It is no secret to anyone in the world, not just America, that the governance of the country has spun out of the control of those who are elected to govern it. Whereas the latter start working on getting reelected from the moment they get elected, outsiders take up the task of governing the country.
However,
despite the fact that those who get elected spend their time in office trying
to make their tenure a perpetual one, they do not always succeed. For this
reason, there is not an elected institution that will ascertain continuity of
governance in America. Thus, by default, this task falls on the shoulders and
in the hands of two major non-elected groups.
One
group is known as the government bureaucracy. It is made of people who are
appointed by the government, and immediately enjoy the protection of a powerful
union. This makes it so that it is near to impossible firing a government
employee. And that’s what makes the bureaucracy what may be thought of as a
permanent non-elected government. It has come to be called the deep state
because, whereas everyone can see the effect of its decisions, no one sees how
these decisions are made.
Another
group that is in practice a permanent feature of the governing landscape, and
eager to contribute to the governance of America, is known as the special
interest group. It is made of organizations such as big business, big labor,
civil society and domestic or foreign advocacy groups that work to rescind,
alter, maintain or replace a legislative status quo, with the aim of making the
government serve their purpose. They lobby the individual legislators, the
committees or the entire Congress as well as the White House, if need be, to get
the laws they formulate themselves.
You
can see how this is done in a 2,800-word article that came under the title:
“What America owes the Uyghurs,” and the subtitle: “A Plan for Stopping China’s
Genocide.” It was written by Nury Turkel and Beth Van Schaack, and was
published on July 16, 2021 in Foreign Affairs. Bearing in mind that this is by
no means the only article on the subject, you will still be greatly impressed
by how comprehensive this article is in laying out a plan of action to
accomplish the cause it is advocating. And you will realize that no elected
official would have the means or the resources to match this performance, let
alone outdo it.
Mindful
of a concept that was floated sometime ago and labeled, “Responsibility to
protect,” Nury Turkel and Beth Van Schaack started their article with a hit on
the conscience of America’s legislators, that was certain to stir them into
action. Here is what the authors said: “There is a word for what is happening
in the Xinjiang region of China: genocide.” This being the ultimate in
wrongdoing that a country can engage in, the political elites of America were
moved by a similar argument put to them by the lobbyists. They found no excuse
to shirk their “responsibility,” and so they acted -- on several occasions, in
fact.
The
irony is that “Responsibility to protect” is modelled after the “Duty to warn
and act,” which is a term used in the medical profession at par with “Do no
harm.” Duty to act allows a mental health professional to circumvent the rules
of confidentiality, and warn of harm that may potentially befall someone as a
result of a mental patient’s intention to act unlawfully. If you consider this
to be an allegory and think who might be the mental patient and who might be
the victim, you will not have to go too far searching. It’s because the history
which Nury Turkel and Beth Van Schaack are discussing, provides the answer.
Think
of Iraq and those who motivated America to destroy it so as to protect the
world from weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Think of Libya and
the French clown who masquerades as a philosopher – the one that has managed to
convince the French and American politicos they will have another Rwanda on
their hand if they failed to act, thus motivated them to act and create the Rwanda
condition they thought they were preventing.
Not
only are Turkel and Van Schaack recommending that America repeat the failed
military policies of the past, they are recommending that America repeat the
failed financial sanction policies of the past as well. In fact, after many
years, America has failed miserably to get countries such as Iran, China,
Russia, the Congo, Iraq or any other of the dozens of countries under American
sanctions, to cry uncle and beg for mercy. And here come our two esteemed
writers to recommend the following:
“Sanctions
are key to shutting down industries that are raking in profits by exploiting
Uyghur labor. Virtually the entire solar power supply chain relies on
material from Xinjiang, produced by Chinese companies that are implicated in
abuses. The White House took an important step in late June when it
banned solar products made by a Chinese company from entering the United
States and tightened restrictions on US companies’ ability to export to five
Xinjiang-based companies”.
What
the two writers must have missed as they prepared to pontificate on this issue,
was a lesson about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and how an economy masters
a new revolutionary product.
There
is not one fact that Turkel and Van Schaack gave, which would indicate that the
Chinese are treating the Uyghurs any harsher than they did other groups during
the Cultural Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. The Cultural Revolution of six
and seven decades ago lifted half a billion Chinese out of poverty and made
China a superpower. Unfortunately, the Uyghurs were left behind at that time.
The Revolution has now come to them, and the expectation is that a few millions
of them will be lifted out of poverty and will make their province a powerhouse
of innovation in its own right.
In
fact, the history of revolutionary products such as the auto, the home
appliances as well as the home entertainment and communication devices,
indicates that the solar power supply chain in which the Uyghur are employed
today, will make of them the leading-edge technicians, engineers and scientists
of tomorrow. By boycotting them, America hurts its own companies; those that
used to interact with the Chinese, compelling the latter to innovate even more
than they are now.
Any reasonable American reading the article written by Nury Turkel and Beth Van Schaack should tell them to find something else to write about. As to the Uyghurs no one will fault them if they told those two to get the hell out of their business.