Say it ain't so, Joe Amnesty!
(With profuse apologies to Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Socks, and Major League Baseball.)
I report and link. You decide. - J :)
From a New York Post article, HUMAN WRONGS & THE ACTIVISTS WHO LOVE THEM:
HUMAN WRONGS & THE ACTIVISTS WHO LOVE THEM [/] by Ralph Peters [/] May 25, 2007 -- HOW many "human-rights activists" does it take to betray civilization?
[[Picture Caption:]] [[Pseudo-Sacred North Korean Dictator]] Kim: Not as nasty as U.S., says Amnesty.
After the Fatah al-Islam terrorists holed up in a Palestinian camp carried out a wave of bombings, bank robberies and assassinations, Lebanon's struggling democratic government ordered its army to stop them. The Palestinian refugees themselves applauded the army's efforts, stating that few of the terrorists were local and most were fanatics from other Muslim states. The terrorists ruled with the gun and sought to enforce Sharia law. Their victims want them gone.
The response from Human Rights Watch? Ignore the crimes of the terrorists and criticize the Lebanese army for attacking them "indiscriminately."
That would be travesty enough for one week, but it was only a sideshow. Each year, Amnesty International releases what purports to be an objective global survey of the state of human rights. Sounds like a great idea, but the report has long since degenerated into an effort to protect terrorists and mass murderers from justice - and bash America.
In its latest report, Amnesty International denounces the United States again. This time, it seems we're the foremost global abuser of human rights.
Oh, if you keep reading, rogue states such as Zimbabwe, China, Sudan, Russia and Iran get tut-tut mentions, although North Korea just sounds like a weight-loss spa. Except for our democratic ally, Colombia, only the United Kingdom appears remotely as savage as the United States.
Reading about American heartlessness made me want to move to Saudi Arabia, where women never see their rights abused and believers of every faith are free to worship. And if I want a beer, I can hop over to Venezuela, where everything's free.
The sad truth is that the misnamed "human-rights community" just may be the worst enemy of human rights without a country of its own. There are real human-rights tragedies unfolding every day, from Harare to Havana, but activists don't give a d%m% about the average Joe or Miguel or Ali.
It's all about saving celebrity mass-murderers. And their advocates' Freudian issues with Uncle Sam. Guantanamo is one of the world's best-run prisons, where terrorists are treated all too indulgently. But to hear the human-rights charlatans, you'd think we were the SS at Babi Yar.
And don't forget that wicked-beyond-all-wickedness criminal state, Israel. Thank God we have men and women of conscience to defend the freedom fighters who launch rockets blindly into Israeli cities or massacre children as a legitimate form of protest.
We, the human race, can't afford this nonsense. Human rights matter. But conservatives abandoned the issue to leftist ideologues - and those of us caught in the middle have no public voice to speak for us. Meanwhile, the world is screaming in agony, while the high priests of human-rights just want to spit in Washington's face (knowing we won't spit back).
How can anyone who pretends to have a conscience attack the United States for violating human rights and engaging in "fear-mongering," while looking away as millions of Zimbabweans live on the brink of starvation in a police-state, hundreds of thousands lie dead in Darfur, all of North Korea makes Guantanamo look like Martha's Vineyard - and Islamist fanatics kill tens of thousands of Muslims?
Apart from the fact that there really are things worth fearing in this world, all that matters to the human-rights phonies is that, if you twist things sufficiently, you can blame America for the Muslim victims of Muslim terrorism.
And I keep missing the mass demonstrations against female circumcision, in which little girls and young women endure unspeakable agony as each has her clitoris sliced away. Guess that's just a quaint expression of cultures uncorrupted by the West.
Human rights shouldn't be an issue of the political left or right. We should all be in this fight together. But to make meaningful progress, you have to take on the butchers who prey upon the masses - as we've tried to do in Iraq. Activists prefer protecting the killers.
Don't any of those sanctimonious human-rights advocates pause to consider what they're doing to hundreds of millions of their fellow human beings when they suggest that the paramount threat to human rights comes from the United States? How do they rationalize all the slaughter, rape, real torture and starvation-as-a-policy they ignore to embarrass Washington?
The defense of the human rights of the innocent masses is the single most serious issue of our time, embedded in every other strategic threat. It's just a d%m%ed shame that the human-rights activists aren't serious.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Never Quit The Fight." [My ellipses and emphasis]
