U.S. pursues selfish ends in foreign policy
By Daily Bruin Staff
Nov. 25, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Over the years we’ve read and grown tolerant of these
kinds of headlines: “Fifty deaths as American warplanes
mistakenly bomb wedding celebration,” “Officer attacks
U.S. soldiers in Kuwait,” “Afghan civilians killed by
U.S. bombs surpasses death toll of Sept. 11 attacks,”
“Philippine forces conduct exercises in New Jersey,”
“Nigerian warplanes mistakenly strike Miami night
club.”
Wait, those last two headlines don’t sound right. Foreign
troops on U.S. land? The kind of insecurity, uncertainty and fear
that comes from knowing that foreign troops possess hegemony over
our land would be intolerable. With only two exceptions ““
Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 ““ in the last hundred years, we
have not experienced civilian or military casualties as a result of
a foreign attack against our people on our land. Such casualties
would require that we actually be attacked and foreign troops
placed on U.S. soil, which has never happened. This is in starch
contrast to the massive military operations that the U.S. military
has taken part in around the globe.
There are only a limited number of motivations for deploying
U.S. forces abroad, falling under overlapping categories:
self-defense as opposed to offense, and American interests as
opposed to foreign interests.
Let us not waste any breath hypothesizing that the primary
motivation driving American foreign policy is humanitarian or
foreign interests. If that was the case, aid would be predominantly
spent on underdeveloped countries in Africa in building
infrastructure. We see that particular region largely ignored, and
regions where natural resources are abundant and susceptible to
exploitation receive the majority of U.S. aid.
The current Iraqi situation is case and point: When the Bush
administration advocates ousting Saddam Hussein via military
invasion, he first justifies such a stance by alluding to the
removal of a “dictator who gases his own people” to
bring democracy to the Iraqi people. He calls Iraqi armament a
threat to world peace, thus citing self-defense. Yet the phrase
“American interests” pervades the speech of
congressman, analysts and politicians alike. I do not know anyone
that can, with a straight face, say “our government is
invading Iraq for the welfare of the Iraqi people.” That is
some very optimistic, but deluded thinking.
Logic brings us to conclude that if the United States is not
there for the welfare of the Iraqi people, it is there to defend
itself and its own interests. Taking care of one’s own
interests is not always wrong; in fact it is a cornerstone in the
liberal-capitalist individualist thought that pervades the world
community. Yet, in a nutshell, self interest is wrong when it
explicitly requires and causes harm to others. This is particularly
the case when self-interest has driven our government to enforce an
embargo against Iraq that UNICEF has deemed diametrically opposed
to humanitarian interests in Iraq.
This embargo has killed monthly, more children than total
casualties we incurred on Sept. 11, 2001. That’s a Sept. 11,
month after month, in Iraq for 11 years. Is U.S. blood worth more
than the blood in other countries?
In the United States, a few powerful “suits” that
represent us in Washington D.C. command the fate of developing
countries and the welfare of their people, and not the other way
around. With such power comes responsibility, but also the threat
of corruption. We must constantly question our leaders when they
make harmful, cruel policies and then justify them with lies.
Call me naive, but I was taught that it’s the
responsibility of the strong to help the weak, not to exploit the
weak because they can.
Some justify acting selfishly for national interests as an
unfortunate reality in the game of politics. But the
“they’re doing it; so we must” mentality is the
kind of logic that allows one wrong to justify the next. The United
States is in the driver’s seat to set a positive, just
agenda. Yet it has not done so. It’s time to call a spade a
spade. Until the United States can pursue foreign policy for the
purpose of benefiting other countries and reinforcing universal
human rights, people across the globe will liken us ““ and
rightly so ““ to corrupt police chiefs, benefiting themselves
while only paying lip-service to the phrase, “to protect and
serve.” What a sham.
