Butler's fierce barrage at US foreign policy
By MARGARETTA POS Hobart Mercury 31mar04
IN a hard-hitting attack on US foreign policy, Governor Richard Butler yesterday accused the Bush administration of total self-interest.
Mr Butler criticised the US for reserving the right "to beat the living daylights" out of anyone who threatened it, regardless of international law.
And he warned Australians to be vigilant against the exploitation of terrorism by politicians to win votes.
He said the terrorist threat was "immensely convenient in Western polities which want to remain in power".
"They want to frighten the living daylights out of you," he said.
"I think you should be extremely careful of being manipulated by politicians," Mr Butler said in Hobart at a Wrest Point 2004 business leaders' luncheon.
Appointed Governor last year, he is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Butler said the failure of the US voting system in 2000 resulted in the Supreme Court selecting Mr Bush as president by a vote of five to four.
"It resulted in the installation of the most highly nationalistic and self-centred Government we have known," he said.
"Their election promise was to be more selfish, more self-centred, more determined to use American power for their interests - and they have kept their promise.
"In a world fearful of terrorism and with only one super power, US concerns dominated - the Bush Doctrine.
"In this new world," he said from the US perspective, "we Americans reserve the right to go anywhere, anytime, to beat the living daylights out of anyone who threatens us."
Mr Butler said that in a world co-operating under the UN, no country, no matter how powerful, had the right to invade another.
While not mentioning Iraq, he said: "The US has torn up international law about who may attack whom."
He accused the media of being compliant in misrepresenting current affairs.
"So much we hear and what we come to believe is put to us by the media, print and electronic," he said.
For example, surveys had shown 60 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for the the terrorist attack in New York - opinion cultivated by politicians for their own gain.
"To know the facts is important but your own independent valuation of them is the absolute essence of freedom," he said.