Victor Davis Hanson: Why U.S. critics turn a blind eye to atrocities
To paraphrase the Ancient Greeks, it is easy to be moral in your sleep. Abstract ethics or soapbox lectures demanding superhuman perfection mean little without deeds.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other global humanitarian groups recently expressed criticism over the slated trial of the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. Such self-appointed auditors of moral excellence were worried that his legal representation was inadequate. Or perhaps they felt the court of the new Iraqi democracy was not quite up to the standards of wigged European judges in The Hague.
Relay those concerns to the nearly 1 million silent souls butchered by Saddam's dictatorship. Once they waited in vain for any such international human-rights organization to stop the murdering. None could or did.
Now these global watchdogs are barking about legalities — once Saddam is in shackles thanks solely to the American military (which, too, is often criticized by the same utopian-minded groups). The new Iraqi government is sanctioned by vote and attuned to global public opinion. Saddam Hussein was neither. So Amnesty International can safely chastise the former for supposed misdemeanors after it did little concrete about the real felonies of the latter.
We've seen many examples of this in-your-sleep moralizing. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pronounced from on high that the American effort to remove Saddam was "illegal" — this after moral paragons in the Security Council like China and France chose not to sanction the enforcement of their own resolutions.
Annan presided over a callous, scandalous oil-for-food program that starved millions with the connivance of international financial players, among them his own son. Again, it is easier to grandstand on television than curb illicit profits or be firm with a killer in the real world.
Europeans especially demand heaven on earth. The European Union is now pressuring the United States to turn over its exclusive control of the Internet, which it invented and developed, to the United Nations. So far the Americans, so unlike a Saudi Arabia or China, have not blocked users from net access, and freely adjudicate the worldwide Web according to transparent protocols.
That would never be true of the United Nations. If Iran or Zimbabwe were to end up on the Human Rights Commission, then they would be equally qualified to oversee the computers of millions of Americans. The same European elites who nitpick the United States about its sober stewardship of the Internet would be absolutely impotent once a China or Syria began tampering with millions logging on.
We see still more in-your-sleep moralizing when it comes to the topic of global warming. The heating up of the planet — and the American rejection of the Kyoto Protocol that was supposed to arrest it — is a keen source of anti-Americanism, especially in Europe....
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Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other global humanitarian groups recently expressed criticism over the slated trial of the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. Such self-appointed auditors of moral excellence were worried that his legal representation was inadequate. Or perhaps they felt the court of the new Iraqi democracy was not quite up to the standards of wigged European judges in The Hague.
Relay those concerns to the nearly 1 million silent souls butchered by Saddam's dictatorship. Once they waited in vain for any such international human-rights organization to stop the murdering. None could or did.
Now these global watchdogs are barking about legalities — once Saddam is in shackles thanks solely to the American military (which, too, is often criticized by the same utopian-minded groups). The new Iraqi government is sanctioned by vote and attuned to global public opinion. Saddam Hussein was neither. So Amnesty International can safely chastise the former for supposed misdemeanors after it did little concrete about the real felonies of the latter.
We've seen many examples of this in-your-sleep moralizing. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pronounced from on high that the American effort to remove Saddam was "illegal" — this after moral paragons in the Security Council like China and France chose not to sanction the enforcement of their own resolutions.
Annan presided over a callous, scandalous oil-for-food program that starved millions with the connivance of international financial players, among them his own son. Again, it is easier to grandstand on television than curb illicit profits or be firm with a killer in the real world.
Europeans especially demand heaven on earth. The European Union is now pressuring the United States to turn over its exclusive control of the Internet, which it invented and developed, to the United Nations. So far the Americans, so unlike a Saudi Arabia or China, have not blocked users from net access, and freely adjudicate the worldwide Web according to transparent protocols.
That would never be true of the United Nations. If Iran or Zimbabwe were to end up on the Human Rights Commission, then they would be equally qualified to oversee the computers of millions of Americans. The same European elites who nitpick the United States about its sober stewardship of the Internet would be absolutely impotent once a China or Syria began tampering with millions logging on.
We see still more in-your-sleep moralizing when it comes to the topic of global warming. The heating up of the planet — and the American rejection of the Kyoto Protocol that was supposed to arrest it — is a keen source of anti-Americanism, especially in Europe....