Obama’s ‘breathtaking’ hyprocrisy on Human Rights

A Breathtaking Hypocrisy – Why the US Has No Right to Lecture Latin America
by DANIEL WICKHAM – 30 July, 2013 – Counter Punch

Venezuela has announced that it is ending efforts to improve ties with the United States after the Obama administration’s nominee for the role of ambassador to the United Nations labelled the country “repressive.” Samantha Power, who is widely known for her strong stance on human rights, vowed to contest “the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela.”

For obvious reasons, Power is selective in who she choses to criticise. The likes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom have presided over major crackdowns on dissent in recent years, warrant no mention, which is not surprising given the US government’s staunch support for the regimes in question. Regarding Saudi Arabia, Washington’s attitude towards democracy is best expressed by William M. Daley, Obama’s chief of staff during the Arab uprisings, who said that “the possibility of anything (like the revolution in Egypt) happening in Saudi Arabia was one that couldn’t become a reality.” Daley explained that “for the global economy, this couldn’t happen”, referring of course to the importance of Saudi oil, which was described by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2003 as the primary reason for US support for the monarchy. An unsurprising claim, in light of the US State Department’s description in 1945 of the Gulf’s oil reserves as “a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

Returning to Latin America, the hypocrisy is again breathtaking. Condemning Venezuela as “repressive”, Power neglects to mention that the “most dramatic setback”, according to Americas Watch, for human rights in Venezuela came in 2002 when a coup d’etat, allegedly supported tacitly by the United States, removed Chavez from office and “dissolved the country’s democratic institutions.” It is also worth noting that the US supported enthusiastically the Caldera and Perez administrations which preceded Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, both of which were vastly more repressive than the current ‘revolutionary’ government.

Also strikingly absent from Power’s remarks was any mention of Colombia, the United States’ closest ally in the region, which according to Americas Watch, “presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere.” This year’s annual report claims that “over the past decade, the Colombian army committed an alarming number of extrajudicial killings of civilians”, carried out in “a systematic fashion”, during which time the army was the highest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. Most of the killings occurred under the presidency of Alvaro Uribe, whom President Bush described in 2006 as “a personal friend” and “a strong believer in democracy and human rights.” Under Obama, Colombia has continued to receive more military aid than any other country in the hemisphere, with Mexico, whose well-documented record of “extrajudicial killings, disappearances” and “widespread torture” is not much better, coming second. …more