For the Attention of all USA Spokespersons: “Can’t your Ears Hear What Escapes your Mouth?”
13.06.2023
The title “Can’t your Ears Hear What Escapes your Mouth?” is a rough translation of the Mauritian saying, “Sannla la, so zorey pa tande ki so labus pe dir?” You exclaim this when someone says something so hypocritical or so untruthful that you can’t believe they said it. A mother might also use it of a child that’s come out with a preposterous pretext for having done something amiss.
American Illegal Invasions and Occupations v/s Russian ones
Listening to CNN, or White House official statements, or bellicose Congressmen and women, when they talk about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being “in violation of international law”, for example, but without the least recognition of recent USA invasions of, say, Iraq and Afghanistan, causes people all over the world to gasp, and mutter something like, “Can’t these American spokespeople hear what escapes their own mouths?” It is just not feasible to act in this unprincipled way. It relies on their total blindness to their own self-deception.
It is a kind of passing madness that allows these “spokespeople” to exhibit willful ignorance, or grotesque double-standards, or just plain glorification of, or fawning to, power. Or perhaps a bit of each? It is the kind of madness that feeds on too much power, which pretends, while it lasts, to make “might” right. There is no other rationale.
And as for when the very next news item following, say, an embedded CNN report from behind Ukrainian lines about the Russian occupation, is a news item taking the form of a eulogy to the Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine, this becomes positively grotesque.
There was an extreme example of this kind of eulogy to invasion and aggression made recently, when European union President Ursula von der Leyen, USA’s hawkish ally, commended Israel on the occasion of its 75th Anniversary for inter alia “making the desert bloom” forgetting that this racist slogan masks the desolation and genocide of the people living there, the Palestinians. She is known for her bellicose stand against Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine, while she provides arms to the victim of the invasion; but she supports the Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which has been and still is, incidentally, well-nigh totally funded and armed by the USA. (We commend our readers to the two-minute speech of the Irish Member of the European Parliament, Clare Daly. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj0-aInOYj4.)
After this kind of public exhibition of hypocrisy in dealing with Israel and Russia so differently for identical crimes, the USA’s spokespeople are then “shocked” that half the world’s people’s respective governments did not vote in favour of the USA-proposed UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia for its invasion? Can’t these Americans’ ears hear what their respective mouths say about Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Russian occupation of Ukraine even when they are happening concurrently? It’s like not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, morally speaking.
People from outside the USA’s hegemony, however, cannot act that irrationally without risking being ridiculed. American commentators, and European leaders like Ms Von der Leyen, who spout these double-standards, echo the obsequious courtiers praising the King’s beautiful invisible clothes when the man is standing there in front of them stark naked.
The rationality that “The Enlightenment” brought to Western so-called civilization is under threat when challenged by such a dire case of the inability to apply a universal principle. The only reason we can refer to “ethical behavior” or “moral standards” or even something practical like “international law” is by using a universal approach: the same rule applies to us all. This is true, unless we, each time, explain what exactly the difference is that could justify any different application of the rule. But, the USA does not do this. Instead the USA falls back on half-witted terms like “the rules-based international order” when “international law” exposes their own criminal behavior.
And what could journalists do to get around this problem of double-standards in their reporting? For example, CNN journalists could cover themselves by introducing items on the Russian invasion with something like, “We now recognize, of course, that we, as journalists, were wrong to be embedded with the USA military during its illegal, unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq. We were duped by American propaganda into believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which he was imminently in danger of using, and have since found out that we were being hoodwinked all along. We should have criticized that invasion and that occupation. Then, we would be more convincing when criticizing this Russian invasion and occupation today. We apologize, by the way, for, say, 500,000 Iraqi deaths in which we were complicit.”
The Israeli Invasion and Occupation of Palestine
Or, in respect of the Israeli invasion and military occupation of Palestine, American journalists and world leaders could explain, before launching their criticism of Russia for its invasion, “We recognize that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is also illegal, and in violation of international law, just as the Russian occupation of Ukraine is. We, as journalists, or as world leaders, deplore US arms deliveries to the aggressor Israeli State, and call for the immediate withdrawal of Israel from Palestine as a whole and, while about it, from the Syria’s Golan Heights, just as we call for a Russian withdrawal. We apologize for being so late in taking a stand in the former case, while being embedded with the Ukrainian army, in the latter. We realize how much Palestinian suffering could have been averted, had we been more consistent in our analysis. We now realize that the USA should, in fact, be arming, not the aggressor Israel, but the victim, Palestine, as it does in the case of the Russian aggression on Ukraine.”
In Mauritius, we would, also appreciate American and British journalists beginning their articles against the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine by saying, “We know the UK and USA illegally occupy the Chagos including Diego Garcia, which are part of the Republic of Mauritius, and that this is in violation of international law, and we call on these two imperialist states to withdraw, in compliance with the advice of the UN’s top Court, the ICJ, of whom the General Assembly requested an Opinion, which said they should withdraw, just like Russia should withdraw from Ukraine.” The same goes for US and UK leaders. Then, we could listen to their speeches without an incredulous guffaw, and without being obliged to say, “Sannla la so zorey pa tann seki so labus pe dir?”
But the continued hypocrisy and moral duplicity of the USA and its allies and embedded reporters obliges us, again and again, to return to the Kreol proverb.
Listen to this example from a U.S. Under-Secretary of State Richard Rahul Verma on his visit to Mauritius, at a time when the UK is hood-winking our Prime Minister into “secret talks” on Diego Garcia. When asked about Diego Garcia, in the context of the UK-USA’s violation of international law by their continued military occupation now being made abundantly clear by both the ICJ and every other UN body, he replied that the USA’s concern is that it, the USA, has “security interests”. So, listen to your mouth: you have security interests in our land. Sounds just like what Vladimir Putin says about the Ukraine. Can’t you hear it?
Monroe Doctrine and “Unprovoked” War
And now let’s look at the “unprovoked war” that Russia has declared.
You will have noticed that the White House and all the US spokespeople and most of the US media cannot refer to this war without mentioning that it is “unprovoked”. Of course, this repetitive refrain means that The lady doth protest too much, methinks. The reason this is so truly hilarious, even as tragedy unfolds, is that it comes out of the mouths of American spokespeople, whose State maintains the existence of the USA’s infamous “Monroe Doctrine”. This, therefore, takes the cake for hypocrisy. Let us explain.
The Monroe Doctrine, imposed for exactly 200 years in the year 2023 and still in operation, has been used in order to justify any American invasion anywhere in the “Western Hemisphere” because this is all within the USA’s “sphere of influence”. This Monroe Doctrine has been the justification given for the United States invasions into some 15 different Latin American countries. Cuba, for example, was invaded by the USA in the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1962, and then Cuba was not even “allowed” defensive help from the then USSR. The USA went to the very brink of nuclear war to keep its enemy of the time (the USSR) away from any country anywhere near its borders. Cuba is across the sea from the USA, while Ukraine abuts Russia. And yet, the USA through its NATO (for “NATO”, read “US-led military alliance”) encircles Russia, supports a coup d’état in Ukraine, announces NATO expansion i.e. US military bases nearer and nearer the Russian borders until in Ukraine with nuclear arms pointed at Russia, pretending all the while that Russia’s closing down of the Warsaw Pact and the USA vowing not to expand NATO were not the very basis upon which the USSR and the USA agreed in the 1990s to end the Cold War and put a halt to the arms race. The USA now claims that not expanding NATO was never signed “in writing”. The reason it was not in writing is that it was the basis of the whole agreement, and everyone in the world knew it. Now, we are all supposed to have forgotten that. And also to have forgotten that the Monroe Doctrine is still in operation. Bernie Sanders and others in the USA have recently launched a move to finally get their government to renounce the Monroe Doctrine. (See the Amy Goodman Show on “Monroe Doctrine”.)
Fortunately, we are not all that docile nor that idiotic, even in the USA itself.
So now we know that we must point out these speakers’ hypocrisy, however powerful they are or think they are, each time their ears don’t hear what their mouths say.
And what about “What-aboutism”?
Anyone who just calls our criticism of the US’s double standards mere “what-aboutism” is part of the counter-enlightenment we are referring to. The very idea of “American exceptionalism”, which underpins this kind of double-standard, is nothing more than an archaic, anti-democratic, immoral excuse for violations of international law and often even for war crimes, and it bears racist connotations. In fact, the concept of American exceptionalism is closely linked to the supposed “Manifest destiny” of “God’s approval” (alleged) for American expansion, even at the cost of colonial genocide, colonial slavery, and general colonial domination and pillage. It is beyond justification.
