I just read a current story on the fragmenting ties between the U.S. and Uzbekistan. It's not a country that many people here know about (I'd probably never heard of it before 2001), but I've been pointing to it for years as a prime example of how our present administration is corrupting itself and our country with its hypocritical dealings with brutal dictators.

The story above traces the current diplomatic decline back to an Uzbeki massacre of protesters instigated by the government. What's tragic is that the massacre took place a year ago, and it's taken this long to get even this little amount of traction. What's even more tragic is that it looks like our own government indirectly shares the blame for the terrible loss of life.

We first started making deals with the violently repressive Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, back in 2001, due to his country's convenient location as a staging ground for the invasion of Afghanistan. Despite a well-documented history of brutal dictatorship, Karimov was welcomed to the White House by President Bush in 2002 to sign a series of deals.

But even by the corrupt standards of our administration, all was soon not well with our Uzbeki alliance. Karimov began to worry over seemingly U.S.-backed rebellions in other former Soviet republics, and in a state of heightened tension and paranoia over potential U.S. double-dealing, responded to an attempt to free political prisoners by slaying, it is suggested, hundreds in the uprising.

Our government just doesn't seem to learn. We helped Saddam Hussein into a position of power in Iraq, and look what happened. We armed and trained Osama bin Laden and his compatriots in their struggle with the Soviets in Afghanistan (and in Bosnia in the 1990s), and look what happened. And now it seems like we're doing the very same thing with radical Islamic militants in Iraq.

What's happened in Uzbekistan and all these other places is the inevitable result of our government's dangerously hypocritical pursuit of power. How else to explain the continuing allegiance with and support of tyrants and murderers in the name of freedom and democracy? What poisonous fruit will these seeds from today bring forth in the years ahead?

Maybe if we vote out enough of the enablers in the next couple elections, we can avoid finding out.

Labels: Politics