"What could be more
disgraceful for Colombia than a prize awarded by the most unpopular President
in the history of the United States, and furthermore, for this to be a source
of national pride?"
Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President
Bush, Jan. 13. Some Colombians consider it a dubious honor, and in any
case, do not believe Uribe deserves such an award.
Unlike those who have
celebrated George W. Bush’s awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to
his counterpart Álvaro Uribe, for his efforts to promote “democracy, human
rights and peace” in the world (read: his unfettered alliance in the war on
terror), to me it seems shameful.
What could be
more disgraceful for Colombia than a prize awarded by the most unpopular
President in the history of the United States, and furthermore, for this to be
a source of national pride?
Besides presiding over an
economic and social crisis without recent precedent, the Bush government has
the dubious honor of having trampled over every international rule that has
ever gotten in the way of its imperial ambition, unleashing a wave of
anti-Americanism around the globe. The beliefs regarding the use of force that
propelled the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party after the attacks
of September 11, based on the right of the U.S. to use force as a preventative
measure against any potentially hostile state, unreservedly violated the
charter of the United Nations. In the same way, the secret prisons that it
established in Europe and the torture that
took place in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo constituted cynical violations of the
Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture.
With the same audacity in
disregarding the aforementioned treaties, President Bush oversaw U.S. withdrawal
from many others. Among the most important, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
and treaties on the reduction of strategic nuclear arms, the banning of nuclear
tests, the control of biological and chemical weapons, the prohibition of
landmines, the control of illegal handguns, the Kyoto Protocol and the Rome
Statute [establishing the International Criminal Court].
After three years and nine
months of “preventative” war in Iraq, the investment of $576 billion, nearly
20,000 dead Americans and 1 million Iraqis, there is growing recognition that
Iraq never posed a direct threat to the security of the United States [the
official count of U.S. dead in Iraq as of Jan. 19 is 4228]. Not
surprisingly, in addition to a truly unfavorable image both inside and outside
his own country, countless inhabitants of the globe consider Bush just as
threatening to world peace as Osama bin Laden.
The outgoing president has
done us a feeble favor by awarding this medal to the Colombian commander in
chief, however prestigious it may appear. It is an empty consolation prize and
is contradictory in light of the Democratic Party's rejection of the Free Trade
Agreement (a deserved rejection, given the human rights situation in our
country). And for the new Obama government, it confirms once again Uribe’s
closeness to an international agenda that it doesn't share. This is not the
kind of recognition that Colombia needs.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
****
Independently of the
legitimacy (or not) of the military actions of Israel in Gaza, one undeniable
fact about its war against Hamas is its violation of international human
rights. Of the more than 900 dead and 4,000 wounded Palestinians in the last
three weeks, almost half have been civilians - many of them women and children
- who have no protection from the bombing. Any government with democratic
convictions cannot consider such butchery legitimate.
