In Myanmar, also known as Burma, the Rohingya minority faces an existential crisis. The Southeast Asian nation’s military is systematically, village by village, executing people and burying the evidence in mass graves, not particularly concerned about the world’s horrified gasps. “Ethnic cleansing” is the dismayingly tame term to describe what is proceeding apace. Think the worst of human behavior throughout history and you are just about there in Myanmar.
But what emphasizes this particular genocide from others tolerated in the past, and adds surreality and immeasurable disillusionment, is who is sanctioning it’s occurance and cover up. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi inspired the globe with her Mandelaesque resistance of the same forces she now strains her neck to look away from. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a dignified and heroic non-violent struggle against generals who repeatedly jailed and threatened her, Aung San Suu Kyi never blinked…and ultimately prevailed, ascending to govern the country she had become the conscience of. The West collectively celebrated her triumph…. careful what you wish for.
Going from compassion and bravery to countenance of outright evil is often simply a function of circumstance. Denouncing the jack boot comes natural when it’s on your neck, yet becomes far more difficult, and a test of real character, when it’s being applied to those one has never particularly liked, or worse, holds accountable for past grievance. Courage is, of course, courage… but history has illustrated time and again the folly of viewing it as synonymous with principle and compassion once the dust clears, and the oppressed shift way too easily into the role of oppressor.
Daniel Ortega led a revolution against the long established banana republic injustice of Latin-American militarism in Nicaragua, even as two-bit elements of the Reagan Administration created a criminal enterprise to stack the deck against him. Now, the liberator is as overt and nihilistic a tyrant as one will find, literally ruining his nation to stay in his palace, worse than the Sandinistas allowed Somoza to become. Sadly, Aung San Suu Kyi has joined Ortega’s ranks, shrugging off massacres as situations “that could have been handled better.”
However, even more of a tragedy for us than the metamorphosis of a hero to a scoundrel is the clear understanding the affliction only underscores how empty America’s inventory of moral leadership in the world has become. The crisis is acute, and there is no light at the end of any tunnel; it will surely get worse before it gets better. Our civic catastrophe of almost two years ago has created a strip poker game of decaying US credibility, as the amoral nitwit we empowered rips off one piece of our once suitable ensemble after another.
How can one possibly criticize Myanmar murderers when North Korea’s maniac is our leader’s bestest new buddy, their relationship characterized by the White House as “a very good and warm one.”? When our President extols Putin as a role model for “strong leadership?” When a Chinese autocrat, poised as no other since Mao for total control of his country’s billions, is a “great President?” When the stated position of our nation, shrilly annunciated by its National Security Advisor, is the International Criminal Court, an institution critical to any collective deterrence of atrocity, is a threat to sovereignty, and any advocacy for inquiries into crimes by our citizens or actions of the only ally we care about will be met with the “harshest punitive measures?”
Anyone with eyes could see MAGA was the refutation of all but the lowest common denominator for American standards abroad. The American exceptionalism crowd has always used the world’s worst to apologize for US outrages like Abu Gharib and black site torture. And that nasty bunch is the heart of Trump’s wretched core, its constituency fully represented in the Administration’s emerging foreign policy brain trust, led by the likes of Bolton and Pompeo. But make no mistake, they speak to the world for all of us. There are no asterisks in international diplomacy.
What weight can our opinion carry on the arrest by Myanmar authorities of two journalists who reported on a recent massacre by an unhinged military? After all, our President spends countless idle hours tweeting his fondest wishes for just such a capability. Jailing political opponents? If only, our petulant fascist wannabe whines to the heavens. US moral superiority used to be condemned by tyrants as propaganda; now it really is.
Trumpism has inflicted in less than two years more ugly scars on our national landscape than can be tallied, but none are more unsightly than the wound we now exhibit when facing the world. Anti-democratic critics used to question how we could presume to lecture others on human rights and respect for decency. Now they don’t even have to; we have nothing to teach any tyrant, only a President who wants to learn their tricks of the trade. BC