U.S. Is seen Losings Its Moral Authority
By Thomas Fuller and Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
Monday 05 July 2004
War, detentions and Patriot Act cited; also, 'incredible harm' of prison abuse.
The costs of the war in Iraq have been counted in dollars spent and lives lost.
But with the handover of limited sovereignty complete, some diplomats, academics and
human rights groups speak of a less tangible price, not just in Iraq but far beyond
its borders.
The war and prisoner abuse - combined with the detentions at the U.S. base at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the tough terms of the Patriot Act - have eroded the moral
leadership that Washington has pursued without embarrassment for years, they say.
"It's caused incredible harm to our position in the world," said Felix Rohatyn,
the financier and former U.S. ambassador to France, referring specifically to the
prison abuse scandal.
"I'm a refugee," said Rohatyn, who went to the United States six decades ago,
fleeing Nazi-occupied France. "I know what America stood for when I came here.
"That's not the way we are looked at now."
Musa Hitam, a former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, cited the case of his
country as an example of diminished U.S. moral authority.
When Musa led a lonely campaign four years ago to abolish a tough internal
security law in Malaysia, Western governments vocally supported him, believing that
the law calling for detention without trial was anachronistic in the fast-modernizing
country.
Today, in a world fearful of terrorism and divided by events in Iraq, the outside
calls to drop the internal security act have been reduced to a whisper, according to
Musa.
He said he sensed an "embarrassed silence" from Western diplomats, especially from
the United States, which once described the law as draconian and denounced its use
against Anwar Ibrahim, a top politician who fell out of favor and remains in a
Malaysian prison, where he was beaten, notoriously, by a chief of police.
"What we were alleged to have done is chicken feed, is nothing, compared to what
the U.S. administration has done," Musa said in an interview. "Leadership by example
is in tatters now, as far as the U.S. is concerned."
American officials acknowledge the damage - Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke
of "a terrible impact" on America's image of the prisoner abuse scandal - but they
cite the larger U.S. record and they promise to redress the problem through a fair,
forthright and tough-minded response.
What matters now, U.S. officials have said, is how Americans react, and are seen
to react. "Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal," Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on May 7, testifying before Congress on the Abu Ghraib
scandal.
By contrast, human rights workers note that in some places the United States has
become a different type of role model: Some governments now cite the Patriot Act or
the Guantánamo experience to justify crackdowns or extrajudicial detentions.
The government in Malaysia has done so in defense of its internal-security act,
said Zainah Anwar, a women's rights activist there. "They say: 'Even the United States
believes in detention without trial. If the democratic, developed, civilized West can
have such a law, why are you clamoring to repeal the law?'" Zainah said.
Politicians in China, Russia and Egypt have employed similar language, rights
workers say.
Alex Arriaga, an Amnesty International USA spokeswoman, noted that when Charles
Taylor, then president of Liberia, last year detained journalists who had criticized
his rule, he labeled them "enemy combatants," the U.S. term for Guantánamo detainees.
"Governments are clearly citing the war on terror to legitimize their repressive
practices," Arriaga said.
"We have seen a proliferation of what we would consider to be very repressive
legislation."
Opinion polls and large street demonstrations show the anger millions of people
abroad have felt toward the United States, its president or its actions in Iraq. Less
clear is how deep and lasting is the harm.
"Many people now critical are people who were great admirers of our principles and
values," said John Esposito, former director of the Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington.
"Abu Ghraib in particular has seriously undermined our ability to preach to the
world," he said. "There's a question about how much moral authority is even left."
There have been tangible consequences. The United States obtained a unanimous
United Nations endorsement for its Iraq transition plan, but then suffered a stinging
setback. The Security Council refused to grant the extension of immunity for U.S.
troops in Iraq that Washington wanted; some council members explicitly cited Abu
Ghraib.
Partly because of the prison scandal, the U.S. State Department delayed by nearly
two weeks the scheduled May 5 release of a report on its promotion of human rights and
democracy abroad.
Diplomats and rights workers say that in many parts of the world, anger and
distrust have grown more evident among intellectuals, elites and political pacesetters
- many of whom once sought inspiration from the United States.
Rights advocates assert that the United States has at times muffled its message on
rights; they claim that it has toned down criticisms of places like Thailand and
Uzbekistan, partners in the Iraq coalition, as well as Israel. U.S. officials deny
this.
In Kenya, the United States found itself in an uncomfortable controversy. It
strongly backed antiterrorism legislation proposed by the government. But democracy
advocates, who had successfully fought against one-man, one-party rule, said the
legislation could bring new oppression, particularly of Muslims.
It was a quandary, Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and former
assistant secretary of state, said in an interview. "The U.S. had to be very sensitive
to the fact that we don't want to be perceived as pushing governments away from the
democratic process."
The government ultimately redrafted the legislation.
But Abu Ghraib was a particularly tough blow.
"It is devastating," Arriaga said. "It makes it so much more difficult to advocate
on behalf of victims of torture all over the world - incredibly so - because the U.S.
is sending the message that international standards apply only when convenient."
Esposito agreed, saying, "We are a great country, but how are we going to now move
forward and pressure others in light of what we've done?"
None of the dozen diplomats, rights workers and analysts interviewed for this
article had a simple answer.
Esposito said he believed that only serious policy change, including a new
approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would help re-establish U.S.
credibility. He seriously doubts that will happen in this election year, he added.
Lyman said that while the U.S. image had suffered, "we haven't been fatally hurt."
But on Abu Ghraib, he said, "It would help if the administration was more forthright"
and admitted fully to mistakes.
As deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights, Lorne
Craner, finds himself smack in the middle of the debate. He said in May that it was "a
reasonable question" whether "Abu Ghraib robs us of our ability to talk about human
rights abroad."
But he said in an interview last week that he had been heartened by reaction to
what he called "a test case": the U.S. response to the growing human disaster in the
Sudanese region of Darfur. Powell visited the area last week to seek solutions and
call attention to the problem.
"I must say I haven't heard anybody say, 'Why is the secretary going to Darfur,
because you guys did Abu Ghraib?'" Craner said. "We have been the leader on Sudan and
Darfur, and I haven't heard one person say, 'You are unqualified morally to address
this question because of Abu Ghraib.'"
When he met last week with a visiting Iraqi group, Craner said: "We talked about
Abu Ghraib, but I raised it, they didn't. I apologized for it."
"I'm not saying it's blown over," Craner said. "It has hurt us. But the question
is how much.
"I have not seen it damage our capability yet" to promote rights and democracy.
Much good is done, Craner said he believed, when foreigners see how the system
deals openly with problems or when the U.S. news media air America's dirty laundry
openly, critically and extensively, as with Abu Ghraib.
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