First,
I would like to thank you for your
thorough and thought-provoking analysis of my writings.
In order to complete the picture, you might want
to also include a text that I wrote in 2002, "Are
we all Americans now?" (published as a chapter
in "The Wrath of the Damned. An Anthology
from the Danish PEN", edited by Niels Barfoed
and Anders Jerichow). As illustrated by the conclusion
of this text, I have always been critical of the
US foreign policy's double standards:
"Also
damaging are the evident double standards and hypocrisy
of the US call for enforcement of UN resolutions
against Iraq, given consistent US unwillingness
to do anything to implement the stream of Security
Council resolutions directing Israel to withdraw
from occupied Palestinian territories, to dismantle
illegal settlements and to apply the Geneva Conventions
governing military occupation. (…) So, 'We,
the peoples of the world, we ask the Americans to
put an end to the double standard and to the terrible
injustice of which the Palestinian people are victims.'
Also 'we, the peoples of the world, we know that
sugar and oil do not have the same commercial value.
But if Cuba's regime is a dictatorship, so is Saudi
Arabia's! We ask therefore our 'sugar heart' American
fellows to put an end to forty years' of embargo
against Cuba'. Finally, 'We, the Peoples of the
world, we are all Americans now and forever. This
is why we wish so much that the Americans were different!'"
Moreover,
as I have demonstrated in a chapter entitled: 'Just
War against an "Outlaw" Region" in
A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for
War in Iraq, ed. by Thomas Cushman, 2005, exterior
interventions (not necessarily military ones) are
appropriate in order to establish democracy and
human rights in the Middle East.
We
must not forget the brutal exactions committed by
US Troops in some occasions. But let us also not
forget that the authors of these exactions are actually
punished in accordance to the US-law, just as US
lawyers are working hard criticizing the human rights
violations in the Guantanamo-base — violations
that must obviously be unanimously condemned, as
I have already done it myself at several occasions.
But the above-mentioned reactions to US Army exactions
show that important parts of the American judicial
system, and of the American population, do care
about human rights and do support these principles
actively. Thus, the exactions reflect errors by
individual soldiers, not inherent values and practices
of the system — as opposed to the human rights
violations carried out and cautioned by the Middle
Eastern dictatorship states.
But
it is noticeable that despite the hardship that
the Iraqi population is suffering, the democratization
process has been initiated, with participation rates
in elections which are actually much higher than
in any US elections. Also, the Kurds are generally
relieved to have been freed from Saddam Hussein's
oppressive regime.
In
conclusion, the picture of the Middle East, democratization
and exterior intervention is multi-faceted. It is
my hope that all these facets be considered when
discussing the subject — only then will we
be able to support the populations of the Middle
East.
