freecounterpoint: Greeting Us with Flowers

Friday, March 23, 2007

Greeting Us with Flowers

5 comments:

Tecumseh said...: I cannot but wonder: if the Media, the French, and the vast, left-wing conspiracy had (mirabile dictu!) rooted for freedom and democracy in Iraq, instead of for the head-hackers, would Iraq be better off by now? Surely that's the case, but I'll bet you a bottle of Schlitz against a magnum of Dom perignon that there is no pinko-lefty out there that has even an ounce of doubt that what they did (root for the devil, basically) is oh-so-superior and moral. For shame.; 3/23/2007 2:36 AM
Mr roT said...: Don't forget the realists llike Scowcroft that were toasting the butchers of Tiananmen. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.; 3/23/2007 6:24 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...: This was a wonderful article. I wondered what the Hitch had been up to lately. I forwarded it to a bunch of friends. A neighbor family fled Iraq, politically exiled when Saddam was still in power. I believe they are Kurdish, from the northern region. The father was on Saddam's hit list. They got out.; 3/23/2007 10:43 AM
Mr roT said...: Symbolically, the Bush administration's most important action toward China in 1989 was its decision to send a high-level delegation, including National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, to China on December 9. Anticipating the outrage that greeted the news, the administration made its decision in absolute secrecy. Congress was not consulted and, it appears, even the State Department's Asia Bureau was unaware of the plan. The enduring symbol of the Bush administration's human rights policy toward China will be the televised image of General Scowcroft, drink in hand, toasting the Chinese leadership with these words: "We extend our hand in friendship and hope you will do the same." He then went on to say, in a callous slap at the Chinese now in prison for their advocacy of peaceful change: "In both our societies there are voices of those who seek to redirect or frustrate our cooperation. We both must take bold measures to overcome these negative forces." These actions were clearly meant to placate Beijing and to apologize for the rupture in ties imposed by Washington after Tiananmen Square, despite the lack of Chinese action in curbing human rights abuses. Link.

How come HRW doesn't see that Iraq is different?; 3/23/2007 10:48 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Yes, JJ, it's very strange. It'd be akin to a 19th-century U.S. Government Official saying all Native Americans are the same, and think the same, and should be dealt with the same. HRW is in danger of similarly repeating the past.; 3/26/2007 9:20 PM

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