Why bother?

The US State Department released its annual country report on human rights practices yesterday, serving as a stark reminder that America has lost its moral authority on human rights issues. Not only do the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib (as indicators of the Department of Defence's treatment of its detainees in general), as well as 'sub-legal' (illegal) detentions elsewhere come to mind, but the Bush administration's apparent eagerness to act contrary to international and US law stand out. See, for example, Joseph Cirincione's comments on the nuclear deal with India, or the latest rumblings about the (probably) illegally-authorised domestic wiretappings in the US.

Coming to the report itself, one word comes to mind: pathetic. Unsurprisingly, America's political adversaries are given undue prominance. Most notable are Iran, with a democratically-elected president (just about) and relatively free speech (relative to Zimbabwe or Belarus, that is), and North Korea, where the government is certainly nasty, but is not, for example, actively involved in genocide (unlike Sudan). Also included among the top human rights abusers are China and Cuba: again, unpleasant enough in their authoritarian ways, but nothing compared to their war-exporting counterparts in Rwanda and Uganda, or Robert Mugabe and his forced evictions, for example. The report compares very badly indeed with those produced by NGOs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Its political aims, and the drop in morality in America's foreign policies, serve to make it little more than a laughable affair.