I've often said that the 'war on terror' is simply the Cold War with different devils. The rhetoric, the tactics and the mistakes are effectively the same. I let someone else reference the military-industrial complex.
During the Cold War, the US government often blindly backed odious regimes simply because they were anti-communist. Or at least claimed to be. The actual communist menace in the country didn't need to be significant. We also backed sickening death squads in places El Salvador, a genocidal regime in Guatemala and state terrorism in too many other Latin American countries. Sure, tens (hundreds) of thousands of people were killed, assassinated or 'disappeared,' but at least we 'saved' Latin America from communism. Can anyone definitively say that state terror in East Germany was really significantly worse than state terror under Pinochet? As repressive as almost all communist regimes were, I would rather have lived in Cuba or Hungary in the 80s than in El Salvador or Guatemala.
Blind US support for ogres backfired when populations revolted and often helped usher in regimes who were anti-American. US-backed despots like Somoza, Batista and the Shah were overthrown in popular uprisings and replaced by the anti-American regimes of the Sandinistas, Fidel Castro and the Ayatollah Khomeni. Somalia's Siad Barre was originally in the Marxist camp but switched sides when the Soviets backed his archrival Mengitsu in neighboring Ethiopia. US government support for the 'converted' anti-communist blinded them to Barre's wild unpopularity at home; Washington was shocked when his regime collapsed. The country has been in chaos ever since. The US intervened in the early 90s. And we're meddling there again now.
In some cases, the friends of yesterday become the enemy's of today. The US backed the theocratic Mujahadeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But when the Mujahadeen became the Taliban and the Taliban supported al-Qaeda, suddenly we didn't like them so much anymore. We went from funding them to invading to get rid of them. This was hardly unprecedented, as Saddam and Noriega could attest to.
I've often argued that the advocacy of human rights was in our national interest. Not human rights as a selective bludgeon to serve other ends. But human rights as a central tenet of foreign policy. This goes against the conventional wisdom in foreign policy circles, which deems an emphasis on human rights to be hopelessly naive. It's always astounded me that the so many of same people who demand ethics and morality as a central tenet of their personal conduct reject it out of hand as a key factor in the conduct of foreign policy.
(It should go without saying that we must demand of ourselves respect for human rights if we are going to demand it of others. We can't demand Robert Mugabe close his internment camps created in a legal vacuum for 'national security' reasons if we refuse to close Guantanamo Bay.)
Human rights has never been a central tenet of US foreign policy ever since imperial America was founded in the 1890s. But given the instability and threats to security provoked by the value-free foreign policy, maybe human rights SHOULD be front and center. The other way hasn't worked.
The reason is simple. Belief in human rights is a core value. Whether a country's government is pro-American, pro-the US president of the day or pro-capitalist or whatever is a temporary interest. Italy's government went from being pro-Bush to anti-Bush in the snap of a finger. However, the core shared values between the two countries remains. For all the sniveling about France, our shared values with that country run far more deeply than with putative 'allies' in the 'war on terror' like Uzbekistan or Pakistan.
Yet, we're making the exact same mistakes we made during the Cold War. Any two-bit despot can call himself 'anti-terror' and he's likely to get virtually unconditional US backing. Just ask the nutjob in charge of the former 'rogue state' of Libya. He's still a nutjob. He's still against democracy. He still is one of the worst human rights abusers on a continent with many others. But since he renounced support for terrorism (against westerners mind you, not against his own citizens or even against West Africans), you'd think he was the next Gandhi.
The expediency of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' is an absolute guarantee for instability. The US government is reportedly backing warlords in Somalia who are fighting against alleged al-Qaeda sympathizers. These are probably the some of the same warlords US forces were fighting AGAINST in the early 90s. How much would you like to bet that they'll end up as our enemy again within the next few years?
The US continues to back despots who call themselves anti-terrorist without regard to their abysmal human rights and governance records. And the implications such nefariousness and incompetence are hardly inconsequential. Will Hosni Mubarak's Egypt descend into chaos (like Somalia), be taken over by force by an anti-American group (like Iran) or will the Islamists take power with democratic legitimacy (like Palestine)? The last one seems unlikely given Mubarak's contempt for accountability; the country has been in a state of emergency for 25 years, possibly a world record.
But what's tragic is that the idea of Mubarak ceding power peaceful to moderate democrats isn't even considered a plausible option. During the Cold War, the US government almost never considered backing peaceful, democratic opposition as an alternative to anti-communist autocracies. The dictatorships blackmailed the US into silence by claiming (often dubiously) that less repression would lead to a communist takeover. The results, as chronicled above, had consequences that we're still living today. We're making the same mistakes in the 'war on terror.'
Why aren't we supporting the peaceful, democratic opposition to Mubarak? Better yet, we've given the Egyptian dictatorship $60 billion of taxpayer money since 1979. Why aren't there some strings attached, like respect for human rights, judicial independence and the rule of law? If Mubarak's regime still needs a state of emergency to maintain 'security' after 25 years, then surely he's been a miserable failure.
Popular uprisings in places like Lebanon, the Ukraine and Georgia demonstrate that autocracies can cede power without massive bloodshed, provided the civil society groups have support. The Iron Curtain fell not because NATO invaded Eastern Europe or because Ronald Reagan wished upon a star but because it was undermined from within. Undermined by courageous Eastern Europeans themselves with western support.
If the US wants to undermine al-Qaeda in Somalia, we should help nascent civil society groups get off the ground, not arm one group of petty criminal warlords against another.The US and Europe are doing the exact opposite in Palestine, undermining civil society by cutting off aid. Hamas' popularity flourished not simply because it sponsored terror attacks against Israel; it flourished because it provided medical care and other services abdicated by the corrupt Fatah regime. With the suspension of aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the void left by the government will only get bigger. Hamas, as a private organization, may well pick up the slack, quite possibly with money from Syria or Iran. Is that what western governments want?
Terrorist groups often fill a vacuum like this. If the US wants to undermine terrorist groups, we must help fill such voids before they do, not make the voids bigger.
We need to choose allies that share our core values, not merely the expediency of the day. If that means helping a private Palestinian medical charity instead of the PA itself, then so be it.
No more "friends today, invasion targets tomorrow" debacles. We need to recognize that allies will not agree with us on every issue but share our core goals. For all the right wing snivelling about the French, the US and France share a fear of western civilization being threatened by Islamic extremism; France is far more vulnerable to this threat than the US.
It's been said that the US has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. We need to define what those interests are. Putting human rights at the forefront of American foreign policy will help ensure long-term protection for our two most important national interests: security and stability.
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