Is There a Human Rights Double Standard?US Policy Toward Saudi Arabia,

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Whether people like it or not the U.S. is still looked upon as the leader in the world in promoting human rights.

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Dream on! LOL

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Right it's Australia.

[John Kilduff]

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Whether people like it or not the U.S. is still looked upon as the leader in the world in promoting human rights. That's an honorable position to be in, hope we don't squander it. It seems like the current administration ignores many of the human rights issues in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia but could be convinced otherwise.


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The U.S. does indeed have a double standard. The matter is also very complex and it goes deeper than that as well.

The U.S. has a double standard in dealing with countries it thinks it stands to gain much from by their cooperation. Some of the oil-rich countries in the Middle East are good examples of this. Realpolitik would seem to apply irresistible pressure in such a direction, at least to an extent.

Where it really gets deeper is in regards to what human rights mean around the world. "Human rights" just doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. In many Islamic countries, the only human rights that are thought to have any validity whatsoever are those rights which are permitted in the Shari'a. This is a fundamental sticking point and impasse. We can't argue (meaningfully) with them that freedom of religious expression is a fundamental human right if the Shari'a says it isn't and if they believe the Shari'a is God's will. Other examples abound.

Another area in which the scenario is complex involves democracy. Democracy in the Middle East has been shown to empower fundamental religious forces which wish to apply religious law and principles in governenance. So merely being "for democracy" or promoting democracy is not the same as being for what we think of as "human rights" or promoting human rights.

It would be nice to see the USA not having a double standard but is it even feasible realpolitically speaking? Idealists may say yes, but I am retain some serious skepticism. That doesn't mean I support a double standard but it does mean I am considering that maybe the USA should stop trying (unsuccessfully) to tie its ideals to its foreign policy.

The USA can't lead the world as much as it would like to think it can, either by example or more pro-actively speaking. Involvement in other countries' politics seems to invariably lead to inability to maintain a consistent position of support for our ideal standards (and those standards are also increasingly being eroded even within the USA itself). Active involvement in other country's politics seems to often be misguided or unwise (e.g. Vietnam War, Iraq War). Telling Shari'a supporters that they must stop believing in and supporting the Shari'a is probably an exercise in futility (the USA doesn't have the balls to actually say that, so it instead tells them that they must stop supporting specific examples of things the Shari'a supports such as disallowing freedom of religious expression).

Much of the world just doesn't believe in human rights and civil rights the way the USA does (or purports to believe).

Much of the world is more concerned with practical matters and has little time or patience for idealism (even if their ideals are aligned with ours, which often isn't the case). Rulers generally care about holding power not "doing what is right". And again their perception of what is right often isn't aligned with our perception.

I think a consistent foreign policy on human rights would, realpolitically speaking, be impossible to achieve. If the USA stopped supporting or being friends with every government with which we have significant human/civil rights disagreements, there wouldn't be many countries left to be friendly with.

As depressing as it sounds, I am gradually leaning more to the side of a more neutral foreign policy as regards such things. I'm coming more to think that something like the Swiss policy is wisest and most practical in the long run (perhaps not quite the extreme of remaining neutral in something as enormous and world-moving as WWII, but just short of that).

Democracy in the Middle East generally empowers the forces opposed to freedom anyway (Hamas' rise to political power via election, and the support the Shi'ite fundamentalists are receiving in Iraq are but two examples). Some things, sadly, just have no good answers and messing with them just tends to cause even more trouble.

The Neo-Cons are still laboring under the grand delusion that democracy in the Middle East will improve human rights there (when it actually tends to empower strict religious rule with precepts which are very much opposed to our conceptions of human rights and civil rights).

I'd still like to see the USA champion the causes of frredom and human rights. I just don't see any way to successfully tie it to foreign policy while remaining consistent. So maybe mere stated declarations of principle would be better, and leading by example of trying to keep our own country free. Actually, at the rate we are losing freedoms in the USA, that ought to be enough of a challenge to keep us busy for quite some time to come.

Thanks for reading.

[John Kilduff]

I think the more entangled the USA gets with foreign countries, the more the USA will realpolitically have to compromise ideals.

The words of our Founding Fathers seem at least as wise today as centuries ago:

John Quincy Adams:

"She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. "

[superleeds]

Yes. All countries have the same double standards. The US 's hyprocracy is the most obvious because its the most powerful country and arguably the most vocal with its 'what me? Do anything bad', atitude - which is purely for domestic consumption. People maybe naive and idealistic but the US government is, and has been for a long time, as cynical as the rest of the worlds.

[adios]

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Yes. All countries have the same double standards. The US 's hyprocracy is the most obvious because its the most powerful country and arguably the most vocal with its 'what me? Do anything bad', atitude - which is purely for domestic consumption. People maybe naive and idealistic but the US government is, and has been for a long time, as cynical as the rest of the worlds.

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I think the point about being consistent in the article was good. In light of the thread about Amadinejad thread I think it's worthwhile to note that the U.S. double standard is troublesome.

[Adebisi]

I was just want to say I think the entire idea of consitancy is bs.
Countries we don't like: try to make them look bad.
Countries we do like: ignore their shortcomings.

That's just the way the world works. We support countries that help us advance what we perceive to be our national interests. We villify those who don't. It's that simple.


Most countries have real [censored] "human rights" records. The only ones that are probably even close to ok are wealthy western liberal democracies. Drug smuggling in Thailand? Life in prison! (I'm sure those Thai prisons are a blast)
The Angolan police force must be fun to deal with. China, Pakistan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Colombia, Russia, Sudan..."human rights" violations are pretty common in all of them.

What we really need is to have people stop giving a f*ck about the political rights of people that live thousands of miles away, come from a totally different culture, and don't really care about us. If the government wants to start beheading every second-born child over in Tajikistan, it's really not going to affect my life in any way whatsoever.

[AzDesertRat]

I can't believe anyone is naive enough to believe that we tie anything into human rights. China runs over its people with tanks and that hasn't stopped us from having relations with China. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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Here's a link to speech that Bush gave today:

Bush urges U.N. to spread freedom

"The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help, and every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them," Bush said.

"Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship," the president said. "In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration" of the United Nations.

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"The nations in this chamber have our differences, yet there are some areas where we can all agree," Bush said. "When innocent people are trapped in a life of murder and fear, the declaration is not being upheld. When millions of children starve to death or perish from a mosquito bite, we're not doing our duty in the world. When whole societies are cut off from the prosperity of the global economy, we're all worse off."

"Changing these underlying conditions is what the declaration calls the work of larger freedom and it must be the work of every nation in this assembly," he said. "This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and diseases, illiteracy and ignorance and poverty and despair."

More stuff quoted in the article but you get the idea.