BUSH HAS NO RIGHT TO LECTURE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS. PEJNEWS-POSTED BY JOAN RUSSOW
Ramsey Clark
PEJ News
d&name=News&file=article&sid=7406& mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Aug 22 2008
Canada
A price the American people are paying for the failure of the
House of Representatives to impeach Bush, Cheney and their cabal
for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity —
the greatest assaults on peace and human rights of this century —
is the Bush Administration’s bellicose drum beat for war against a
widening circle of chosen enemies.
Imagine George Bush with the blood of a million Afghans and Iraqis
on his hands, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo hanging around
his neck, having trashed the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, lecturing China for
violating human rights at the World Olympics in Beijing, a hopeful
symbol of international cooperation through the peaceful competition
of athletes in friendship.
Imagine George Bush lecturing Russia on human rights after insisting
on putting U.S. (not NATO) Star War missile sites on the Russian
border in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the tragic lessons of
the Cold War, all told the greatest crime in history. Among its costs
are expenditures that could have provided food for all, vastly reduced
poverty on the planet, progressed toward quality universal health care,
education and housing for everyone. Instead it took more lives by
military violence on five continents and greater military expenditures
than World War II and released the genie of nuclear weapons to a
status beyond control. Can the planet survive another arms race? And
what was George Bush planning when he urged immediate admission of
Georgia to NATO just months before Georgia invaded South Ossetia?
Imagine George Bush who committed wars of aggression, the "Supreme
International Crime," against Afghanistan and Iraq, invading and
occupying both, judging Russia’s conduct as" unacceptable," and
demanding withdrawal of Russian forces because it sent troops into
Georgia to protect the population of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from
an invasion by Georgia that killed citizens and peace keepers alike,
destroyed property and had driven tens of thousands from their homes.
Nor was Georgia a stranger to Russia. It had been a part of Russia
since 1801 for nearly all the last two centuries. It had great power
within the USSR. Joseph Stalin was from Georgia, as were L. P. Beria,
longtime head of the NKVD and many others, Edward Shevardnadze, the
Soviet Union’s last Foreign Minister and the first President of the
Government of the independent Georgia that separated from the Soviet
Union in 1990.
George Bush took a keen interest in Georgia, which is on Russia’s
southern border, but on the opposite side of the planet from the
U.S., early in his Presidency and in Mikhail Saakashvili. Under
Bush’s direction the U.S. provided major military arms and training
for Georgia. It persuaded, or paid Georgia which had no interest
in Iraq to send 2000 troops to there, a number exceeded only by the
U.S. and U.K. It trained and supported the Georgian troops for duty
in Iraq. Saakashvili, a U.S. law school graduate, to quote the New
York Times "…positioned himself to become one of the world’s most
strident critics of the Kremlin" and with the strong support from
the U.S. he was elected President of Georgia.
The U.S. helped them militarize what had been a weak Georgian
state. The Pentagon helped overhaul Georgia’s military forces,
train its commanders and staff officers. U.S. marine strained
Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle. The forces were
equipped with Israeli and U.S. firearms, reconnaissance drones and
other sophisticated equipment, including anti aircraftweaponry. That
the U.S. trained and equipped Georgian forces fled in the face of
Russian forces should have told us something about the U.S. training
and equipping of foreign militaries.
All this U.S. support and manipulation was with the public goal,
urged by George Bush, of making remote Georgia, though a thousand
miles from Europe across the Black Sea and Russia, member of NATO
and placing Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Georgian control by force.
As in most matters in which George Bush takes aggressive action,
oil is a factor in some form. Georgia has made itself available for a
pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan then across Georgia
to the Black Sea, a major Bush goal, carrying oil from Azerbaijan
and former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, produced in large part
by U.S. oil companies, to Western markets by-passing Russia. Western
Europe shared this U.S. interest.
President Bush visited Georgia in 2005, the first U.S. President to
do so. Condoleeza Rice visited while National Security Advisor to
Bush and since. Saakashvili has been a frequent guest at the White
House and in the Washington corridors of power.
It is George Bush’s enticement and incitement of Georgia that created
the present crisis. We have not been told what has been paid Georgia
for it.
Suppose NATO had agreed to Georgia membership before Georgia invaded
South Ossetia, as the U.S. urged. NATO would have been bound by mutual
defense pact to defend Georgia as a Member. NATO, a Cold War creation,
which includes all the former colonial powers, should be abolished. The
U.S. persuaded NATO to share blame for its assaults that balkanized
Yugoslavia which was created to end centuries of violence in the
Balkans through unity. It tried to persuade NATO to join in its wars
of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. It nearly succeeded in Georgia.
The U.S. has a major military airbase in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet
Republic to Russia’s south and more than 1500 miles east of Georgia
which is used to bomb Afghanistan. The U.S. has surrounded Russia
with military bases from the Baltic states south across its western
border with Europe then east for more than 2500 miles to its borders
with Xinjiang Province in western China and Mongolia.
Now we can see the hypocrisy of the U.S. calling NATO into emergency
session to address the Georgia crisis with false claims made
repeatedly about the ceasefire and withdrawal terms negotiated by
President Sarkozy of France, only to back down from all its threats
and demands for action after fomenting international friction on false
pretenses. The world cannot be made safe for hypocrisy, or mendacity.
It is noteworthy that Georgia is within one hundred miles of
the border of Iran across Armenia. While George Bush vigorously
protests Russian confrontation with Georgian troops which invaded
South Ossetia, he has continued his threatening of Iran with a war
of aggression for its alleged but unproven efforts to achieve nuclear
weapons capability while he engages in a huge U.S. expenditure for new
nuclear weapons. The U.S. now has its largest Naval presence in the
Gulf region since the Gulf war, pointed toward Iran. The probability
that President Bush will cause Israel and the U.S. to attack Iranian
nuclear facilities plants during his remaining months in office remains
high. Such an attack would violate the Nuremberg Charter and Article 56
of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1979, which protects
"Works and Installations Containing Dangerous Forces," including
nuclear facilities, from attack, because of the "consequent severe
losses among the civilian population" from the blast and radiation.
As Bush’s crimes grow, so does our responsibility to act. Please
bring your friends and family members into the impeachment movement
by sending them to ImpeachBush.org …
Ramsey Clark August 22, 2008
COMMENT: The Bush Regime must also be tried by the international
community; under Article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations,
the UN General Assembly has the power to set up an International
Tribunal. (Russow)