Mr Bush, whatever happened to your commitment to "end tyranny in the world"?

The conservativehome.com website is a great admirer of George W Bush and his progressive brand of conservatism. We support him in the war on terror and in the Iraqi stage of that war. We were always worried, however, that he would find it difficult to live up to the rhetoric of his January State of the Union speech and our fears are being justified in horrible fashion.

Bush's idealism is floundering at the end of the Uzbekistan government's rifles. Two weeks ago 500 people, including many women and children, were killed by Uzbeki troops in the Andijon province. President Bush's response was muted. Uzbekistan's leader, Islam Karimov, was the first power to offer America support after 9/11. But, as noted by The New Republic, Uzbekistan is the kind of unsavoury regime that Bush's new foreign policy was meant to challenge:

"Uzbekistan's dictator, Islam Karimov, does not tolerate dissent. A former communist apparatchik turned pro-Western kleptocrat, Karimov has tortured and killed his way to the top of the heap of the world's human rights abusers. His medieval regime notoriously suffocates prisoners with chlorine-filled gas masks and has boiled at least two opponents in cauldrons of water. He has used a real but exaggerated threat from an Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), as a cudgel to destroy all opposition." 

Concern at Bush's foreign policy from a left-leaning journal like TNR might be shrugged off but it's less easy to shrug off similar criticism from a neocon magazine like The Weekly Standard:

"President Bush should lead the international pressure on Karimov to allow journalists, legitimate relief workers, and trustworthy investigators to travel to Andijon and render a verdict on the events there. That verdict will likely be harsh for Karimov, and it should have consequences for U.S. aid to and support for the regime. Washington cannot turn a blind eye to massacres in a country where U.S. troops are based and that receives U.S. assistance. Here as elsewhere, the principle of linkage between a regime's behavior and relations with the United States must be reestablished. And if not in Uzbekistan, where we have so much leverage, how seriously will others take our promises and our warnings?"

Comments

[Simon C]

Quite right to take this up in the Blog. Karimov must go. Those of us who agree with neo-con principles must keep up whatever pressure we can to ensure they are consistently applied.

[malcolm]

I hate to rain on this parade but I'm sure that most of those who use this board are well aware that U.S .foreign policy is dictated by national interest rather than morality.Therefore the U.S. will do sweet f.a. about Karimov unless it's in their interests to do so,at the moment it isn't so they won't.I'm quite suprised to find that anyone who supports the neo-Con agenda would be naive enough not to recognise this.

[Simon C]

The point is though, that to date, the Bush line has been that it is no longer in the long-term US national interest to foster oppression - it creates worse problems down the line.

[Passing through]

Rather like Robespierre's notion of the "virtuous society", more folks are likely to agree that the "war on terror" is a "good thing" than are likely to agree on what either entails.

Besides that, I don't see many American economists, or even Alan Greenspan, saying that the soaring budget deficits of the Bush administration are a "good thing". At the very least, the deficits hardly reflect a commitment to "small government". Btw Bush collected 51% of the total vote in the US Presidential last year, which hardly demonstrates landslide support for the Bush administration on the part of America's electorate.

Just how much credibility will Tony Blair have with G8 leaders when they meet at Gleneagles this July after he assured the G8 leaders at the Evian summit in June 2003 that he stood "100%" by the evidence shown to the public about Iraq's alleged weapons programmes and it turned out that Iraq didn't have any WMD?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2955036.stm

Naturally, the BBC report is "biased", of course. ROFL.

[Malcolm Shykles]

Anyone wishing a serious debate on the "War on Terror" should read the excellently researched book “Terror Inc” by Loretta Napoleoni”.

What is (nothing to do with the above book) evident in the London 7/7 atrocity is that it seems to be a measured attack. Some who have more knowledge of what could have happened are thankful that it was not a nuclear or chemical assault.

It has also exposed London’s vulnerability to serious terrorism. Only four 10lb devices were needed to cripple the city for two days.

The whole idea of a war on terror needs revising. We have seen at first hand what the citizens of Baghdad have to suffer every day.

One might argue that Blair and Bush are now the prime proponents of global terrorism. It is my view (and I accept that I may be alone in this) is that the “War on Terror” is actually spreading terror.