Calling for a better foreign policy

American media ignores important concepts

By: Collin Hawkins

Posted: 11/17/08

The Los Angeles Times recently reviewed the story of 17 Chinese nationals who were ordered to be released from the "enemy combatant" detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The piece was intended to discuss the domestic ramifications of the Bush administration's ambiguous legal policies in holding such prisoners in jurisdictional limbo. What's interesting is the article's complete white-wash of the foreign policy implications of this affair.

The men in question are part of a group of 22 Uighurs (a predominately Muslim-Chinese ethnic minority) who fled China's Xinjiang province for Afghanistan in 2001. They were arrested in Pakistan as "foreign fighters" in late 2001. The men were transferred to U.S. forces and subsequently sent to the so-called "Camp X-Ray" enemy combatant detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

Two years ago, five of the men were deported to Albania, but the others remained in custody, as no country was willing to accept them pending United States deportation. The LA Times story glosses over repeated requests by the Chinese (who have accused the men of terrorism) for extradition, claiming the prisoners would not be sent back to China because the United States "fear[ed] what Chinese officials would do" to them.

Now it's especially curious that fear of ill treatment would be used as an excuse to deny the extradition of prisoners held in a camp condemned by virtually every human rights organization and referred to by the apolitical Red Cross as "tantamount to torture." Ostensibly, it seems the United States doesn't mind torturing detainees (via sleep deprivation, humiliation, water-boarding and other methods), it doesn't mind sending detainees to its allies for torture (via the policy of "extraordinary rendition"), but it draws the line at torture by unfriendly governments. To put it more plainly, we don't care if prisoners are denied basic human rights, so much as we care who denies them.

Sadly, it's not surprising to see the mainstream American media ignore the concept of universality - applying to ourselves the standards we apply to others. To do this, we would also have to examine the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the calls for invasion of Iran. In each circumstance the case has been made these countries "harbor terrorists." In 2001, President Bush made a speech in which he stated bluntly: "America has a message for the nations of the world 'If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists.'"

It is difficult to rectify this statement, and the rationales for war with the aforementioned countries, with the behavior of the United States in regards to the Chinese detainees. The United States effectively released suspected Chinese terrorists to its Albanian ally. Seventeen more are about to be released into the United States. There was never any serious talk by either political party of actually extraditing these prisoners to China, a country recently rocked by three terrorist bombings attributed to Uighur separatists. Instead the only debate hinges on where they are to be released. One must wonder what would happen if China was found to have arrested 22 al-Qaeda militants and, refusing United States' requests for extradition, released them to friendly governments. It is doubtful the United States response would be as measured as China's has been.

The point is not that the United States should be extraditing prisoners for torture in foreign lands; rather the lesson to take away from this affair is that it is the duty of students, academics, Americans and human beings to scrutinize their own country's foreign policy with the same skepticism that they use to examine others. American conservatives have perfected the technique of patriotic demagoguery - that is, creating a culture so hostile to any critical analysis of American foreign policy that to even ask questions is labeled "America-bashing." In this political climate, any unqualified criticism is quickly condemned and critics, labeled "radicals" or "discontents," are accordingly marginalized. While this plays well to an increasingly nationalistic and protectionist population that fears America's decline, the rest of the world sees it as dangerous arrogance that threatens the international order.

The American people, of course, don't understand all the hostility and distrust from abroad. They often view it as wanton anti-Americanism, but can't figure out why anyone would distrust the motives or behavior of the United States.

The United States in its own mind is still the world's moral authority, leading a parade of nations all desirous of emulating the "city on the hill" and accepting American (universal) values. What Americans don't notice is that it has increasingly become a one-nation parade, with the United States - drunk on the hubris of American exceptionalism - staggering along as a long line of hostile nations and alienated allies gawk, coming to the realization that the empire has no clothes.

Hawkins is a senior political science major and guest columnist for The Spectator.