Good intentions don’t ensure human dignity

In its annual report, Amnesty International charged that there is a vast chasm between the rhetoric and the reality of President George W. Bush’s contention that America is "founded on and dedicated to the cause of human dignity."

In fact, Amnesty listed the United States as being one of the top human rights violators around the world.

The Declaration of Independence clearly indicates that this country was founded on the notion that "all men are created equal." And the U.S. Constitution is a checklist of freedoms Americans are meant to enjoy. This would imply that the country was indeed founded on the cause of human dignity.

The intentions of the founding fathers – including those who first set sail from England – were noble ones indeed, based on the idea of freedom and human rights. Unfortunately, good intentions don’t always ensure human dignity.

It would be two centuries before African Americans would be raised from the level of beasts of burden, and even longer before women would have the fundamental right to vote. And then there were Native Americans who were getting in the way of people enjoying their newfound freedoms, so those people engaged in ethnic cleansing and systematically destroyed the Indians.

Was the near annihilation of the Native American population a violation of their human rights? President Andrew Jackson – responsible for the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Trail of Tears — certainly didn’t think so. But today, most of us believe differently. If stealing land and killing its inhabitants are not violations, what are?

Despite our founding fathers best intentions, millions of Indians died, millions of African Americans were forced into slavery, and women couldn’t practice their fundamental right to vote until the early 20th Century.

We find in our country similarly good intentions to those of the founding fathers. We want a world founded on freedom and democracy. We want all people to be able to worship freely. We want humanity to respect the life of the unborn. We see terrible atrocities – first the 9/11 attack, then kidnappings, beheadings and other horrors – and we scream for justice.

So, why the Amnesty International report? Because good intentions don’t ensure human dignity.

"The USA, as the unrivaled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behavior worldwide," wrote Secretary General Irene Khan in the foreword to the Amnesty report. "When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity."

It’s not surprising that the report has been strongly discounted by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. President Bush called the report absurd, and maintained that the allegations were made by "people who hate America." Cheney commented, "Frankly, I just don’t take them seriously," while Rumsfeld called the report itself "reprehensible."

The report largely focuses on what it called "serious human rights violations" at Guantanamo Bay, a reflection of proven violations at prisons in Iraq, such as the notorious Abu Ghraib.

America was indeed founded on the notion of human dignity. But it could be argued that, as happened with the early European immigrants, we have become blinded to the violations of human dignity, and not only those at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Right here at home, the basic human rights of millions of Americans are being violated every day. The greatest cost of war is the damaged and destroyed human lives — the lives of the American soldiers, and the lives of innocent citizens of Iraq.

The cost also can be calculated in terms of our most needy here at home. Under the administration’s current budget, by 2009:

• Funding for veterans’ health services will fall 17 percent, or by $5.7 billion;

• State and local housing agencies will have to reduce the number of low-income families, elderly and disabled households it helps by 30 percent;

• Head Start will have to reduce by 62,000 the number of children who can participate;

• Funding for the Clean Water Act would have to be cut by nearly 40 percent;

• Education funding aid for low-income and other disadvantaged children would fall by $660 million.