Hypocrisy in GovernmentIvan Eland | March 17, 2009
Recent statements by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, admitting that they were going to use the economic crisis to get other things done, are at least surprisingly honest. But they are also hypocritical. Remember when some of these same people criticized George W. Bush for using the 9/11 tragedy to invade the unrelated nation of Iraq?
It is true that the super-secretive Bush administration was less honest about its "bait and switch" subterfuge than Obama and his team appear to be, but Bush's ulterior motives occasionally showed through. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, shortly after 9/11, did once write a memo to then-President Bush declaring that, "If the war (on terror) does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim."
Liberals would also argue that using the economic crisis to pass new education, energy, and health initiatives, which they deem to be positive, is of a much different magnitude than using a horrendous terrorist attack to invade an unrelated country for no good reason and get even more people killed. Of course, many neoconservatives still tell us that all the chaos, mayhem, and death in Iraq were for a positive good. But even if new education, energy, and health initiatives have a positive effect—a dubious proposition—the question is whether the debt-ridden government can afford them during a severe economic meltdown. Different politicians, same chicanery.
Other hypocrisies abound overseas. President Obama recently broached the possibility of negotiating with the Taliban, in the same spirit as the Bush administration bought off the Sunni guerillas in Iraq. Yet the United States has implied that Pakistani government officials were wimps for doing the same thing. U.S. government officials and politicians frowned on Pakistan acquiescing to Islamic law in the former ski resort country of the Swat Valley, not too far from Pakistan's capital city, in exchange for a truce with Islamic militants.
And what about all of that U.S. rhetoric supporting democracy? All of a sudden, Hamid Karzai, the democratically elected president of Afghanistan, is on the outs with the United States. Unlike the Bush administration, the Obama team seems to have distaste for him and is doing everything it can to undermine him. This spurning of democracy is nothing new, however. The Bush administration foolishly pushed for elections in Palestine in 2006, was somehow surprised and horrified when the Islamic militant group Hamas won them, and has shunned and put the screws to the group ever since then. Thus, given the historical tendency of the United States to favor "pragmatism" over democracy, Karzai needs to watch his back or he could end up overthrown, much like Ngo Dinh Diem was in South Vietnam in 1963.
Rest of article at:
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