In his snapshot of the current situation across the Middle East (The opening up of Iran will count for microscopic without American support for democracy and human rights,19 January), Paul Mason calls for the US to foster “the forces of rationality, or legality and compassion in regions the west is disengaging from”. This is akin to asking a scorpion not to sting.
The country that gave us the secret detention centres at Bagram air base,Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper to carry out its detention and interrogation programme without interruption or challenge; the country that gave us Guantánamo Bay and drone assassinations, is now called on to be a force for “democracy and human rights”. I suspect the “young, and educated population of the region has long since ditched any faith in such empty promises. Anyone who retains such belief need only search for at how the US stood by while the military took power in Egypt and massacred about 1000 protesters at Rabaa al-Adawiya square on 14 August 2013. After the Rabaa massacre the US continued to provide the Egyptian state with $1.5bn of aid per annum. So much for fostering rationality,legality and compassion.
Nick Moss
LondonContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com