US Neither A Beacon of Democracy nor Human Rights Advocator
One of the most shocking and disgusting scenes the world has ever witnessed in recent years was the standing ovation accorded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by US Congressmen and women when he was invited to speak to the Congress last month. This blatant display of racism and impunity by America’s ruling elite, both Democrats and Republicans, was a confirmation that the United States of America has never been a beacon of democracy or an advocate for human rights. For the families of the Palestinian women, children and men who have been killed in the tens of thousands in Gaza, this single act was yet another demonstration that the United States does not care for human rights or for the suffering of the world’s people. That the rules set by the so-called Policeman of the World are for the benefit of those doing the policing, not those being policed.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of that disgraceful episode was that the world finally understood who controls the United States. Israel and rich and influential Jewish American lobby groups have held every US president in the palms of their hands since Israel was created in 1948. Israeli governments have almost total control over US presidents and can literally order them to do their bidding, including aiding and abetting a genocide. Meanwhile, the United Nations looks on as Gaza is decimated before the world’s eyes, because it too is beholden to the US, which provides almost a quarter of its budget and has veto-holding powers in the UN Security Council. This means that any sanctions against Israel will be automatically vetoed by the US.
A few weeks after that shameful event in the US Congress, a British teenager, the son of Rwandan immigrants, stabbed three girls in a dance class. The murder of the girls elicited mass mourning in the UK, with even the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer sending condolences to the grieving families. This same Prime Minister has not shed a single tear for the tens of thousands of children who are being killed or maimed by weapons supplied to Israel by Britain. Britain’s ultra-right movement decided to use the identity of the teenage boy and the murder of the girls to carry out racist anti-immigrant protests. Mosques were vandalised even though the boy charged with the murders was not a Muslim.
It gets stranger. The US is currently preparing for an election where a convicted felon with a history of misogyny and corruption might become president – for the second time. For those watching from afar, the ascent of Donald Trump to the highest political office in the US is as astounding as it is disturbing. If Trump embodies the values of the majority of Americans, then what hope is there for the rest of the world? Were we fooled into believing that this country stood for what is right?
Black people in America have long understood that American democracy is a sham. A country built on slavery and the genocide of indigenous populations cannot claim any moral superiority over other nations. It has no right to lecture the world on how to protect the rights of the vulnerable and the weak. This is a country that for centuries denied Black people the right to vote. The scars of the wounds of racism are visible even today. But the majority of white Americans have chosen to forget this injustice because remembering and acknowledging their dark past denies them the authority to lecture the world and to live under the illusion that America is “great” because of some inherent greatness embedded in the population that is not accessible to the rest of the world.
Let us also not forget that almost every war waged since the end of the Second World War has either been fought or funded by the United States. The war in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq, the civil wars and coups in Latin America and in some parts of Africa in the 1980s and ‘90s, the wars in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, and now the genocide in Gaza would not have been possible without American funding and weapons, something that China is quick to point out. Despite its military might, China has not invaded a single country in the last seven decades, except for a few skirmishes along its border with India. China relies on “soft power” to exert influence around the world through infrastructure projects and the like. It does not send its military to decimate populations in far-off lands.