The US should practice the democracy it preaches

BAGHDAD - The American strength, which grew exponentially after 1990, made of the American administration the world's de facto government. This government is trying to convince the world that it works hard on preserving and spreading its democratic principles, so far implemented inside a select few Western countries including America itself.

Yet there are no indicators that the American new world order is about democracy, justice, human rights and the welfare of other states and their peoples.

The first rule for the creation of a democratic world order is the establishment of a checks-and-balances system. This can never become true at the time the US strengthens the role of the World Trade Organization at the expense of all other international organizations.

As the US refuses so far to ratify the 1998 Rome Treaty for the creation of an International Criminal Court and as it undermines the role of the Security Council - among other acts of abating international organizations - it makes "everybody else" believe that the American hegemony is only aimed at its national trade interests and not at the creation of a fair and just new world order.

It is also worth mentioning that "everybody else" do not fall into a single category. The French and the Russians came to hate the Americans after the war on Iraq because they lost oil concessions and trade privileges among other reasons.

Meanwhile, the Arabs - save for many Iraqis- detest America against the background of their conflict with Israel. Why should Arabs trust a Security Council resolution against Iraq when the United Nations fail to force Israel to let in a committee to investigate what happened in the Jenin Camp during an Israeli military operation last year?

By the same token, how can America be an arbitrator in the Arab-Israeli conflict while at the same time it reiterates day and night its commitment to the defensive strategic and military needs of Israel?

In the same manner that Americans try to understand why the world hates them, I try to understand how most Arabs forgave France for all the ill doings it had done over the last century. The imperial France, which participated in the tripartite offensive against the Suez Canal in 1956 and was the first county to give Israel its nuclear technology, has now become a friend of the Arabs.

The Arabs have reached the following conclusion: Whenever in doubt, blame America. The American removal of Saddam Hussein, the abhorrent and brutal dictator, never improved America's image. The common Arab argument has it that it was America that created Saddam in the very beginning. The same argument applies for the Taliban.

Whenever I try to convince people that it was the Soviet Union that trained Saddam's terror apparatuses, Germany that provided him with chemical weapons technology and France that gave him his Tammuz nuclear reactor, they jump to say: Why didn't America remove him during the 1991 revolts in north and south Iraq?

Trying to explain the dynamics of the issue that in 1991, George Bush senior became pre-occupied with his presidential re-election makes me more harm than good. "See, it's all about his interests," they answer.

It is this discrepancy between America's rhetoric and its deeds that makes the world hate America. If the US strives to create a democratic world order, it should do so without its "unilateralism," without treating Iraq as a spoil of war and dividing it among "those countries that paid" and should convince everyone that it treats the world fairly and in the same way it expects the world - including the so-called terrorist rogue states - to treat her.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a reporter at the Beirut-based The Daily Star. He wrote this commentary for Alternative