Shut Up And Listen 212

God Bless America

My classes have ended for the year, just have exams left. That meant this past week I had my last class in international relations and this week, my prof really impressed me. I'll be honest in that Dimitrov, as that is his name, hadn't made a big impact on me this past semester. But this week he really impressed me. For our final class, the topic was "The Politics of Human Rights" and where he impressed me was when we got to the various international initiatives that have been taken within the field of human rights. We went down the list and got to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Amazing thing, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is. Did you know that it is the most widely ratified treaty in the world? Currently 191 countries in the world have ratified it out of a possible 192. Now, you may ask yourself, "Well then, which country has not ratified that treaty?" And your mind may immediately gravitate to all of those horrible countries that are usually the main suspects when it comes to shit like this. "Oh, it's got to be China or North Korea or Iran, those bastards," you say to yourself. Can't say I blame you, but see, I'd been in this class to know what the answer was before I learned it. It's the good ol' US of A. "But surely, it can't be the USA!" you cry. "America promotes human rights! Especially the rights of children! America is a good country devoted to freedom and the protection of the innocents!" Well no.

Of course it's the United States of fucking America, boys and girls.

If there's one thing I've learned in international relations during this past semester, it's that the US doesn't give two shits about that sort of thing unless it's in the US' best interest. Time and time again, we'd be given lists of international agreements where only small groups of nations were opposed to it and every goddamn time, the US was fucking on it. Let's take the International Criminal Court as another example. At the Rome Conference in 1998, the ICC was created through the Rome Statute with a vote of 120 nations in favour and 7 opposed. Those in opposition were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen, and the United States. Such an illustrious group, isn't it? (And just so you know, the US's objection to the ICC is that US soldiers may be prosecuted, but that is a falsehood as the requirements for prosecution are that the objectionable actions must be a plan, policy and widespread practice. That means if a lone soldier acts on his own, he is not under the jurisdiction of the court. The people who would be prosecuted would be those who order the actions. And by the way, those actions are stuff like genocide and crimes against humanity, you know, the kind of stuff that the US uses as justification for their little "regime changes.") Seriously, it didn't seem to matter what the treaty involved, the US almost always opposed it (oh, sorry, the US was all in favour of creating things like the World Bank--so, if it involved the handling of money where they got to be in charge, they were cool with it).

Getting back to my prof, as I said before, he impressed me this week when the fact that the US is the only country in the world to not ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child and someone asked why. He opened it up to the class to speculate and people gave some answers, all of which could be right, but weren't what he was looking for. And then before telling us what the "official" reason was, he impressed the hell out of me. He said something along the lines of "You know what? I don't care what their reason is. I don't even consider that a legitimate question despite the fact that I have to treat it as a legitimate question. The US always has a reason. They always have some justification and I'm just sick of it." Then he gave us their "official" reason and oh, it is a good one: the Convention explicitly applies to anyone under the age of 18 and one of the provisions is that no child can be involved in military service. How this applies to the US is that if they ratified the treaty, then they could no longer recruit high school students to join the military. Damn fine reason, don't you think?

The US also argues that other nations don't take treaties as seriously as them and when they enter into one, they follow it. And that is a good point in one respect. If they don't intend to follow it, they shouldn't sign it and as we all know, a good chunk of those 191 nations who ratified the Convention are breaking it. But here's the other thing: the US should be following it. Fuck that "oh, we don't sign if we don't intend to follow" excuse. It doesn't fucking apply because the US should fucking want to adhere to that Convention. And who cares if the other guys don't follow it? That makes it okay to be just as big assholes as them? I thought America was supposed to be the good guys. What the fuck is wrong with them? Huh? Fucking tell me! Oh, they want to be able to recruit kids straight out of fucking high school to serve in the motherfucking military? Oh, well, I guess that excuses it! I guess that makes America look like the good guys all over again! Did if ever occur to them that maybe they, I don't know, shouldn't be recruiting children to fight in the military? No, I mean, really, tell me how that is a justifiable thing. Tell me. Convince me that that is an okay thing to do. And I say that recognising that Canada probably does it too, but I don't agree with that, so give me another justification. Just one. Tell me why it is okay to convince children to put their lives on the line where legally it's recognised that they are not able to make such decisions.

The United States of America is a selfish, short-sighted nation. As I said before, it seemed every time we discussed international agreements, the US was always opposed to them. Let's see, there's the UN, which the US has been a big supporter of, but hey, look at this: in the UN charter, the US insisted on the inclusion of Article 51 that states that the only justification of war is "if an attack occurs" against the nation. I still laugh at that. When it came to climate change, the US pretty much was in the forefront of arguing against any international measure that would try to limit climate change. Same with deforestation. In regards to collective security, we learned how well the US handles that on the international scale (the "you're with us or you're against us" policy, which is a damn fine policy, I must say). My absolute favourite was in regards to globalization where it became very apparent that western nations such as the US were the main opponents to free trade and the opening up of markets. Just so you know, developing nations don't want your money, they just want to be able to sell you their products, but the US government won't let them. Capitalism at work, people. And so on. It was amazing.

In this week's lecture, another interesting idea came up: why is the US more concerned with giving the people in Iraq the right to vote than in giving them food, clean water, medical care, and all of those essentials to live? Seriously, how the fuck is the right to vote more important than the bare essentials it takes to survive? In fact, do people in the US and other nations really have the right to life when they don't have the right to those essentials? Or how can you have the fourth largest number of state-sponsored executions in the world in 2004 and promote a "culture of life"? Can someone tell me please?

And I'm sure it will be easy for many to just write this column off as more of my anti-America ranting, but it's not like I'm making this stuff up. I'm not saying any of this as justification for the deaths of any American people either, as that's just as wrong. I'm just saying that in many respects, the US is a fucking scumbag nation that is often more in agreement with horrible dictators than other democratic and free nations. Because you know, my prof was right, it doesn't matter why the US does what it does anymore. That doesn't change the fact that they do it. And it doesn't change the fact that it's wrong.