NP US cheerleaders please read

[Doug Millison]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010528&s=editors

excerpt:
"The global outrage is by no means limited to US policies on the Human
Rights Commission. In barely 100 days in office, the Bush Administration has
declared the Kyoto accords on global warming dead, spurning eight years of
work by 186 countries. It banned US support for any global organization that
provides family planning or abortion services, even as an AIDS pandemic
makes this a matter of life and death. It bade farewell to the antiballistic
missile treaty, while slashing spending on nuclear safety aid for Russia. It
casually bombed Iraq, helped shoot down a missionary's plane over Peru and
enforced an illegal and irrational boycott of Cuba. It sabotaged promising
talks between North and South Korea, publicly humiliating South Korea's
Nobel prizewinning president, Kim Dae Jung. The nomination as UN ambassador
of John Negroponte, former proconsul in Honduras during the illegal contra
wars, is an insult. "There is a perception," said one diplomat in carefully
parsed words, "that the US wants to go it alone. Our lawless exceptionalism
is a deeply rooted, bipartisan policy that didn't begin with the Bush
Administration. Under previous Presidents, Democratic and Republican,
Washington denounced state-sponsored terrorism while reserving the right to
bomb a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan or unleash a contra army on Nicaragua.
It condemned Iraq for invading Kuwait while reserving the right to invade
Panama or bomb Serbia on its own writ. The United States advocated war
crimes tribunals against foreign miscreants abroad while opposing an
international criminal court that might hold our own officials accountable.
Our leaders proclaim the value of law and democracy as they spurn the UN
Security Council and ignore the World Court when their rulings don't suit
them. The Senate refuses to ratify basic human rights treaties. The US
international business community even opposes efforts to eliminate child
labor. And of course, there are those UN dues, which make us the world's
largest deadbeat."