U.S. Supports Undemocratic Regimes Worldwide (Lone Star Iconoclast)

[struggle4progress]

By Hadi Jawad
Special To The Iconoclast

The U.S. has a funny way of dealing with undemocratic regimes around the world: it sells them guns. According to a study recently released by New York’s World Policy Institute, more than half of the top 25 recipients of US arms deals in 2003 were defined as “undemocratic” by our own State Department. The criteria was that in these countries “citizens do not have the right to change their own government” or “that right was seriously abridged.” We might be nurturing future Saddams right now!

Some of the top recipients of U.S. largesse? Saudi Arabia ($1.1 billion), Egypt ($1.0 billion), Kuwait ($153 million), the United Arab Emirates ($110 million) and Uzbekistan ($33 million). No Saudi citizen dare challenge the rulers. Mubarak of Egypt is the sole contender in national elections. In Uzbekistan, a staunch U.S. ally in the “war on terror,” state police recently killed in cold blood several hundred unarmed protesters in the capital, Andijan. President Karimov called the protesters “terrorists,” but according to an Associated Press report they were ordinary civilians demanding free business activity and better living conditions, and complained about the stark poverty they’ve been forced to live in since the ex-Soviet republic became independent in 1991. A favorite method of dealing with Karimov’s critics: Boiling. Very medieval, but highly efficient.

The World Policy Report also found that “when countries deemed to have poor human rights records or serious patterns of abuse by the State Department are factored in, 20 of the top 25 US arms clients in the developing world in 2003 — a full 80 percent — were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses.” The U.S. fans the flames of war around the world. As the worlds leading arms peddler the U.S. in 2003 supplied arms to 18 out of 25 active conflicts, sometimes to both sides.

The U.S. has a sordid history of dealing with terrorists also. Ronald Reagan once welcomed to the White House a group of fierce looking bearded warriors from Afghanistan he referred to as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” The men belonged to a group of radicals who had been recruited by the U.S. for a program funded by the Saudis, and trained by Pakistans military strongman; Zia-ul-Haq to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan. These men became known to the whole world later as the much hated Taliban. More recently, neocons in Bush’s administration were attempting to restore the Mujaheddin e Khalq, a known terrorist group based in Eastern Iraq that is opposed to the current regime in Iran. The MeK, a well trained 4,000 member militia, the neocons are hoping will be used to topple the mullahs in Tehran much as the Northern Alliance was used in Afghanistab to bring down the Taliban. <snip>

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Guest/2005/24Aguest.htm

[Double T]

1. The US Government Has A Track Record For Being......

a bunch of hypocrites; first we support an undemocratic, tyrannical regime then later turn around and knock it down. Examples such as Iraq and Afghanistan are just a few of the many countries the US has supported and later condemned or worse.

[indepat]

3. How undemocratic or tyrannical matters not for the only criteria needed

to secure US friendship and arms is for the regime to lean strongly to the far right: history is the best teacher of what happens when the US views a small country's regime to lean even a tad to the left of far right these past fifty or so years, beginning with Guatemala and continuing to this day.

[landoisnum1]

2. Who makes the decisions to sell them the weapons?

[Kenergy]

4. Good newspaper n/t