The situation in Uzbekistan utterly frustrates me. After 9/11 people asked, “Why do they hate us?” Uzbekistan is a perfect example of why. The Uzbeks are ruled by a despot who does not believe in Freedom (which is supposed to be the one value that we are trying to spread). Uzbekistan however has an airbase that is of vital importance as a staging ground for combat operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. makes the choice to support a government that massacred its own people. American dollars keep that regime in power, thus setting the stage for the possibility of blowback. It would be a mistake to think that this most recent massacre is just a one time thing that surprised our government. Over a year ago I blogged about this article (a MUST READ) reporting on a prison in Uzbekistan. Gulags are “in” right now.
Time Magazine’s Asia edition features Kishore Mahbubani’s new book, “Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World,” which offers other reasons to explain how we squandered our once glorious reputation, and what we can to do change our course (although this second part is reportedly not very substantive):
Some of the ground Mahbubani covers is familiar enough, but much is not. One of his arguments is that the loss of trust between the U.S. and the rest of the world started years before George W. Bush invaded Iraq “unilaterally.” Mahbubani is particularly astute about how the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 damaged America’s image overseas. He writes, for example, about how disillusioned Thais were when the U.S. did not bail them out after it had bailed out Mexico during a similar currency crisis in 1994. The reason the U.S. spurned Thailand may seem obvious to a lot of Americans—”you’re not on our border,” one U.S. Treasury Department official supposedly told the Thais. But for a country that had followed the global financial rules as dictated by Washington—opening itself up to large capital flows from abroad, only to get hammered as that same money flew back out in a matter of days—the truth hurt in ways that most Americans still don’t get. The perception was that the U.S. would prop up another nation if threatened with a massive wave of illegal immigration, but otherwise cared only that big American banks should be able to get their money out of Thailand ASAP. Is it any wonder, Mahbubani writes, that China—the one major country that didn’t play by Washington’s rules back then—now sees its influence gaining steadily, probably at America’s expense?
Hopefully the fact that Mahbubani takes plenty of shots at the Clinton administration will get even Republicans to read what he has to say.
Mahbubani is equally forceful about U.S. abuses at its war-on-terror prison camps. He writes that Guantánamo Bay—where inmates have been held indefinitely without formal charges—has had a “profound effect” on the liberal élites that are America’s “best friends abroad.” Many Americans don’t yet see the corrosive effects of this injustice, viewing Guantánamo as a necessary evil in a grim but vital war against the people who brought down the Twin Towers and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. But I’ll bet Christopher Hill gets it. Hill is the U.S. diplomat now charged with trying to get key negotiating partners in line to deal with North Korea and its nukes. One of the most troublesome U.S. allies is South Korea, which is in the midst of a kiss-and-make-up lovefest with its brothers to the North. A few weeks ago, Hill had a testy exchange with South Korean journalists over why Seoul’s blame-America-first media don’t write more about the heinous human-rights abuses in the socialist paradise next door. It’s a good question. One answer, no doubt, is the distrust of America fomented by Guantánamo.
Further reading:
Mahbubani’s essay in the Globalist: Dealing with the Muslim World- Five Western Mistakes
NPR’s story on the U.S. resisting a NATO probe of the massacre in Uzbekistan
I agree with your general point about potential blowback (there are lots of Uzbek Muslims, some no doubt extremist), but this specific example is lame:
Doesn’t that sound weak to you? ‘We don’t trust the U.S. because we’re not on the dole’?
Yes, its sounds lame to me as an American but I think that was his point, no? The Thai perspective may have been one of “fairness.” I think his point was to understand what their perspective is. How we choose to deal with that knowledge is something different I would think. I’d have to read the book to understand his reasoning better.
And what blame do India, Thailand, the Philippines – targets of Islamic terrorism all – bear for Uzbekistan and Guantanamo?
The section of the HRW report on Jaslyk prison:
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/uzbekistan0304/12.htm#_Toc65397975
Somewhat off topic, but again, somewhat on it,
Questions, Bitterness and Exile for Queens Girl in Terror Case – New York Times
tells the story of a 16 yr old girl who was deported to Bangladesh because she was suspected of being a suicide bomber. Must be especially hard for her because she grew up here in the US.
The FBI is working extra hard to piss people off and then “why do they hate us”? , “why don’t they integrate with the MAINSTREAM and just be normal?”
Stop your whining, little girl! Or at least tell it to the liberals at LGF, becuz’ I don’t give a damn. This is WAR! We are fighting a war on terra! And you have to do unpleasant things to win a war.
In WWII, we sided with Papa Joe. Then, during the cold war, we sided with Saddam and Bin Laden. If the oooozbecks get WMD, we’ll take them on just like we did Saddam!
We’re the US of A! We’re here to bring freedom and justice to people all over the world, the same way we always have. If you’re not with us …
I find invoking Guantanamo an odd justification for ignoring North Korea’s human rights situation, especially since this has been a trend in the South Korean media long before September 11. Even more strange is that the US is heavily criticized for Gitmo by Europeans while their own laws allow for detention of terrorist suspects without charges for years on end.
Because according to our current administration the war on terror (which to be honest will never end unless you can put chips into peoples head and stop them from thinking a certain way) supposedly allowed them do away with any form of human rights. At the same time they are saying America is the Paragon for human rights and justice. This hypocrisy is what gitmo now symbolizes and why it’s become such a big deal. If the US can do whatever it wants in the name of the ‘war on terror’ then why can’t anyone else do what they want?
Perhaps but my point still stands. The Europenas have long considered themselves superior to the US in terms of human rights but still allow terror suspect detention for several years without charges and without access to lawyers. It would seem there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.
Doh. I bought this book when it came out, dove into the opening, and promptly left it a friend’s house, from which it has yet to be claimed. I’ll go reclaim it and give you my two cents worth. (more like a dime, you know me.)