Which Double Standard Bothers You the Most?

1. North Koreas and Pakistans human rights records are abysmal, but Pakistan is a strategic partner and North Korea is a pariah.

2. International law is important, yet the United States can sign a deal with India, undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Joseph J. Steinberg
Busan, South Korea

Assertions of support for democracy, human rights, and self-determination for all peoples, while frequently overthrowing democratically elected governments to install right-wing dictators who not only have no respect for those proclaimed values, but actively undermine them, with brutal, even lethal results, to which the United States turns a blind eye and even offers covert support.

Scott Bidstrup
Costa Rica

Promoting democratic elections, and then ignoring the results if we dont like them, e.g., Gaza and Hamas.

Brian

The double standard that bothers me the most is the same one the article mentioned: support for horrendous tyrants while preaching freedom and democracy. Any government in the world that tries to care more for its people than for American business interests finds itself in trouble with the United States. The military or the Central Intelligence Agency, or both, will intervene with disastrous consequences.

Al Hingston
Canadian citizen
Marianivka, Ukraine

Abandoning Afghanistan, supporting former President Pervez Musharrafs military while neglecting the nations development needs, fear-based adherence to zero-tolerance policies on Iran, and distance from Sudan. The world is your citizens, United States, so wake up.

Suzanne V. Buchanan
Washington, D.C.

After the United Nations disapproval, we threw out U.N. inspectors to invade an independent country, Iraq, on false pretensions and still occupy that country. But we are arming Russias neighbors, threatening economic isolation, and demanding immediate withdrawal because Russia invaded Georgia, a war that was brought on because Georgia invaded a pro-Russian region.

Thomas Watts

The United States uses lack of religious freedom and democracy to oppose Iran, while supporting the same in Israel. Israel is a selective democracy (if that can be called democracy), where 50 percent of the population under its control does not have any citizenship or rights and 20 percent of the rest are second-class citizens who have to accept the majoritys dominance and superiority.

Bassam al-Kuwatli

The Israeli-Palestinian double standard where Israel can do no wrong. The United States should make a list of all of its vetoes of U.N. sanctions against Israel, and that list alone would convince rational Americans that Arabs do not just hate our freedoms but have real grievances the United States refuses to redress and refuses to let anyone else (including the United Nations) redress.

Orayb Najjar
Associate Professor
Department of Communication
Northern Illinois University

I dont know if I would call our hypocrisy on farm subsidies the worst, but it is the timeliest when one considers the weakness of the economy here and the rising cost of food everywhere. Should we be subsidizing farms here when we, in fact, need to tighten our governmental belts? The Doha talks just failed and foreign producers are too often locked out.

Michael Griffin

The most disgusting double standard from the USA is the one that says were a Christian nation and then the world sees the most un-Christian activities conducted under the guise of democracy and liberalism.

Howard Haighter

The so-called certification issued to countries like Colombia, as U.S. aid recipients, for their human rights performance. It is widely known that the most horrendous human rights violations are being committed by U.S. officials at the Guantnamo Bay prison and at other prisons abroad.

Armando Sanchez
Canada

I would love to see the end of policies that glorify the right to independence of one ethnic group (Kosovo from Serbia), while at the same time promoting the idea of untouchable borders (in Georgia) and denying others the same right (Russians in Georgia).

Sr?an Zdravkovi?
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Bryant University

1. Palestine/Israel. We would never tolerate being occupied in America; we would never tolerate roads for whites only; we would never tolerate a wall on our property that divides our communities and contributes to 70 percent unemployment; we would never tolerate checkpoints; and we would never tolerate collective punishment (I dont get thrown in jail or missiles fired at my home from helicopters when my neighbor does something wrong). Why is it OK when it comes to the Palestinians?

2. Asking the world to consume less energy and pollute less, while we consume about 75 percent of the worlds energy resources.

Mohamed Abdel-Kader

As long as the United States perceives utility and purpose in maintaining and improving a large nuclear weapons stockpile, then there is no reason in the end why other nations should not also want to do the same.

William Grassie
New York, N.Y.

The United States rails against countries such as Russia for flouting democracy, but it doesnt allow the residents of its own capital city a meaningful voice in Congress. Although its citizens pay federal taxes like those in the 50 states, the District of Columbia does not have a voting member of Congress and, indeed, is subject to the legislative oversight of elected officials from California to Maine.

John Gramlich

In the matter of Serbia, the United States denied Serbias claim of territorial integrity and forced an independent Kosovo onto the world, and the lickspittles of the West fell in line. But it defends the territorial integrity of Georgia and denies the rights of Ossetia and Abkhazia to their independence. When Russia says, OK, we will accept the principle of independence of peoples and recognize the independence of Ossetia and Abkhazia, Washington says, Well, no, we dont mean self-determination of peoples where we dont want it.

Andrew Kevorkian
Philadelphia, Pa.

If America were truly pursuing a policy of bettering the world and serving a practical lesson of justice for the entire world to see, then how can we explain its reluctance in signing the Rome Statute and becoming a state party to the International Criminal Court at The Hague?

Diana-Florin Cosmin
Bucharest, Romania

Your proposal to conduct a hypocrisy audit is all well and good, but misses the point. Double standards are merely symptomatic of the fact that the United States has no coherent foreign policy to begin with. Since the end of the Ronald Reagan presidency, the United States has bumbled its way from one ad hoc response to the next, making things up as we go along.

Jeff Procak
Jersey City, N.J.