'Something's happening out there'
Astonished U.S. booted off UN committees
By John
Catalinotto
The would-be rulers of the world suffered two humiliating
setbacks in United Nations votes in early May. They were
paybacks for the extreme arrogance the Bush administration
has shown towards allies and enemies alike.
The first rebuff was when the U.S. was voted off the Human
Rights Commission. Washington had used this commission as a
means of punishing those countries that dared to challenge
its policies.
This year it had particularly targeted China and Cuba. It
failed to win a condemnation against China but narrowly
succeeded in getting a resolution passed against Cuba after
twisting enough arms.
The U.S. also lost its seat on the International Narcotics
Control Board. Washington had viewed this agency as a way to
bring pressure against countries that fail to toe its line,
coordinating this with the "war on drugs" that is really just
a cover for U.S. intervention in Latin America.
The imperialist architects of U.S. foreign policy have
grown so used to taking the UN for granted as a handy tool
for aggression and intervention that they were stunned when
the two secret votes in the 54-member UN Economic and Social
Council went against them.
Four Western countries, including the U.S., had been
running for three slots on the Human Rights Commission.
France won 52 of a possible 54 votes, Austria 41, Sweden 32
and the U.S. trailed with 29. The secret ballot had allowed
countries that usually fear Washington's retribution to vote
against it.
In a similar vote, U.S. representative Herbert Okun was
removed from the International Narcotics Control Board after
two terms. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said
the two losses indicate that "there's something happening out
there." He added, "I think it's fair to speculate there may
be issues related to how we handled ourselves, to how we
position.'' Columnist Maureen Dowd was blunter. "EVERYBODY in
the world HATES us," she wrote in the New York Times on May
6. "Even the Swedes can't stand us, for Pete's sake."
Why a revolt now? The major capitalist media list, for
starters, the Bush administration's rejection of the 1997
Kyoto treaty on global warming and its unilateral rejection
of the 1972 anti-ballistics missile treaty. There has also
been the Clinton administration's rejection of a treaty to
ban land mines, its refusal to support an international
court, and the Senate's refusal to approve the nuclear
test-ban treaty. And there was the attempt to sue South
Africa to keep it from acquiring affordable drugs to treat
AIDS.
There are so many other issues: U.S. hypocrisy on human
rights when this country is the largest prison house in the
world with 2 million inmates. Its arrogant preaching to the
world even as its cops shoot down unarmed Black people like
Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo and Timothy Thomas and its
courts fail to prosecute the killers in blue. And its
self-righteousness on fighting drugs when the huge U.S.
market for the stuff is what drives the production of coca,
poppies and synthetic intoxicants around the world.
Many countries are also sick of Washington's attacks on
socialist Cuba, which unlike the rich, capitalist U.S.
guarantees free medical care and education for all its
children and has been generous to others with its limited
resources, providing doctors and nurses to Africa, Central
America and the Caribbean.
Perhaps the weakening of the U.S. capitalist economy, the
end of that raging bull market that seemed to drag everyone
behind it, also made it easier to just say no.
Washington has always had a two-pronged approach to the
UN.
On the one hand, over the past 56 years the U.S. ruling
class has used the UN as a cover for its military
interventions--in Korea in 1950, the Congo in 1960, against
Iraq in 1990-1991 plus another decade of murderous sanctions,
and in Somalia in 1992-1993. The Clinton administration even
had the UN oversee the occupation of Kosovo after first
relying solely on the NATO military alliance to carry out its
war against Yugoslavia.
In a similar way, Washington has used bodies like the
Human Rights Commission to condemn Cuba and, depending on the
year and the needs of U.S. diplomacy, to attack Iraq, Libya,
Sudan, China and others.
At the same time the U.S. has used its vote and influence
again and again to keep Israel from being condemned for its
brutal human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian
territories.
But the U.S.--under both Republicans and Democrats--has
also withheld support from the UN. It has specifically held
back billions of dollars in dues as a form of pressure.
A grouping of reactionary U.S. politicians, led by Sen.
Jesse Helms, has made a career of demagogically attacking the
UN whenever it fails to be a completely subservient tool of
narrow U.S. interests. Helms and others can be expected to
use these latest votes as grist for a campaign to withhold
some $580 million that Congress was about to authorize for UN
dues.
Once Bush's foreign policy team finish licking their
wounds, they'll undoubtedly come back with a strategy to
bring the rebel nations to heel. But Boucher was right.
Something is happening out there. The votes in the UN are
just a pale reflection of the seething anger growing around
the world at these lords of the universe who would privatize
every drop of water, every inch of soil, while trampling down
whole nations to get it.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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