Uzbekistan double standards

If 9/11 and Iraq should had lessons, one of them is surely that we, the West, cannot go on playing the Kissinger era game of boosting the power of evils we consider to be lesser in order to defeat greater evils. We helped created Osama and the Taliban to fight the Cold War in Afghanistan; we strengthened Saddam to fight Iran. Now we're continuing to give succor to supposedly friendlier Arab Gulf tyrants and authoritarian regimes in places like Pakistan. And, of course, places like Uzbekistan.

While Bush, Rice and co rightly supported the democratic insurrections in Ukraine and elsewhere, we are standing by and letting similar aspirations in Uzbekistan be drowned in blood, because the regime is an ally in the war on terror.

John Quiggan of Crooked Timber writes:

The US currently has an air base and around 1000 troops in Uzbekistan. They can’t be regarded as neutral, and their presence clearly supports the mass murdering and torturing dictator Karimov, someone who appears indistinguishable from Saddam circa 1980. A literal reading of Administration rhetoric would suggest that the US should use its power to overthrow Karimov , but there’s zero possibility that this will happen (the official US response is an appeal for restraint, directed mainly at the protestors). But the troops should be withdrawn immediately, and all ties with this evil regime broken.

Blog links: Gateway Pundit More Violence Rips Uzbekistan, SiberianLight: Carnival of the Revolutions II, Registan.net Uzbekistan

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