China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Cuba Win Seats On UN Human Rights Council, Drawing Scorn

[JackRiddler]

25. My choice would be for the U.S. to stop supporting Saudi Arabia.

How about yours?

Not only has the U.S. ceded any moral standing to complain about the situation in other nations, it is directly responsible for the situation in several of the nations you are now complaining about:

Imagine if Vietnam had not been invaded in the greatest international crime after 1945. Imagine two million people in Indochina had not died because of the U.S. invasion and war of aggression there. Perhaps conditions in Vietnam would be better today? Perhaps the U.S. would have any kind of moral standing to complain about conditions in Vietnam?

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most horrible regimes, no doubt. And it exists thanks to UK and U.S. imperialism. It is the most important U.S. ally in the key Middle East region alongside Israel.

Cuba, the target of a U.S. invasion and long-running blockade, absolutely merits a seat on that council, if any state does. Compare its history to those countries in the region that were unable to resist U.S. imperialism, like El Salvador or Guatemala, where U.S.-backed death squads killed hundreds of thousands. Also, probably the only torture chambers in Cuba are found in the U.S. military base at Guantanamo. Cuba's human rights violations are by any measure a) to be condemned and b) not comparable to the United States's, even on U.S. soil where a "war on drugs" rages and the highest imprisonment rate in the world obtains.

Russia is in a special class since it is the only nation that can be said to be quite in the same league as the United States - the only other one that has launched wars of aggression in recent years, and thus committed the highest of all international crimes, according to Nuremberg principles.