US & Somalia Tied for Last Place

To hear some, the USA is the champion of the down-trodden, and the oppressed, the Johnny Appleseed of Democracy. The truth precludes such prideful bumptiousness. In fact, the US is one of the last two states out of 192 to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. (The other is Somalia.)

The United States has, however, signed two optional protocols on trafficking in children and on children in armed conflict. Very noble of us.

Furthermore, having signed the optional protocols of the Convention, the US has expressed its intention to eventually adopt it completely. Eventually.

What’s stopping the Bushites or the Congress from ratifying this convention? This is a no-brainer. Or should be, even for the half-wits running this farcical fiasco.

According to the Unicef site the Convention is summarized as follows:

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.”

“The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have:

1. the right to survival;

2. to develop to the fullest;

3. to protection from harmful influences,

4. abuse and exploitation;

5. the right to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

The four core principles of the Convention are:

1. non-discrimination;

2. devotion to the best interests of the child;

3. the right to life, survival and development;

4. and respect for the views of the child.

Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects children's rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil and social services.”

“By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children's rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.”

This seems straightforward, proper, just and right. It is the expression of an ideal, one would think, of which all people, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Animist or Atheist would approve.

Obviously.

190 out 192 nations have ratified it.

What’s stopping the US from ratifying this convention?

Could be that the thousands of youths who have been jailed in US prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo might pose a tough issue to spin-doctor into anything close to resembling sentiments and opinions acceptable to anyone outside the Oval Office or Fox News.

The ‘Real World’, in other words.

Since the March 2003 invasion, the United States has detained 2,400 children under the age of 18 in Iraq, including some as young as 10. Human Rights Watch said as of May 12, U.S. military authorities were holding 513 Iraqi children as "imperative threats to security".

The upside is that youths charged under Iraqi law receive access to legal counsel.

The downside? Read on…

"Those who are not referred to the Iraqi criminal courts do not have legal counsel because they are not charged with a crime," said Major Matthew Morgan, a spokesman for U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.

Not charged with a crime but imprisoned nevertheless.

Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary for Detainee Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense, told reporters in Geneva "There is nothing in the optional protocol that prevents the detention of individuals under the age of 18, so the United States is in full compliance with its treaty obligations."

So, imprisoning children without charging them with a crime, without the basic legal rights of Habeas Corpus, due process or legal representation is acceptable to the Neo-Con-men in Washington. This is the level to which the United States has sunk under the stewardship of the Bush Administrations.

Tied with Somalia for last place.

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL21923136

http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/_files/C8CDC017719763AE4393C90EEC4E6602.pdf

http://www.unicef.org/crc/

Stop the War with Iran

Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.

Bush and his Boys are not about to let this one go. We won’t be any safer from terrorism – quite the opposite – but their compadres, the CEOs at Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Bechtel , Exxon-Mobile, etc, ad nauseam would be thrilled to death if the war widens to include Iran along with Afghanistan and Iraq.

CounterPunch.org is reporting President Bush has signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime. Bush’s secret directive covers actions from Lebanon to Afghanistan. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reports the directive is “unprecedented in its scope” and permits the assassination of targeted officials. http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html

Of course, actions like this cost money. Not to worry. An outlay of $300 million has been approved with bipartisan support. Way to stand on your hind legs, Dems! So much for will of the people, you bunch of self-serving back-stabbing slackers.

Now, Hill the Pill is declaring she’ll unleash Armageddon on Iran if they attack Israel. Break out the testosterone suppositories! She’s gonna grow her some ‘nads!

'What’s wrong with saying that?', she asks in her campaign delirium.

“Why would I have any regrets? I’m asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons.”

And stuff like that there…

Lord, Sister Hill, why are you buying into Cheney’s paranoid propaganda? Are you trying to get some wack-o swing votes from McCain supporters who think he’s ‘soft’ on terror? McCain has that area of Psycho-town nailed down with his 100 years in Iraq vision. Meanwhile, he’s getting spa treatments and taking meetings with Carl Rove clones while you and Obama dance the dance from ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’. Fire your advisors and stop shooting yourself and your party in the foot.

Let's all take a reality break!

As mentioned here a fortnight ago, Iran is in no position at all to attack Israel. They have no nuclear capability according to the current NIE report while Israel has hundreds of active nukes. That would hardly be stepping into a fair fight let alone provoking one. The old saw about bringing a knife to a gun-fight springs to mind.

Oh, and has anybody in the Clinton campaign or anyone else covering the ‘situation’ with Iran looked at a friggin’ map? Just how is Iran planning to attack Israel? (Sure, they’ve blustered about it. Look at all the trash talking coming from Washington and Jerusalem.) Let’s get practical: just how would the Iranians go about attacking Israel? March, unseen, 1200 kilometers across Iraq and Jordan to wage war against the second-best equipped army in the world?

That ain’t gonna happen.

Or would Tehran, just go ahead and toss all caution and sense of self-preservation aside and simply attack Israel with air-strikes – just to start a pissing contest? Right. No matter what the state of Iran’s air force, the US and Israel have them trumped, hands down. Especially when the Israelis have the capability to launch nuclear devices from their specially equipped, American supplied fighters.

Not a single Iranian plane would even be allowed to approach Iraq air-space unchallenged. How in hell would Iranian planes make it across Iraq to Israel? Even the attempt, even the feint of an attempt at such an insane self-destructive act of aggression would mean a shit-storm descending on Tehran.

And does anybody out there really think that given the chance, the Israeli leadership would think twice about letting a couple of tactical nukes find a worthy target or two for the sake of future deterrence? Not that the presence of 300 more nukes just like those aren’t deterrent enough.

I, for one, am inclined to think that Iran would rather err on the side of caution than seek the destruction of its republic and the death of a substantial number of its people.

Call me crazy.

Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.

The Road to Hell

Let’s begin with a parable; the parable of ‘the boy, the bird and the stone’.

A small child throws a stone and kills a songbird. The child might not have intended to kill the bird; perhaps he meant only to chase it away or practice his throwing arm. Whatever the intent, whatever the boy’s motive, the bird remains dead. The Audubon Society would care nothing about the child’s motives. And neither would the bird.

The Brookings institution is a well-known Washington think-tank upon which many administrations of the US government have depended for non-partisan research for almost a century. Kenneth M. Pollack is the Director of Research at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is an expert on national security, military affairs and the Persian Gulf, was Director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council and spent seven years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst.

In an article posted on the Brookings website on March 16, 2008, Mr Pollack had this to say:
“If we leave behind a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein and the Middle East more threatened by the chaos spilling over from Iraq than they ever were by the dictator’s arms, then no one will care how well-intentioned our motives.”

How well-intentioned our motives? Motives?

Mr Pollack, with all due respect, please re-read your statement. Note the words “…a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein…” and the part where you say “and the Middle East more threatened by the chaos spilling over from Iraq than they ever were by the dictator’s arms…”.

If that is a proper assessment of the situation in Iraq – and I think that it is, with little room for disagreement – what does it matter what our motives were?

A recent World Health Organisation report estimated that 151,000 civilian Iraqi men, women and children were killed between March 20, 2003 and June 2006. The estimated number of civilian Iraqis killed by violence in 2007 is in the neighborhood of 22,000 to 24,000 according to Iraq Body Count, a British firm dedicated to making this grim tally. Do you expect the surviving family members of the 175,000 Iraqis killed as a result of American foreign policy to care a whit about the motives of the US?

Neither the Brookings Institution, the Pentagon nor even the Red Cross/Red Crescent, to my knowledge, have offered an estimate of the number of Iraqi men, women and children wounded since the onset of the invasion. (Here’s quite the party killing parlor game: Pick a number. Twice those killed? Three times the number killed? Four times? A factor of 10?) What do the wounded and suffering care if our intentions were well-meant?

The ICRC states “five years after the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world. Because of the conflict, millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care. The current crisis is exacerbated by the lasting effects of previous armed conflicts and years of economic sanctions.” The once developing nation of Iraq has been reduced to the dire, retched state of one of the poorest third world countries. Will the children dying of thirst and dysentery in the shell of a bombed out neighborhood clinic pause to weigh the pros and cons of our intentions?

Please, Mr Pollack, tell me what had the Bush administration intended when they rail-roaded the US Congress and the American people into this illegal war? The term ‘well-intentioned motive’ does not spring to my mind. ‘War profiteering’ does and that’s a matter that should be discussed along with war crimes and war reparations, but let’s leave that for another time.

To his credit, Mr Pollack has belatedly seen the light. Or at least, he’s caught a glimpse, for he goes on with this carefully worded under-statement, “…what I most wish I had understood before the invasion was the reckless arrogance of the Bush administration.” He then calls the Bush administration’s handling of the war “clumsy, careless and rash”. Clearly, Mr Pollack now thinks, like the majority of Americans, that waging war in Iraq was a blunder.

Better late than never?

Now, presumably, he and his fellow Saban Center intellectuals will spend months or years ciphering the tactics, strategies and operations to deduce where the fatal errors lay that lead to yet another less-than-successful, though valiant American crusade to bring the gift of freedom and democracy to an oppressed people.

Better luck next time?

The greater issue Mr Pollack and most of his profession seem blissfully oblivious to, however, is precisely the one which should be triggering red flag alerts and setting off klaxons and sirens of warning. Most of the rest of the world is aware of it. Much of the world resents it. Some of the world hates us for it. Some hate it enough to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up in crowded markets to express their resentment and hatred for it. The issue referred to is not ‘our love of freedom’. It is not ‘our noble vision of a democratic world’. It is not our magnanimity, our wealth, our life-style, our sports heroes, our films or our music. The issue that gets under the skin of the rest of the world is the self-deluded, self-righteous, self-serving credo that the government of the US, while capable of the most egregious acts, is nevertheless motivated by only the most high-minded of intentions and ipso facto should be excused for its various transgressions.

(‘Transagressions’ is the euphemism that would be preferred in polite company. To come closer to the truth as understood by much of the rest of the world, transgressions should be read as ‘crimes against humanity’. Anyone with a shred of moral integrity need only recall Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and Panama for past examples of such ‘transgressions’. )

It is said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That might be, but the larger paving stones on the road to hell are undoubtedly greed, murder, torture, corruption and hubris.

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0316_iraq_pollack.aspx

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf

http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/iraq-report-170308