Bush known for discrepant fruit

Ever since his invasion of Iraq, President Bush has been talking
the talk of freedom.

Just this month, he was eloquent, inspiring, even provocative as
he apologized to Latvia. He told the eastern European nation, which
was once crushed under Soviet tyranny, that the United States was
wrong to hand over its fate to Stalin in the Yalta Conference after
the end of World War II.

Bush lamented that many times in recent history, “When
powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was
somehow expendable.”

He then delivered a sweeping rejection of this approach.

“We have learned our lesson: No one’s liberty is
expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend
on the freedom of others.”

Since 2003, this message has been the heart and soul of the
president’s foreign policy speeches.

Bush would have the world believe that the past 50 years of
cold, calculating sacrifices of freedom around the world for the
sake of short-term U.S. stability are now understood to have simply
created a perpetual cycle of new threats and ongoing
oppression.

An enlightened United States, Bush claims, now rejects the
notion of “excusing tyranny … and sacrificing freedom in
the vain pursuit of stability,” and instead blazes ahead on a
righteous course to liberate countries like Afghanistan and Iraq,
whatever the cost to our own interests.

It’s a beautiful vision, and a refreshing one. However, as
Bush’s favorite philosopher Jesus Christ would remind us,
“The tree is known by its fruit.”

And while Bush can talk the talk of freedom, he is abysmally
failing to walk the walk.

His overall foreign policy looks remarkably, disgustingly like
the short-sighted, narrowly self-interested approach for which he
so high-mindedly scolds his predecessors.

Bush and his defenders will of course point to U.S. liberation
efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but even if these had pure motives
and perfect consequences (which they don’t), they would be
the exceptions to the rule.

There are at least twice as many freedom-suppressing,
human-rights-abusing, even genocide-committing governments that
Bush happily appeases, excuses, and supports, all “in the
vain pursuit of stability.”

Let’s start with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Both countries
are ruled by brutal dictators ““ Ilham Aliyev and Islam
Karimov, respectively ““ who have Saddam Hussein-like talents
for imprisoning and torturing those who oppose their regimes.

Karimov put Uzbekistan in the news just last week by ordering
the worst massacre of peaceful protesters in Asia since Tiananmen
Square.

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who seems intent on
shaking hands with every dictator on the planet, has embraced both
these leaders. The Bush administration justifies ongoing flows of
military aid with vague references to the contributions each tyrant
has made in the War on Terror.

Of course, one of our biggest allies on the terror front is
Pakistan. Perhaps because Osama bin Laden could be hiding somewhere
in its western mountains, we should tolerate this country’s
military government, reinterpretation of rape as female infidelity,
and suppression of pro-democracy critics just long enough to catch
him.

But President Bush is even willing to let Pakistanis smuggle
nuclear technology to Iran and Libya and purchase American F-16s
capable of launching the nukes they already possess ““ if
they’ll keep up the ever-colder search for bin Laden.

But worst of all is Sudan.

The Sudanese government’s genocidal violence against its
ethnically distinct citizens makes Saddam and the Taliban look
pleasant.

The systematic displacement, terrorization and murder of
millions places this regime squarely in the historical company of
Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin.

Sudan even welcomed bin Laden before he took up with the
Taliban, but now its leaders have found that they can divert
attention from their own depravity by offering the United States
intelligence on al-Qaida.

To show its gratitude, the Bush administration has undermined
even its own positive steps in Sudan.

The United States has allowed the lifting of U.N. sanctions,
entertained the chief of Sudanese intelligence in Washington, D.C.,
and quietly killed the Senate’s unanimously approved Darfur
Accountability Act, which sought to crack down on this abhorrent
regime.

The clear lesson of all these cases is that whatever Bush may
say, he is no more enlightened than his predecessors on foreign
policy.

On the contrary, he is perfectly willing to purchase narrow,
short-term stability at the price of freedom, human life and quite
possibly a whole new set of enemies in the decades to come.

Though some may argue that this is simply the way the world
works, the president explicitly says he aspires to a higher
ideal.

But until he acts on that ideal in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan,
Pakistan and Sudan, he stands condemned by his own words, and
history will condemn him as well.

Collinsworth is a fourth-year history student.