Tag: foreign policy

World’s Most Tyrannical Regime Can’t Stop Babbling About “Human Rights”

“America won’t back away from our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms,” reads a Wednesday tweet from the presidential Twitter account. “No responsible American president can remain silent when basic human rights are violated.”

The tweet, an excerpt from the US president’s prepared congressional address, was retweeted on Saturday by Secretary of State Tony Blinken with the caption, “We will always defend human rights at home and abroad.”

Like all US secretaries of state, Blinken’s public statements overwhelmingly focus on the claim that other nations abuse human rights, and that it is America’s duty to defend those rights. Which is very silly, considering the fact that the US government is the single worst human rights abuser on planet Earth.

And it’s not even close.

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Anti-War Activist Harassed By Plainclothes Cops For Tweet Exposing AOC’s Foreign Policy Incompetence

A leftist anti-war activist was visited by the California Highway Patrol for a tweet he made that lightly criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) pandering and bumbling comments about a “two-state solution” in the Middle East. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s office has denied contacing police about the tweet.

On April 7, activist Ryan Wentz tweeted, “On April 1, @AOC did a livestream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. She was asked about ‘peace between Israelis and Palestinians.’ Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least”…

The next day, Wentz was visited in Los Angeles by two plainclothes members of the California Highway Patrol, who reportedly accused him of “threatening” Ocasio-Cortez.

Wentz posted a picture of a business card provided by one of the officers, with the caption, “I’m really shaken up right now. I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home. They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening @AOC on Twitter yesterday. This is provably false.”

The activist added, “I felt scared, intimidated, and violated. They knew my name and where I live. It was done on behalf of a congresswoman who advocates against police state tactics.”

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Biden’s Protection of Murderous Saudi Despots Shows the Hidden Reality of U.S. Foreign Policy

A staple of mainstream U.S. discourse is that the United States opposes tyranny and despotism and supports freedom and democracy around the world. Embracing murderous despots is something only Donald Trump did, but not normal, upstanding American Presidents. This belief about the U.S. role in the world permeates virtually every mainstream foreign policy discussion.

When the U.S. wants to start a new war — with Iraq, with Libya, with Syria, etc. — it accomplishes this by claiming that it is, at least in part, motivated by horror over the tyranny of the country’s leaders. When it wants to engineer regime change or support anti-democratic coups — in Venezuela, in Iran, in Bolivia, in Honduras — it uses the same justification. When the U.S. Government and its media partners want to increase the hostility and fear that Americans harbor for adversarial countries — for Russia, for China, for Cuba, For North Korea — it hauls out the same script: we are deeply disturbed by the human rights violations of that country’s government.

Yet it is hard to conjure a claim that is more obviously and laughably false than this one. The U.S. does not dislike autocratic and repressive governments. It loves them, and it has for decades. Installing and propping up despotic regimes has been the foundation of U.S. foreign policy since at least the end of World War II, and that approach continues to this day to be its primary instrument for advancing what it regards as its interests around the world. The U.S. for decades has counted among its closest allies and partners the world’s most barbaric autocrats, and that is still true.

Indeed, all other things being equal, when it comes to countries with important resources or geo-strategic value, the U.S. prefers autocracy to democracy because democracy is unpredictable and even dangerous, particularly in the many places around the world where anti-American sentiment among the population is high (often because of sustained U.S. interference in those countries, including propping up their dictators). There is no way for a rational person to acquire even the most minimal knowledge of U.S. history and current foreign policy and still believe the claim that the U.S. acts against other countries because it is angry or offended at human rights abuses perpetrated by those other governments.

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Biden’s First Foreign Policy Speech Vows Forever Wars

US foreign policy has clearly continued in the same direction, without missing a beat. Unlike in previous transitions in the White House, this time US President Joe Biden has not even really tried to promise even the faintest hope that it wouldn’t.There were a few glimpses of remote hope – particularly regarding the possibility the US wouldn’t abandon its last arms treaty with Russia, New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) – and Biden’s promise of returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.

However, in Biden’s first speech regarding foreign policy since taking office, now posted on the White House’s official website and titled, “Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World,” reveals that, if anything, US belligerence on the global stage is set to only expand.

“America is back.  Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” 

Biden’s opening remarks attempt to suggest that America has drifted away under his predecessor US President Donald Trump. But when he says “America is back,” we are left to assume he means “back” to what the US was doing under the administration of US President Barack Obama under which he served as vice president.

This was a president elected into office by the American people to end the wars of his predecessor, US President George W. Bush. Not only did he fail to end those wars – one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan – he expanded both. He also started several new wars including in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Under the administration of Obama-Biden, the US also overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014 precipitating deadly violence in the nation’s eastern region.

Obama also continued Bush-era policies aimed at overthrowing the government of Venezuela and instituted the so-called US “pivot” to Asia in which US meddling was expanded in a bid to peel Southeast Asian states away from China’s orbit – or create an arc of chaos to disrupt China’s rise, trying.

And in Biden’s recent foreign policy speech – he has vowed to continue all of this.

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