Please find below:
(1) A letter to the editor of The New York Times Magazine by the American Hellenic Media Project;
(2) A similar letter forwarded to numerous newspapers and media sources; and
(3) A brief message from The Economist.
(1)
American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org
(the longer of two responses)
March 29, 1999
To the Editor of The New York Times Magazine:
When arguing that the U.S. should serve as the world's enforcer (3/28), Thomas Friedman fails to recognize that American leadership must be earned and not imposed. Otherwise, U.S. military action, such as the use of disproportionate force in places like Iraq and Yugoslavia, will be perceived as aggression and not as humanitarian intervention.
After the fall of the iron curtain, the US had a historic opportunity as the sole remaining superpower to take a leadership role in encouraging democracy and geopolitical stability throughout the world. Instead, our insincere posturing regarding human rights and our selective advocacy of democratic principles abroad, in combination with the abuse of our enormous military advantage, has seriously eroded our ability to undertake such a leadership role.
No other example best illustrates this point than our mephistophelean alliance with Turkey. We stamped our feet at Yugoslavia's strong-arm tactics against its Albanian separatists while our client state Turkey ethnically cleansed up to 3 million of its Kurds and while Ankara continues to repress tens of thousands of its citizens through government-sponsored death squads and right-wing terrorist groups. We dropped millions of tons of explosives on Iraq after Hussein's nearly bloodless invasion of Kuwait, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process, but acquiesced in Turkey's ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Greek Cypriots as we continue to subsidize Turkey's ongoing occupation of Cyprus.
Mr. Friedman's vision of U.S. military adventurism ("The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist . . . And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps") sounds more like the cautious aggression of an unchallenged Germany before the outbreak of WWII than the humanitarian intervention professed by State Department spindoctors.
It is neither our wish for the "enlargement of both our values and our Pizza Huts" nor an image of Americans as "prophets of the free market and the high priests of high tech" that has resulted in the global rise in the "resentment of America", as Mr. Friedman naively posits. Rather, it is the portrait we are painting of ourselves as an arrogant and hypocritical bully who will grandstand about democratic values but will consistently engage in policies and support governments that flagrantly undermine them.
This is not just a moral lesson but a practical one. It is our opportunistic support of anti-democratic regimes and the selective application of humanitarian principles in the Middle East and Asia that are most responsible for the creation of the Islamic fundamentalist threat. Rather than promote U.S. interests, our short-sighted and decidedly un-American foreign policy irreparably damages them, backfiring in places like Iran and Iraq, and waiting to do so in others like Turkey, Indonesia and Central Asia. By going beyond our use of proxy governments and organizations, and using direct military force under the guise of humanitarian intervention as we are doing in Yugoslavia, we are engineering our own foreign policy disaster.
Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director
_____________
The American Hellenic Media Project is a non-profit organization created to address inaccuracy and bias in the media and encourage independent, ethical and responsible journalism.
(2)
American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org
March 29, 1999
To the Editor:
Your coverage of Kosovo fails to recognize that American leadership must be earned and not imposed. Otherwise, U.S. military action, such as the use of disproportionate force in places like Iraq and Yugoslavia, will be perceived as aggression and not as humanitarian intervention.
After the fall of the iron curtain, the US had a historic opportunity as the sole remaining superpower to take a leadership role in encouraging democracy and geopolitical stability throughout the world. Instead, our posturing regarding human rights and our selective advocacy of democratic principles abroad, in combination with the abuse of our enormous military advantage, has seriously eroded our ability to undertake such a leadership role.
No other example best illustrates this point than our mephistophelean alliance with Turkey. We stamped our feet at Yugoslavia's strong-arm tactics against Albanian separatists while our client state Turkey ethnically cleansed up to 3 million of its Kurds and while Ankara continues to repress tens of thousands of its citizens through government-sponsored death squads and right-wing terrorist groups. We dropped millions of tons of explosives on Iraq after Hussein's nearly bloodless invasion of Kuwait, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process, but acquiesced in Turkey's ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Greek Cypriots as we continue to subsidize Turkey's ongoing occupation of Cyprus.
The portrait we are painting of ourselves is as an arrogant and hypocritical bully who will grandstand about democratic values but will consistently engage in policies and support governments that flagrantly undermine them.
This is not just a moral lesson but a practical one. It is our opportunistic support of anti-democratic regimes and the selective application of humanitarian principles in the Middle East and Asia that are most responsible for the creation of the Islamic fundamentalist threat. Rather than promote U.S. interests, our short-sighted and decidedly un-American foreign policy irreparably damages them, backfiring in places like Iran and Iraq, and waiting to do so in others like Turkey, Indonesia and Central Asia. By going beyond our use of proxy governments and organizations, and using direct military force under the guise of humanitarian intervention as we are doing in Yugoslavia, we are engineering our own foreign policy disaster.
Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director
(3)
From The Economist:
Dear Mr. Spyropoulos, - the editor thanks you for your recent letter, which we shall now consider for publication. We do hope, however, you appreciate that there is great pressure on space in our letters column, and we can only publish a few letters each week.
Meanwhile, your views will be passed to the author concerned. Thank you for having taken the trouble to write.
[signature]
(in the editor's office)
[Note: the letter was ultimately not published]