Bush-whacked

This is a continuation of my reposting of my work at the Kennesaw State Sentinel. Many thanks to Ed Bonza, the director of KSU Student Media for his enthusiasm about this project.

Bush-whacked
Originally published 2/2/2005
Reprinted courtesy of The Kennesaw State Sentinel

Mr. President, I have a few questions.  In your inaugural address you mentioned a few things that I am having a little difficulty understanding.  You spoke about the “policy of the United States to seek and support the growth democratic movements ... with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.  I am curious about how that can be policy given our long standing political alliances with the governments of known human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel.  Are they on your list of nations for whom you plan to “persistently clarify the moral choice” between oppression and freedom?  When was the last time you made it clear to these countries that “success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people”?
You told us that “America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies,” and yet it remains our policy not to allow the Iraqi people to count their own dead, and for the prisoners in Guantanamo to have no legal redress after having been held in prison for up to four years without judicial review, access to lawyers, or any kind of independent monitoring.  Should one of those persistent clarification memos be left on your desk as well?  You told us that we “will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling” and yet that appears to be exactly what we are doing, the only difference being that you, having failed to convince us that this is a war of self-interest, now seem determined to convince us that it is a war of liberation.  All of this makes your use of Lincoln’s “those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves” bitterly ironic.
Finally, you told those living under tyranny’s thumb that “we will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors.”  But apparently we won’t do anything about the horrors going on in Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, or Nigeria, despite the profound evidence that terrorist operatives are moving about freely in states such as Nigeria and Somalia.  Perhaps even more disturbing is that, while there was never any credible evidence of a connection between Al Qaeda and the government of Iraq, there IS a credible link between Al-Qaeda and the former president of Liberia(*).  So, why are we spending billions in Iraq, while the Liberians languish in abject poverty?
America may be “speaking anew to the peoples of the world,” but unfortunately what the world is hearing sounds like the same half-truths and empty promises we have been handing out since the start of the Cold War, only now greed for oil seems to be our only motivator.  You are right, sir, no human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.  But who is using their strength to impose their singular will upon the world?  Who are the bullies here?

* Africa and Threats of Terrorism - Olayinka Oyegbile
Daily Independent (liberal)
Lagos, Nigeria
December 6, 2004
As presented in WorldPress.org: http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1989.cfm