[Mb-civic] This Isn't the Real America By Jimmy Carter The Los Angeles Times

[Michael Butler]

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    This Isn't the Real America
    By Jimmy Carter
    The Los Angeles Times

    Monday 14 November 2005

    In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of
radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused
by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

    These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and
social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

    Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with
truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect,
state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

    At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from
the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed
long-standing global agreements - including agreements on nuclear arms,
control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

    Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority
unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of
"preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally
to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious
differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and
refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

    Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top US leaders
to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

    These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe
that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be
internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and
America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration
of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of
alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the
threat of terrorism.

    Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of
national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on
the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire
of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice,
and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of
casualties.

    Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we
now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some
extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

    Of even greater concern is that the US has repudiated the Geneva accords
and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and
secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary
rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice
president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel,
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in US custody.

    Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their
further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to
retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost
all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We
have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America
also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against
nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment
of weapons in space.

    Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of
government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and
other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued
lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of
our nation's global environmental policies.

    Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented
favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of
Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the
minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

    I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of
worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly
intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

    As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving
champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal
point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to
international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment.
We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in
need.

    It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our
country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common
commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values
that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

    Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. His newest
book is Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, published this month
by Simon & Schuster.