America, the self-appointed cop of the world, may need to rethink its policing strategies. Both at home and abroad.
A good global cop is one which polices itself as it does others by the same rules. The United States of America fails on both counts. Begin with self-policing.
If not before, at least on Jan 6, last year, and thereafter, the US has been a bad cop at home. Come tomorrow, the riot that shook the seat of the government will be a year old. Yet former president Donald Trump, who engineered the revolt, and his Republican Party, have not mended their ways. They have gone so far right that there appears no way back.
What's worse, the sore losers are unleashing their anger on state legislatures by getting them "to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do", moans The New York Times. Talk about the power of a bad example.
America is doing much worse outside its borders. Again, a good cop will apply the very same rules on its allies as it does on others. Not America. Take Israel, a state that the US helped create on stolen Palestinian land. It commits all the crimes in the Rome Statute yet not a squeak from President Joe Biden, who is supposed to be better for America and the world.
In less than a year, Biden has given ample reasons to both that he is just as bad as Trump. Like Trump, he is urging on Tel Aviv's impunity by arming the Zionist regime to the teeth against the helpless Palestinians.
Neither is there any squeal from The Hague, where the International Criminal Court (ICC) resides. When the cop fails, the court fails, too.
David Hearst is right. Writing in the Middle East Eye, a regional news portal, he says of the US: "If it is the enforcer of international law, let's see Washington make Israel pay a price for its continued settlement policy, which makes a mockery of United Nations Security Council resolutions, and its policy for a resolution to the Palestinian conflict."
We join him in saying this: Doing nothing about armed lynch mob settlers attacking unarmed Palestinian villagers in the West Bank is the same as agreeing with them. Perhaps Biden's Washington, like that of Trump's Washington, wants Tel Aviv to make a Palestinian state an impossibility.
Also, a good cop, like a good law, will be consistent. Not America. One rule for the "Third World" and another for the "First World". Consider the freedom to protest.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just warned Khartoum of dire consequences if the military government of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan continues to put the protests down. Where was Blinken when far-right bound British Home Secretary Priti Patel pushed through several bills in Parliament to put down such protests in Britain? Do not get us wrong. We are no supporters of al-Burhan.
On the contrary, this Leader had, on more than one occasion, equated the Sudanese general to the rogue Myanmar general Aung Min Hlaing. We urge the ICC to investigate both with haste. In this we are consistent.
Not America. It has a North-South bias etched deep into its psyche. As Hearst argues, if America wants to be a champion of rules, it must live by the rules. Put differently, America must practise what it preaches.
