- Mark well the sequence. On the morning of November 10,
President George W. Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and spoke
words that warmed the hearts of human rights activists the world over:
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- "For every regime that sponsors terror, there is
a price to be paid and it will be paid.... [Nations that support terror]
are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice... We must
unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them. No national aspiration,
no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent.
Any government that rejects this principle, trying to pick and choose its
terrorist friends, will know the consequences.... The Afghan people do
not deserve their present rulers.... I make this promise to all the victims
of that regime: The Taliban's days of harboring terrorists, and dealing
in heroin, and brutalizing women are drawing to a close."
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- That evening, during a joint press conference with Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, Bush described the Northern Alliance as "our
friends." ("We will encourage our friends to head south across
the Shumali Plains, but not into the city of Kabul itself.")
-
- Moments later, Musharraf branded Bush's "friends"
terrorists:
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- "Why I have been recommending that Kabul should
not be occupied by the Northern Alliance basically is because of the past
experience that we've had when the various ethnic groups were ahold of
Kabul after the Soviets left. There was total atrocities, killings and
mayhem within the city. And I think if the Northern Alliance enters Afghanistan
-- enters Kabul -- we'll see the same kind of atrocities being perpetuated
against the people there...."
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- A reporter followed up by asking Bush if he agreed with
Musharraf's assessment of the Alliance. Bush replied, "Only, only,
I said one question. Now you're going with three." No other reporter
put the question to Bush.
-
- Now that is a disciplined press corps. In the morning,
President Bush takes a strong stand against those who terrorize the innocent
and brands governments that support such terrorists "equally guilty
of murder and equally accountable." In the evening he hails as "our
friends" an alliance that has terrorized the innocent (and, by the
way, dealt heroin) both as a government (1992-96) and as an opposition
force.
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- For a sampling of Northern Alliance atrocities, see the
October 2001 "Background" report from Human Rights Watch. Since
1992, the various Alliance factions have killed tens of thousands of civilians
every bit as innocent as America's 9-11 victims; their rap sheets includes
rape, torture, summary executions and "disappearances." "To
date," states HRW, "not a single Afghan commander has been held
accountable for violations of international humanitarian law." (http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/afghan-bck1005.htm)
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- Saturday night is followed by Sunday morning, so it was
just a matter of time before a Bush administration official would have
to explain why the president would describe forces that fit his own definition
of terrorists as "our friends," why he was backing them, and
what he intended to do to bring his own administration to justice for supporting
Alliance terrorists.
-
- Secretary of State Colin Powell looked cool November
11 in the Meet the Press hot seat. His inquisitor, Tim Russert, can be
relentless when the topic is a stained blue dress, but he simply is intellectually
and emotionally incapable of raising moral questions about U.S. foreign
policy. He missed the obvious disconnect between Bush's words and policy.
-
- Thus, Powell never had to say, "I endorse what the
president said at the U.N., and as soon as we crush al-Qaida, whether it's
next year or next decade, we'll base our foreign policy on his words."
He never had to relinquish any moral high ground for a more pragmatic (and
defensible) realpolitik position.
-
- On ABC, Slammin' Sam Donaldson did indeed hold National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's feet to the fire on state sponsorship
of terrorism. Outflanking the Bush administration on the right, Donaldson
put on the screen the State Department's list of states that sponsor terror
(Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan) and asked why we aren't
taking it to those governments like we're taking it to the Taliban.
-
- Note that Donaldson, in theory, represents ABC's "liberal"
wing. For two decades he's been cast as a counterweight to George Will,
the staunch conservative of "This Week." Donaldson could have
asked why Cuba was on the terror-sponsor list. He could have asked why
Colombia was not, given that its army collaborates with and protects a
right-wing death-squad federation on the State Department's list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations. He could have quoted from Bush's U.N. speech and
the Human Rights Watch report on the Northern Alliance -- or cited the
massive U.S. aid to the terror-facilitating Colombian army -- and asked
why the U.S. wasn't on the terror-sponsor list.
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- To ask any of those questions, Donaldson wouldn't necessarily
have to be a liberal. He could just as well be a moderate or conservative,
many of whom disapprove of selective morality and alliances with cutthroats.
But he would have to be informed.
-
- Like most everyone else posing questions on Sunday morning,
Donaldson is bright, articulate and ignorant. All are prerequisites: Smarts
and a way with words lend an air of credibility; ignorance ensures the
avoidance of embarrassing questions about "principles" that seem
to be honored more often in the breach.
-
- To gain a coveted seat as a network foreign-policy interviewer,
you must be incapable of thinking outside the parameters of bogus State
Department lists. Your knowledge must be sufficiently superficial that
you cannot recognize an evasive answer or demolish a dishonest one. Mix
in an abiding faith in the fundamental decency of U.S. foreign policy and
you could be the next Russert, Donaldson or Jim Lehrer. ___
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- Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose essays have appeared
in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online
at TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other
outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign
policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, and can be reached
at Hans_D@popmail.firn.edu
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- http://commondreams.org/views01/1123-05.htm
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