World knows our foreign policy better than we do

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http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/index.html

"We watch the American government be friends with this dictator over here and support him, because he will give you the oil or minerals or something that you want," one person stood up to say. "But then with this other dictator over there, who is not so friendly and cooperative, you will start talking about democracy just so you can get rid of him. This is so hypocritical, to use democracy this way, like a weapon. Do Americans think that the world does not understand what it is you are doing?"

Boy, now how would you answer that one? As he knew and I knew, he's right. In the past, we have used talk of democracy not as a core American principle, but to justify and disguise attacks on leaders who dare to defy us. Even the Bush administration, with its push for what the president calls a "global democratic revolution," acknowledges the history but promises that those days have ended. The short version of its new pro-democracy policy is, "This time we really mean it."

But we don't. Our discussion took place Monday. That very day, 80-year-old Heidar Aliyev, the longtime ruler of Azerbaijan, was being buried in the capital city of Baku. A former KGB general who had run Azerbaijan when it was part of the Soviet Union, Aliyev had continued his harsh rule as dictator after the country became independent in 1993. His funeral was attended by his successor as president of Azerbaijan -- his 41-year-old son, Ilham Aliyev.

The younger Aliyev had been "elected" president in October with 80 percent of the vote in an election that international observers dismissed as a sham. Afterward, street protests were brutally suppressed, opposition figures tossed in prison and opposition press muzzled. And yet, shortly after the fake election, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Baku to congratulate Aliyev on his victory, express support and, according to Azerbaijani officials, to negotiate the stationing of thousands of U.S. troops on bases in Azerbaijan.

Why? Because Azerbaijan possesses enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, hosts a strategically critical oil pipeline and shares a border with Iran. It's a troubling echo of events that occurred 20 years ago this week, when Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad to greet a man named Saddam Hussein.

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