Time To Treat The USA As A Rogue State

"I think it would be a good idea." - Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization.

The UN's High Commissionner for Human Rights today urged US-led multinational forces to probe and prosecute deliberate killings of wounded people and civilians in the embattled Iraqi city of Fallujah. Unfortunately, that is simply not enough.

We have already seen that the USA, under the Bush administration, is incapable of delivering justice. Even if the soldier responsible for this murder is brought to justice, the massacres and repression of Iraqis will go on.

Look at the Abu Ghraib scandal, for example. Despite numerous US-led inquiries, "a few bad apples" were held to blame, while those truly responsible were never even seriously threatened with real justice.

Donald Rumsfeld, the chief architect of the proactive torture policy, has not been forced to resign. Alberto Gonzales, the White House Counsel who advised Bush that the Geneva Convention was a "quaint" irrelevance, has actually been promoted to Attorney General. And Bush himself has claimed another four years in the White House, despite another round of widespread election irregularities.

Look at the WMD fiasco and other so-called "intelligence failures" - the CIA and other arms of government are now being purged of all disloyal realists, while Bush White House insiders are promoted to positions of increasing power. This is an administration that will no longer even pretend to be moderate.

In other words, the USA has become a rogue state.

So rather than wait for the USA to mete out justice to the murderers on its payroll, the world must begin to proactively punish the USA.

It is time for sanctions and embargoes. It is time, moreover, that the USA's membership of the UN was suspended.

The rogue state must be treated as a pariah state until real change is effected.