The limits of freedom (NCR)

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Yes, we pursue elections in Iraq, even as we help depose the duly elected leader of Haiti; yes, we support freedom, but only as long as it respects our authority -- something Venezuela’s freely elected president Hugo Chávez learned when our government supported the ill-fated coup designed to depose him in early 2002. (On Feb. 2, Bush promoted Elliot Abrams to head his democracy push at the National Security Council. Abrams, convicted of lying to Congress over the Iran-contra affair in the late 1980s, was part of the U.S. team that sought to remove Chávez.)

Yes, we support limits on Iran’s nuclear program, even as we maintain the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet. And of course we must urge other governments to provide “decent treatment their own people,” even as we torture their citizens at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. <snip>

Today, one-sixth of the world’s 6 billion people exist on $1 a day -- less than a Starbucks cup of coffee; more than 800 million people in the developing world are malnourished; and more than 5 million children under the age of 5 die unnecessarily each year from hunger-related causes. It’s a daily tsunami.

In his calls to end tyranny and to promote freedom, the president makes no mention -- none -- of the world’s poor. <snip>

http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/021105/021105t.php