USA Needs Help To Begin Long Journey Towards Democracy And Credibility By Robert Barsocchini

USA Needs Help To Begin Long Journey Towards Democracy And Credibility

By Robert Barsocchini

23 May, 2014
Countercurrents.org

It is time for the USA to begin the long journey towards one day achieving its aspirations of becoming a credible, free, and democratic entity.

The USA has made clear its desire to achieve credibility in the eyes of the world and be perceived as a group that bolsters peace and law, instead of a group that threatens and destroys them, as the USA  currently does .

If the fledgling group's commendable aspirations are ever to become realities, the USA must first make sincere commitments and preliminary moves towards achieving democratic ideals, and then carry those commitments through in the real world.
This is going to require many years of hard work, dedication, and tremendous focus on the part of the USA.  It will require great sacrifices, particularly on the part of US dictators and oligarchs, who will have to give up their positions of power over other US group members.  

Crucially, it will require concrete, lasting solutions for the USA's  critical problem areas , which include, but are in no way limited to, the following: 

• Democracy  -  Currently  and  traditionally , the group of people referring to itself as the USA has organized itself as a dictatorship, with prevailing elements of plutocracy and oligarchy.  US dictators and oligarchs must relinquish their power and allow all group members democratic control over their lives.  This is going to be difficult for figures that have enjoyed the benefits that positions of power and dictatorship over other group members allow, but it is an absolutely necessary first step on the journey to democracy and credibility.  The USA will also have to respect international democracy, and cease its use of guns, explosives, and other weapons to prevent and destroy said democracy.   
• Child Labor  - The USA must make firm commitments and take preliminary action towards ending its practice of child labor.  ( Example .)  Refraining from engaging in child labor is a crucial first step for any group hoping to achieve credibility and democracy.  
• UN Declaration on Children's Rights  - Currently the only group of people on Earth that refuses to sign the UN sanctioned commitment to children's rights, the USA must finally sign this commitment.  This will be a key step towards achieving international credibility, and a key step  towards eventually becoming a group that respects all of its members, and thus has a chance of functioning as a democracy.
• Maternity Leave  - The USA must give new mothers paid time off to bond with and raise their babies.  The USA is currently one of only four groups of people on Earth that refuse to do this.  Rectifying this issue will be a key step towards achieving democracy and international credibility.   (Th e other three countries that refuse to grant maternity rights are Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.)
• Spying on its Citizenry  - Privacy is essential to any group of people that wishes to function as a democracy.  Creating privacy for its group members is a necessary step on the way to achieving democratic ideals. 
• Using Government Spying Capabilities for Corporate Espionage  - Part of achieving credibility as a democracy will involve ceasing the use of government spying infrastructure to perform illegal corporate espionage on behalf of US oligarchs and their corporations, which is a key component the USA's current, undemocratic status.   
• Spying on the World -  The USA is the world's biggest illegal spy.  This damages its credibility and acts as a deterrent to democratic aspirations.  
• Prison System  - The USA has the world's biggest prison system and highest incarceration rates, with no close competitor.  Crime rates do not correlate with incarceration rates.  Group members with darker complexion are convicted of crimes at higher rates than group members of lighter complexion.  This leads into the next two problem areas:
• Racism  - The USA imprisons and tortures its group members of darker complexion at far higher rates than its members of lighter complexion.
• For-Profit Prison Labor System  - US plutocratic group members profit off of putting people in prison and having them do labor at low or no cost without opportunities for unions or benefits.  Considering the USA's racist imprisonment tactics and its history of slavery, lynchings, failure to prosecute murder of people of darker skin complexion, etc., this is a major roadblock to the USA's aspirations of democracy and credibility.  
• Lying  - The USA is going to have to learn to be honest and forthright, both internally and to the international community, if it wants to achieve its admirable, but currently unattainable, goals.  Like a "slow" child who lacks self awareness, the USA often seems to think that the world believes its fibs and lies.
• Propaganda  - The plutocratic USA's mainstream media is currently controlled by five plutocratic companies.  The issue is self explanatory, and will have to be addressed before the USA can be taken seriously.
• Hoarding Lethal Weapons  - The USA is currently the world's biggest hoarder of lethal weapons.  Unfortunately, current group-head Obama is veering the USA away from its goals of credibility, legality, and democracy by illegally requesting more money for nuclear weapons enhancement than any other president, while the only possible legal action is nuclear disarmament.  The USA is also the world's biggest hoarder of chemical and biological weaponry.  A necessary step to achieving the USA's aspirations will be to reduce its hoarding of lethal weaponry to a level comparable to any other group.  
• Weapons Sales  - The USA is also the world's biggest supplier of lethal weaponry, chiefly to regimes that violate human rights.  For example, current group-head Obama has recently sent the USA's biggest ever lethal weapons shipment, over 60 billion dollars worth, including some illegal weapons, to Saudi Arabia, another of the globe's most repressive groups, to help it maintain dictatorial power over its group members and others.  
• Torture  - The USA runs the world's biggest torture operations.  Respect for human beings is negated by the crude and medieval practice of torture, as are credibility and democracy.  Unfortunately for the USA's prospects of becoming a group with credibility and democratic forms, the USA has tortured nonstop since its recent inception, which, not coincidentally, involved torture, genocide, ethnic cleansing, aggression, biological warfare, and all the rest of the war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The USA has major momentum preventing it from ceasing its longstanding practice of torture, and it will be a difficult roadblock to overcome.  This is why the USA will need help from all citizens of the world in shedding its heinous practices and achieving its more noble aspirations.      
• Support for Torturers  - The  top ten recipients  of assistance from the USA are torture regimes.  This is a major impediment to the USA's aspiration of credibility, and of course to respect for human beings, which is essential to any aspiring democracy.   
• Recognizing International Law  - This will be a difficult step for the USA and will take time, but to achieve credibility, respectability, and, eventually, to support democracy and build democratic forms within itself as a group, the USA will have to recognize and obey international law, including the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, rather than subverting, ignoring, and destroying them, as has been longstanding US practice.
• Support for Fellow Dictatorships and Anti-Democratic Regimes -  The USA will have to stop supporting fellow anti-democracies and non-credible groups like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, etc., unless they do what the USA needs to do, too, and make firm commitments to ceasing their sponsorship for terrorism, and cease accepting aid from fellow terror states like the USA.  The USA currently sends hundreds of millions in aid or weapons to each of these and dozens of other dictatorships, making credibility and democracy impossible for the USA, as well as the countries it is selfishly holding back from achieving those aspirations for themselves.  
• Sponsorship of Terrorism -  Unfortunately, the USA is currently the  world's biggest sponsor of terrorism .  This is one of the USA's most critical problem areas, and it will need to be addressed before the USA can start thinking about achieving its more admirable aspirations.  
• Training and Harboring of Terrorists  - The USA is also going to have to make firm commitments and take concrete steps to show that it will stop training and harboring terrorists such as Orlando Bosch, Louis Posada Carriles, and  countless others. 
• Harboring of War Criminals  - To turn over a new leaf and show that it can be taken seriously, and that it has good intentions, the USA is going to have to turn its war criminals over to international courts for prosecution.  This list would include current outcasts and enemies of humankind such as war criminals  Barack Obama , John Kerry,  Hillary Clinton , and others, as well as "retired" war criminals such as George Bush Sr. and Jr., Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other such examples of persona non grata individuals.  Giving up its major war criminals will be a good starting gesture for the USA to show that it is serious about its aspirations for credibility, trustworthiness, and preliminary forms of democracy.  
• Mass Murder  -  From the USA's recent infancy, US dictators and oligarchs have  aggressively killed people en masse  to terrorize and position themselves above fellow group members and others.  Having murdered tens of millions of people, particularly in the last three decades, when the USA has murdered several million people in the Middle East ( example ) and backed the murder of several million more in  Africa , not to mention other places, this is another key problem area for the USA that will require "group therapy", as well as addressing all of the issues on this list, if the issue is to be overcome.  Only when the USA ceases its mass murder operations will it be able to take the true preliminary steps towards earning credibility and achieving basic democratic forms.
• Terrorism -  The USA, currently the world's biggest  terrorist  organization, is certainly going to have to stop committing terrorism if it is serious about earning credibility and achieving initial forms of democracy.  
• Chemical and Biological Warfare -  This has been an unfortunate scar on the USA since its inception, which involved biological warfare.  The USA will have to make firm commitments to cease engaging in and supporting chemical and biological warfare (examples:  1 ,  2 ,  3 ).  Example 3 links to a Human Rights Watch report on Israel's use of US-provided chemical weapons against civilians in Palestine.  After the massacre, Obama and the USA increased their support for Israel, which was already the biggest recipient of US aid.  These are the types of credibility-destroying actions that the USA will have to cease, and the people who have committed the crimes will have to be turned over to the proper authorities (ICC, ICJ), before the USA has any chance of achieving its aspirations for credibility and preliminary forms of democracy.  

The USA will need to make firm commitments to addressing the above issues, and take concrete steps to show the international community that it is serious about its desire for credibility and preliminary forms of democracy.

However, with all of its momentum towards continuing the above practices, the USA will not be able to correct its behaviors alone.  For the USA to achieve its lofty but admirable aims, citizens of the USA and world are going to have to invest serious time and effort towards helping the USA address the above, and other, critical problem areas.  

With the USA  polling  as the greatest threat to world peace and no competitor coming close, the journey towards credibility and democracy will be difficult, but, with hard word and dedication from the international community, the USA will one day be in a position to begin.  

Robert Barsocchini is an investigative journalist and historical researcher.