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Saturday, May 21, 2005
Freedom is a curious thing. Consider the case of Uzbekistan, where the regime of Islam Karimov gunned down over three hundred anti-government demonstrators last week. Karimov's government, a brutal dictatorship which routinely employs torture and boils prisoners alive, is an ally of the United States, backed up by American troops and aid dollars. Does this association then undermine the President's goal of spreading freedom through the world? Hardly, for beneath that torture, savagery and murder is torture, savagery and murder aimed at bad people.
Freedom, after all, is not merely the condition of being free. It is also the willingness to fight those forces opposed to freedom. And in the fight against the fight against freedom, Uzbekistan has more than proven its mettle, putting its unique people-boiling skills to good use against the terrorists, suspected terrorists, and suspected possible associated of possible suspected terrorists flown in by the United States. Indeed, Uzbekistan has bought itself enough anti-anti-freedom to counterbalance the somewhat regretable human rights abominations within its borders. The Medium Lobster has consulted the formula for freedom itself and has found Uzbekistan to be hardly problematic: F = good guys not tortured or killed(bad dudes tortured or killed)In fact, when one looks at the hard numbers, America's weakest allies in the war on the war on freedom - and thus the least free - are not halfway across the world in central Asia, but much closer to home. For all its vaunted human rights record, Canada has done precious little to help torture its citizens on behalf of the United States government; indeed, it has opposed this critical counterterrorist measure at every turn. Likewise, despite Sweden's remarkably open society, the Scandanavian nation hasn't turned a single thumbscrew in the struggle against our Islamist enemy. Why, next to stalwarts like Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan, France is a veritable red flag for regime change! Until the Bush administration starts getting serious with dirty-fingered allies in the anti-freedom axis like Germany, Luxembourg, and Holland, how can its message of freedom be taken seriously at all?
posted by the Medium Lobster at 8:15 PM
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