Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse

[andrewducker]

US kidnaps workers and uses them to build Embassy in Iraq:

I mean, what the fuck?

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Look, this seems to be a case of a Kuwaiti contractor doing evil stuff without appropriate amount of oversight, and the US covering it up after the event in order not to look crap. However much you dislike the US, it's not the same thing as them instigating slave labour.

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

The responsibility ultimately lies at the State Department to vet contractors and manage them properly, and they are at the very least culpable if the charges laid against them are true. If true, this is a clear case of kidnap and slave labour done for the US, by US-paid contractors, rubber stamped somewhere at some point by State officials. Saying the US doesn't instigate slave labour - but allegedly benefitted by it in this case - doesn't make them any less culpable for damages. One of the greatest failures of the current administration is the inability to accept responsibility for one's actions. The mismanagement before and after Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demand someone to take responsibility, and the more the someone says, "Not my fault even though it was done on my watch and was ultimately my responsibility" smacks of arrogance at best, and willful neglect at worst.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I agree they're culpable and have failed in serious ways, but I was replying to a comment that said things like I suppose it's only because of transport costs that they don't ship out US convicts to do some hard labour in Iraq. - implying that somehow slavery was policy.

To give an analogy, they're (in this case) more like a drunken mechanic who doesn't check the brakes on a bus and signs it off as OK, than a murderer who sabotages the brakes. Both are culpable, morally and legally, but there's a bit of a difference in how I (at least) see them.

The fact that I can't stand the current US administration doesn't mean that I should judge them more harshly as a result.

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

I don't know international law and how it would apply in this case, but I think it's only fair to judge the US administration as harshly as it judges other governments and peoples around the world.

To put it another way, how would the current US administration react if a foreign contractor, working for a foreign government, allegedly kidnapped skilled US workers to work on a foreign government's embassy building, effectively turning skilled US workers into slaves? I think you'd see them take your analogy and definitely compare align the culpability towards the murderer, not the drunken mechanic.

And anyway, drunken mechanics in that situation in the US could possibly get sent to jail for murder rather than manslaughter, depending on the prosecution and the state and federal laws where it occurred, and whether it killed pregnant women and whatnot.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I am absolutely not prepared to argue that people who run stupid judicial or political systems should be judged according to their own systems as opposed to being judged with the best eye to equity and justice that can be managed. It might have a nice ring of irony or whatnot to it, but I consider it immoral.

[ratmist.livejournal.com]

Heh, fair enough. :)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Thank you.