By Foreign Policy In Focus and Common Dreams, June 30, 2005
By Stephen Zunes [source]
The Bush administration, like its predecessors, has frequently taken advantage of the idealism and values of the U.S. citizenry to justify foreign policies that most Americans would otherwise find morally unacceptable. The recent emphasis on justifying Washington’s imperial goals in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East in the name of spreading liberty and democracy is a case in point. The fact that the United States is the world’s principal supporter of autocratic Middle Eastern regimes is conveniently overlooked…
Month: June 2005
Bush Speech Reveals Administration’s Ongoing Deceptions on Iraq
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS, September 28, 2005
By Erik Leaver, Stephen Zunes [source]
As popular domestic opposition to the administration’s policies in Iraq reaches new highs, President George W. Bush’s efforts to justify the ongoing war seem to have reached new lows. Indeed, in the president’s nationally-televised June 28th speech from an Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he was clearly straining to defend his disastrous decision to invade and occupy that oil-rich Middle Eastern country…
The United States and the Iranian Election
CommonDreams.org, June 28, 2005
By Stephen Zunes [source link’s no longer available]
The election of the hard-line Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over former president Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new president of Iran is undeniably a setback to those hoping to advance the cause of greater social and political freedom in that country.
It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate, however. While Rafsanjani was portrayed as a more moderate conservative, the fact that this 70-year-old cleric had become a millionaire while in government service and was widely seen as the penultimate wheeler dealer of the political establishment was apparently perceived by many Iranians as of greater importance than his modest reform agenda. By contrast, the victorious campaign of the young Tehran mayor focused upon the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption…
Bush Administration Support for Repression in Uzbekistan Belies Pro-Democracy Rhetoric
Foreign Policy In Focus and Antiwar.com June 25, 2005.
By Stephen Zunes [source]
Recent revelations that the United States successfully blocked a call by NATO for an international investigation of the May 13 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the government of the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan serves as yet another reminder of the insincerity of the Bush administration’s claims for supporting freedom and democracy in the Islamic world and the former Soviet Union…
Bush Administration Attacks on Amnesty International: Old Wine, New Bottles
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS, June 6, 2005
By Stephen Zunes [source link’s no longer online]
In what appears to be a concerted effort to discredit independent human rights advocates, the Bush administration and its allies in the media have been engaging in a series of attacks against Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organization and winner of the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize… [source not available]
Undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—It Didn’t Start With the Bush Administration
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS, June 1, 2005
Stephen Zunes [Source link is no longer available]
Most of the international community and arms control advocates here in the United States have correctly blamed the Bush administration for the failure of the recently completed review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the course of the four-week meeting of representatives of the 188 countries which have signed and ratified the treaty, the United States refused to uphold its previous arms control pledges, blocked consideration of the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, refused to rule out U.S. nuclear attacks against non-nuclear states…