Never Mind the Torture
Taken from MotherJones.com (http://motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/29/we_479_05.html#two)
These must be proud days for Islam Karimov, dictator of Uzbekistan and newly-anointed defender of freedom and democracy in Central Asia.
Indeed, in the eyes of some on the right wing, Karimov appears to have joined the pantheon of distinguished international freedom fighters. In his commitment to the war on terror, the central Asian tyrant has proved himself the equal of right-wing heroes like Angolan warlord and conflict diamond smuggler Jonas Savimbi, who -- with CIA backing and apartheid South Africa's help -- prolonged his country's civil war for decades. Or perhaps he's more like Nicaragua's thuggish Contras, whom Ronald Reagan compared to America's Founding Fathers. Back then, of course, our unsavory allies abroad were fighting communism. Now they're battling Islamic terrorists -- or in Karimov's case, any political opposition at all, Islamic or not.
Karimov, an ex-Communist party boss, has worked tirelessly to crush all domestic dissent in Uzbekistan. He imprisons entire families to punish one member. He boils opponents to death. Yes, that's as in immersing victims in boiling water. His elections, the State Department itself declared, are "neither free nor fair." Even the Secretary General of NATO criticized Karimov's habit of indiscriminately locking people up.
But there stands Karimov, a cornerstone in the White House's war on terror, palling around with Donald Rumsfeld and collecting more than $500 million in US aid last year.
All of this is as it should be, says Stephen Schwartz, a member of the right-wing Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (which counts among its advisors such neoconservative luminaries as accused war-profiteer Richard Perle, disgraced House leader Newt Gingrich, and former CIA director James Woolsey). Writing in the Weekly Standard, Schwartz assures us that Karimov's sins are nothing to worry about -- just the growing pains that all "aspiring democracies" go through. Furthermore, Schwartz declares, human rights groups that dare to criticize Karimov's overly broad definition of "terrorist" are modern-day Neville Chamberlains.
"The campaign against terrorism is undermined by weakness, irresolution, and apologetics, not by identifying the enemy.
...
The United States, which has entered into a military alliance with Uzbekistan, must support the Uzbeks in their internal as well as their external combat, and must repudiate the blandishments of the human rights industry."
America's central mission, Schwartz opines, should be "[p]rotecting Uzbekistan's young democracy from radical Islamists and the human rights groups who defend them," not hemming and hawing over a few (undoubtedly deserving) dissidents who were boiled to death in defense of democracy.
Karimov couldn't have said it better himself. Oh wait, he did, in 1998, in a warning to his parliament about the dangers of Islamic extremists.
"'Such people must be shot in the forehead! If necessary, I'll shoot them myself ... !'"
Taken from MotherJones.com (http://motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/29/we_479_05.html#two)
These must be proud days for Islam Karimov, dictator of Uzbekistan and newly-anointed defender of freedom and democracy in Central Asia.
Indeed, in the eyes of some on the right wing, Karimov appears to have joined the pantheon of distinguished international freedom fighters. In his commitment to the war on terror, the central Asian tyrant has proved himself the equal of right-wing heroes like Angolan warlord and conflict diamond smuggler Jonas Savimbi, who -- with CIA backing and apartheid South Africa's help -- prolonged his country's civil war for decades. Or perhaps he's more like Nicaragua's thuggish Contras, whom Ronald Reagan compared to America's Founding Fathers. Back then, of course, our unsavory allies abroad were fighting communism. Now they're battling Islamic terrorists -- or in Karimov's case, any political opposition at all, Islamic or not.
Karimov, an ex-Communist party boss, has worked tirelessly to crush all domestic dissent in Uzbekistan. He imprisons entire families to punish one member. He boils opponents to death. Yes, that's as in immersing victims in boiling water. His elections, the State Department itself declared, are "neither free nor fair." Even the Secretary General of NATO criticized Karimov's habit of indiscriminately locking people up.
But there stands Karimov, a cornerstone in the White House's war on terror, palling around with Donald Rumsfeld and collecting more than $500 million in US aid last year.
All of this is as it should be, says Stephen Schwartz, a member of the right-wing Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (which counts among its advisors such neoconservative luminaries as accused war-profiteer Richard Perle, disgraced House leader Newt Gingrich, and former CIA director James Woolsey). Writing in the Weekly Standard, Schwartz assures us that Karimov's sins are nothing to worry about -- just the growing pains that all "aspiring democracies" go through. Furthermore, Schwartz declares, human rights groups that dare to criticize Karimov's overly broad definition of "terrorist" are modern-day Neville Chamberlains.
"The campaign against terrorism is undermined by weakness, irresolution, and apologetics, not by identifying the enemy.
...
The United States, which has entered into a military alliance with Uzbekistan, must support the Uzbeks in their internal as well as their external combat, and must repudiate the blandishments of the human rights industry."
America's central mission, Schwartz opines, should be "[p]rotecting Uzbekistan's young democracy from radical Islamists and the human rights groups who defend them," not hemming and hawing over a few (undoubtedly deserving) dissidents who were boiled to death in defense of democracy.
Karimov couldn't have said it better himself. Oh wait, he did, in 1998, in a warning to his parliament about the dangers of Islamic extremists.
"'Such people must be shot in the forehead! If necessary, I'll shoot them myself ... !'"
