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Thursday, September 28, 2006

This is the Bush Administration's kind of guy
Posted by Jill | 6:02 AM
I swear, if Borat didn't exist, Sacha Baron Cohen would have to invent him.

Oh. OK.

Anyway, it looks like the Bush Administration has learned nothing about coddling dictators:

When Vice President Dick Cheney came to this oil-rich Central Asian nation this spring he expressed admiration for what he called its “political development.” Yet just a day before his visit began, the authoritarian government effectively shut down the two most prominent American democracy organizations working here.

While American officials are negotiating to reverse the government’s decision, they have yet to complain about it publicly.

As President Bush prepares to receive the Kazakh president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, at a state dinner in Washington on Friday, the episode reflects the delicate balance the administration has struck with a country of growing strategic importance that has a record of corruption, flawed elections and rights violations, including the killings of two opposition leaders in the last year in disputed circumstances.

Critics here say the episode also illustrates the Bush administration’s willingness to sacrifice democracy, a centerpiece of its foreign policy, when it conflicts with other foreign policy goals.

“There are four enemies of human rights: oil, gas, the war on terror and geopolitical considerations,” said Yevgeny A. Zhovtis of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, an organization that has received financing from the American Embassy and the National Endowment for Democracy. “And we have all four.”

The Bush administration has promoted democratic reforms in Kazakhstan for years, but it also appears eager to mollify a president who has been a comparatively moderate Muslim leader in Central Asia, who has allowed NATO aircraft headed to Afghanistan to fly over the country and sent a company of soldiers to Iraq, and who controls vast resources of oil and gas, much of it extracted by American companies.


In other words, the Bush Administration promotes freedom and democracy everywhere -- except in the United States and in countries that have oil. If Saddam Hussein hadn't gotten too big for his britches where the Bush Family is concerned, he would still be heading the government in Iraq.
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