What is the Value of American Values in Africa?

“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks; we did some things that were  contrary to our values. When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be understood and accepted,” said President Obama at a press conference a couple of days ago.

President Obama offered his comments to blunt Congressional criticism following an inspector general’s report which concluded that the CIA improperly scanned the computers of Senate staffers looking into allegations of enhanced interrogation techniques by that agency. He cautioned Americans “not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.” In the same breath, he instructed, “The character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.”

The “torture” condemned by President Obama was initially launched under the auspices of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the architect of the “War on Terror”  and enhanced interrogation. The Bush Administration denied “enhanced interrogation”, which included such techniques as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sensory bombardment by noise and light, prolonged isolation and sexual humiliation, among others, is torture. Recently, Cheney said, “If I would have to do it all over again, I would.”

The President’s remarks on torture got me thinking about the torturers attending the “U.S.-Africa Leaders” Summit. On August 5-6, President Obama has invited to the White House the “finest” practitioners of torture, corruption experts and master criminals against humanity from Africa to talk business and American investments (not human rights or American values). Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, who is on trial with his deputy president William Ruto at the International Criminal Court on various counts of crimes against humanity,  is expected to attend. The roster of invitees reads like a rogues’ gallery of certified human rights violators including Paul Biya of Cameroon,  Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of  Equatorial Guinea, José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, Idriss Deby of Chad and Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia. These wicked African criminals against humanity make the CIA’s practice of “enhanced interrogation techniques” look like a walk in the park.

Incredibly, President Obama calls these human rights scofflaws and crooks America’s “partners”.  President Obama exhorted, “The character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.” But how do we “measure the character”  of our President? By his lofty words and catchy phrases or his inactions “when things are hard” ?   If the old saying that “one can judge a man by the quality of friends he keeps” is true, does it necessarily follow that one can also judge a man by the quality of the “partners” he keeps?  When President Obama made “partners” of African criminals against humanity,  did he “cross the line”  between decency and sleaze?  Should it not be “understood and accepted” that American values make no distinction between torturers in America and torturers in Africa?

I believe American business investments in Africa without morality breed only misery and thievery.  An American economic investment policy in Africa that is not anchored in human rights will only accelerate the endemic corruption on the continent and deepen the despair and agony of Africans. President Obama should realize that it is wholly insufficient to invest in African banks, dams, mines, rail lines, hotels and bricks and mortars without a moral foundation. After all, America is not China.  American values are not Chinese values.  President Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks…” That exceptionalism is built on the American values of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism and laissez-faire economics.

Even Adam Smith, the “father” of capitalism understood the utmost importance of a moral foundation and continued education in creating and maintaining a just, fair and harmonious society in a free enterprise system. He called it “mutual sympathy”, something without which a society would degenerate into immorality and amorality. It is  “mutual sympathy” that restrains and bridles the natural predation and avarice of the rich and powerful from ravaging the weak and powerless.  In American business investments in Africa, the moral foundation of “mutual sympathy” is and should always be human rights. I lament the fact that Africa, the cradle of humanity,  is today the graveyard of human rights.

Does President Obama “truly believe” in “American values”? Which American values has he “betrayed” in “partnering” with African dictators?

posted  By Daneil Aleyu Zeleke