Double Standard

As I do now and then, I just visited the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Web sites. Among other articles on their home pages, both AI and HRW noted reports on [AI’s words] “the need to close Guantánamo and to end the lawlessness that it symbolizes.” That really goes to their claim that the USA is violating the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo Bay.

I decided to search the AI site for articles addressing the Geneva conventions and found that there are 1,890 citations under “Geneva Conventions” including lots of articles that condemn the USA for Guantánamo and Israel for a variety of acts in the “occupied territories,” Lebanon, Gaza and the like. At the HRW site, a similar search yielded 2,500 citations including a commentary by Jamie Fellner, the Director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, who accused the U.S. of a “double standard” when it applies the Geneva Conventions at Guantánamo.

Hmmm. I went back and checked the home pages again. Surprisingly, there was no mention of the Iran’s gross violation of the Geneva Conventions that occurred just today as the Mullahs paraded kidnapped British marines in front of TV cameras.

Talk about a “double standard.”

Organizations that characterize themselves as “defending human rights world wide [HRW’s catch phrase] should recognize that the world is a very big place with lots of very bad people, and not all of those people reside in Western democracies or carefully selected third-world dictatorships. They should be just as willing to condemn Hezballah, Hamas, and Iran -- not with muted tones or with qualifiers, but with the same fervor that currently reserve for just two countries -- the USA and Israel.

I guess that's the "double" standard they're happy to live with.