It’s too much to expect governments to follow the rules they expect everyone else to follow, whether it’s their own citizens or other countries. The US government certainly does not follow its own piously stated ideals. Fro Michael Jabara Carley at strategic-culture.org:
The West has always been a great trembling hive of hypocrisy, portraying itself as liberal, progressive, civilised and democratic. You know the descriptors; the list is very long. Take the United States, for example, it is the «shining house upon the hill»: just, altruistic, democratic, with a «mission to extend individual liberties throughout the world».
«Our cause has been the cause of all mankind», Lyndon Johnson declared during the 1964 presidential election campaign. To reinforce his argument Johnson cited President Woodrow Wilson, who had similar things to say about American virtue. Nothing has changed: listen to Barack Obama talk about the altruism of the United States. ‘We are the «exceptional nation»,’ he often says.
These western and especially US virtues are mobilised to justify policies, wars, covert activities which are not virtuous at all. Let’s start with Wilson. He is best known for the «Fourteen Points», national self-determination, «democracy», open agreements, and so on. «Do as I say, not as I do,» Wilson might have cautioned in the backroom. He did not, for example, anticipate «self-determination» for the Philippines, a US colony, or closer to home, for American «Negros».
You see, Wilson was a segregationist and supporter of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan. We need the KKK, Wilson believed, to keep «colored folks» in line, especially those who came back from France having served in the US armed forces. They might think they were entitled to the same rights as white people. As American blacks were to be subject to Jim Crow, so Bolsheviks in Russia were to be subjected to Entente military intervention to put an end to their socialist revolution.
Then of course there was World War II. It is during this war that the United States and Great Britain got into the habit of destroying cities and civilian infrastructure, and killing large numbers of civilians. It is true that Nazi Germany set the precedent for targeting civilians, and few people questioned the destruction of German cities and the mass killing of civilians in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin and other places.
The «krauts» had it coming. So did the Japanese, most of their cities were burned to the ground. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed with the first atomic bombs. «Military targets,» said accidental President Harry Truman, «we had to do it to save the lives of American soldiers». He lied. The American government knew very well that Japan was beaten and ready to surrender. The United States wanted to intimidate Iosif Stalin, with atomic bombs the USSR did not yet have. Did the Americans truly believe they could intimidate Marshal Stalin?
The end of World War II led to the resumption of the Cold War, Act II (Act I having started in 1917). With Great Britain reduced to the status of a vassal state, the United States took the lead in defending «free» peoples against the menace of communism. Unfortunately, there was a chasm between the image and the reality. The US government unleashed the CIA to buy politicians and elections and overthrow governments it did not like. Iran, Guatemala, Cuba were early examples. That was the fate reserved for Vietnam too, except there, Washington bit off more than it could chew.
To continue reading: Western Hypocrisy, and Why It Makes the World a Dangerous Place
