arms, security
equipment and training to governments and armed groups that commit
torture, political killings and other human-rights abuses in countries
around the world.
We also profess a dedication to ridding the world of poverty and
disease but, in fact, do more to spread it than ameliorate it. In Iraq
the United States above all nations insists on maintaining sanctions.
A recent U.N. Report said that "40,000 more children and 50,000
more adults now die each year in Iraqi hospitals than died before the
sanctions were imposed." Rates of polio, diphtheria,
tuberculosis, malaria and viral hepatitis also have increased sharply.
The recently resigned head of the U.N. humanitarian effort is Iraq,
Denis Halliday, explains that sanctions "are starving to death
6,000 Iraqi infants every month, ignoring the human rights of ordinary
Iraqis and turning a whole generation against the West." Yes,
Saddam Hussein is a monster, and yes, his arsenal is quite worrisome
to everyone in the region. But what good is starving the Iraqi people
to prove it?
The sanctions have been in effect for nine years, and Hussein looks
as prosperous as ever. His weapons are just as deadly. But many
millions of innocent people are dead, and they are not his victims but
ours.
Some telling statistics
Much the same can be said of our policy toward that pathetic Cold
War relic, Fidel Castro's Cuba. Since it stopped receiving more than
$4 billion a year in Soviet aid, Cuba has become an unabashed basket
case.
With a highly educated population, doctors make less than $30 a month
and must moonlight as cab drivers for tourists to make ends meet. Some
educated women with professional skills choose prostitution at resort
hotels as a way out of poverty. The average monthly salary is 207 pesos,
or about $10.
Again, by what moral calculation can the United States justify
worsening the plight of these people simply because we do not approve
of their leader?
Conservative politicians speak of poverty, disease and their causes
as conditions of life rather than problems to be addressed, but this
is itself a political choice. Consider the following statistics,
released last week in the annual U.N. Development Report:
Of the world's 6.8 billion people, 4.4
billion live in developing countries, the rest in rich industrial or
transition countries. The three richest people in the world own assets
that exceed the combined gross domestic products of the world's
poorest 48 countries. Among the 4.4 billion people who live in
developing countries, three-fifths have no access to basic sanitation,
almost one-third are without safe drinking water, one-quarter lack
adequate housing, one-fifth live beyond reach of modern health
services, one-fifth of the children do not get as far as grade five in
school and one-fifth are undernourished.
The amount of money necessary to provide basic education for
children worldwide is less than Americans spend on cosmetics. The cost
of installing water and sanitation for everyone would be less than is
spent on ice cream. Reproductive health services for all women would
cost approximately what Americans and Europeans together spend on
perfume. And basic health care and nutrition for the entire world
would cost less than Americans and Europeans spend on pet food.
The question of the year
Certainly, the problems above are more complicated than the numbers
make them seem. Curing poverty and disease is more than a matter of
money, no doubt. It is also a matter of culture, delivery systems and
adaptation of traditional ways of living to the modern world.
But it is also very much a matter of money. And money spent is, to a
considerable degree, a matter of politics.
During the next year, we will no doubt continue to obsess about
Monica Lewinsky, the "politics of personal destruction,"
campaign-finance reform and 24-hour tabloid television. It would be
nice, however, if somewhere in our busy lives we could find the time
to discuss the vast gulf between the people we profess to be and the
people we are -- and what, if anything, as the millennium approaches,
we might like to do about it.
COMMENTS ON THE ABOVE OPINION ARTICLE
1/7/99 chris
I've seen most of the content in this article on other web sites.
The paragraph on Somalia was lifted verbatim. I hope you people didn't
pay for this. Beyond that money has nothing to do with solving these
problems. The governments of the countries in question (and Cuba in
particular) would be more likely to spend the money on weapons and
palaces than problems. Case in point the money wasted on Russia. And
since when did human rights have anything to do with plumbing? If Mr
Alterman is going to plagiarize at least get him to stick to one
subject.
1/7/99 Mopmap
The problem, Eric, is not our hypocrisy but rather the narrow,
tunnel vision, like those of some Jews, who want to make genocide as
something that happened only to them rather than recognizing just who
and how many were victimized during and since WWII. Families and
friends were devasted by what happened, and won't someone point out
that there were five million more reasons that had nothing to do with
Judiasm, per se, that resulted in 11 million people dying in those
camps. Or what about the 20 million that died in Stalin's camps. The
issue is very simple. It is not a matter of this person's death was
any more significant than another's but that ANY PERSON died. Those
who question anyone's right to exist, not because of the harm they
have done, but simply because "those people are responsible"
for whatever evil you want to point out, even their defending
themselves, provide the animus for the death and destruction that
continues to polarize and fragment peoples in the post-Cold War world.
1/7/99 Will
I agree with Mr. Alterman about the futility of laying crushing
sanctions on an entire populace in an effort to show disapproval of an
unsavory leader. We avoided this problem in Panama by removing the
offending cancer ourselves. However, I am revolted by the usual
liberal whine about how good Americans have it while the rest of the
world starves. This guilt trip is supposed to make me want to share
the wealth of the USA with the poorer countries, raising their
standards of living while lowering ours through higher taxes and
wealth redistribution. This kind of global socialism does not entice
me, even if it does mean Mr. Alterman will be able to sleep with a
clear conscience.
1/7/99 Don Coyote
I think the Pope has said that the greatest human right is the
right to life, and I would note that we allow over a million abortions
in the U.S. every year. Perhaps when people talk of human rights
violations they should include abortion on the list. Interesting that
Mr. Alterman doesn't mention it.
1/7/99 Gordon Wallace
As for the Catholic Church in WW2 - it was openly on the side of
the fascists starting in Spain, Italy, France and Portugal and
everywhere else too. As in present-day US, the european right wing
before WW2 was pretty religious. Before the SS took over running the
german concentration camps, at least one was run by a Lutheran Deacons
association. In part this was due to the fact that the communists and
far left openly wanted to destroy chrisitanity and especially the
Catholic Church - witness what the left did in the Spanish Civil War.
But you're not going to see a history of the Church's association with
the European right any time soon. In fact, it's pretty impolite of you
even to bring it up, Eric.
1/7/99 DZ dzink@rocketmail.com
OK, regardless of political persuasion, we can probably agree that
Eric's writing often gets a little muddled, and he doesn't always
think out his positions completely. That said, and having read all of
the posts, let's then agree to retire some absurd American platitudes.
1) The US claims to promote freedom and democracy around the world. It
never has, it doesn't and it won't tomorrow. 2) The US claims to
promote human rights around the world. It never has, it doesn't and it
won't tomorrow. 3) The US claims to promote economic development and
improvement in living standards around the world. It never has, it
doesn't and it won't tomorrow. So, if we can eliminate the above
rhetorical BS, then go ahead and rip up Eric's article. We'll all live
in our Pat Buchananite world and let the rest rot. I doubt that that's
what most of you, or I for that matter, believe, but it is the clear
implication of the early responses. Oh, and yes, as always, I'm
wearing my bullseye t-shirt.
1/7/99 Kevin C
Mr Altermann's article is right in pointing out the hypocrisy
between US media lip service and US actions abroad. But I think the
article overlooks the fact that US inaction is calculated, not a
matter of ignorance. On either side of the political spectrum, human
rights are contigent to political expediency, not altruism. The US
wouldn't think about wasting billions in defense dollars in Rwanda or
Cambodia: there's no oil! Resources first, morals second. Why would
the US do a crazy thing like help to improve the quality of life in
Latin America? The whole point is to preserve a pool of cheap,
desperate labor for US-based corporations. Contrary to the spin of
hard-core, libertarian, laissez-faire crusaders like Pete DuPont,
prosperity is only possible in the midst of poverty. Who is
disingenuous enough to deny that the New Economy (New Scheme) would
collapse if the average downsized American worker didn't have access
to cut-throat cheap clothes and products from Latin America and Asia?
Wealth depends on poverty and misery.
1/7/99 Steve D.
Some of the posts to this article represent the standards of
ignorance to which people controlled by greed (Republicans, mostly)
aspire to. These type of people like to attack others who feel empathy
for the poor and impoverished throughout the world in order to protect
their version of the status quo (their bank accounts). Generally,
Americans are considered the greediest people on the planet (that's
where I agree with William Bennett); 6% of the world's population
consuming 48% of the world's natural resources. If you can't
understand how this fact alone impedes on the human rights of others,
then it's another example of how you've created a mental glass ceiling
you're unable to penetrate because of the greed factor in your mind.
We don't need to lower our standard of living in order to help poorer
countries, that's just propaganda. (KC, There will always be wars over
energy until the energy source is renewable. Petroleum corporations
and their supporters don't want that, of course. It is the politics of
greed. For every person who is rich, there are ten who are poor in
order to support him.)
1/7/99 Gander
On the general subject of disparity of wealth--Articles of this
type always make disparity of wealth the whole problem. We must
deplore the fact that Bill Gates's net worth equals the GDP of some
number of third-world nations, etc. Can no one see that disparity, in
itself, means next to nothing? A community of people who each have a
dollar apiece has less wealth disparity than one where everyone has
ten dollars except the solitary fellow with twenty, but everyone in
the second group is better off than anyone in the first. The *size* of
a disparity is not the point. /// I remember arguing with a friend who
thought it was obscene that people bought $700.00 dresses when there
was starvation in Africa. I tried to point out that even a $10.00
shirt represented a month's or even a year's wages to many Africans.
If it is obscene for us to spend amounts of money on clothes that look
outrageous next to African per-capita incomes, than we had better not
wear clothes, period. (Mr. Alterman, in his photo, does appear to be
clothed, but I should be the last to accuse him of hypocrisy.) /// My
life will not become appreciably worse if Bill Gates has a hundred
dollars tomorrow for every dollar he has today. The problems with our
wealth distribution are, first, that some people have not the minimum
they need to support themselves in the dignity due them as human
beings; and second, that the very wealthy can buy influence that they
can neither beg, borrow, nor steal.
