This Isn't the Real America By Jimmy Carter

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111405Q.shtml

 

 

 

 

This Isn't the Real America

By Jimmy Carter

The Los Angeles Times

 

Monday 14 November 2005

 

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of

radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles

espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

 

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace,

economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and

human rights.

 

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens

with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with

respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

 

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence

from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed

long-standing global agreements - including agreements on nuclear

arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of

justice.

 

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority

unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a

policy of " preemptive war, " an unabridged right to attack other

nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other

purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we

brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct

discussions to resolve disputes.

 

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top US

leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

 

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who

believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be

internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat

and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our

declaration of " You are either with us or against us! " has replaced

the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual

interests, including the threat of terrorism.

 

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times

of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated

exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to

fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been

asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal

or minimize public awareness of casualties.

 

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human

rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly

violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

 

Of even greater concern is that the US has repudiated the Geneva

accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and

Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the

so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see

the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free

to perpetrate " cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment "

on people in US custody.

 

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and

their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that

of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate

or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated

during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global

nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of

" first use " of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is

contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

 

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of

government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry

and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought

continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal

condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

 

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by

unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working

families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000

per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest

among industrialized nations).

 

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses

of worship and in government, as church and state have become

increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

 

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the

unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country

should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to

combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of

our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing

human assistance to people in need.

 

It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within

our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a

common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and

moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

 

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. His

newest book is Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis,

published this month by Simon & Schuster.

 

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