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An Inconvenient Empire

“Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests … You’re on your own.”

That’s Senator John McCain’s New York Times op-​ed mockery of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who recently told State Department employees that conditioning our foreign policy “on someone adopting our values … creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”

In his op-​ed, entitled “Why We Must Support Human Rights,” McCain recounted the hope it gave him to know America would not abandon him as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. But, of course, Tillerson wasn’t suggesting the U.S. abandon POWs. 

McCain highlighted dissidents throughout the world, urging the U.S. to speak out for them, to provide “hope … a powerful defense against oppression.” 

No fan of President Trump*, the senator is playing up the praise Trump has awkwardly offered despots, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Chinese leaders behind the Tiananmen Square massacre and recently North Korea’s Kim Jong-​un. Still, recent successes in freeing Americans and others from the grasp of tyrants in Egypt, Iran and China suggest some degree of caring by Tillerson, Trump and Co.

The inconvenient truth? American foreign policy has long pursued certain political and economic interests at the expense of extolling human rights. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Intercept: “The list of U.S.-supported tyrants is too long to count.…” 

Hypocrisy alone won’t change that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Very early in the presidential campaign, Trump needled the senator and reacted to McCain being called a war hero, by echoing a four-​lettered Chris Rock routine: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, okay. I hate to tell you.” 

In 1967, McCain was shot down over Hanoi, North Vietnam, on his 23rd bombing mission of the war. He broke both arms and one leg and nearly drowned after parachuting into a lake. Denied medical treatment by the North Vietnamese, McCain spent the next five and a half years as a POW, some of it at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, where he was tortured.


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term limits

Universal Bull

“We have term limits, they’re called elections.”

So goes one argument, famously paraphrased by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for an African Union summit: “It is a democracy. If people want a leader to continue, let him continue.”

“All over the world,” Owen Bennett-​Jones writes at BBC​.com, “leaders…are reluctant to give up power.” He points to a number of cases, mainly in nations struggling for democratic stability:

  • “The most striking current example,” according to Bennett-​Jones, “is Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza who, amidst violent opposition, is campaigning for a third term in office despite the constitution saying he can only have two.” The president’s spokesman acknowledged, “ Nkurunziza indeed believes he is president by divine will.”
  • In Burkina Faso, thousands clogged the streets after the 27-​year presidential incumbent, Blaise Compaore, schemed to evade a constitutional term limit on his office. But facing unrelenting pressure, Compaore soon stepped down.
  • Speaking about his campaign to have the parliament eliminate term limits so he can run for re-​election, Ecuador’s socialist President Rafael Correa told reporters, “The easiest thing would be for me to retire in 2017 as one of the best presidents in our history, as the people refer to me.” Correa’s decision to reluctantly remain in power has sparked protests across the country.

It is easy to recognize the sad abuse of power by these “third world” strongmen. Yet, we are continually fighting politicians in “first world” America.

When will politicians ever learn?

When the people are organized enough to assert power over those politicians … in Ecuador … Burundi … and the good ol’ US of A.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Term Limits