Pompeo, you must be joking about Hong Kong and China
- When it comes to undermining the autonomy of other countries, and mistreating and killing Muslims, the US secretary of state and his band of merry hypocrites should look at themselves in the mirror
Listening to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lecture China about human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong is beyond comical. Has this guy no sense of decency or at least irony?
Don’t get me wrong. Beijing does have a lot to answer for, but not to people like Pompeo or the legion of hypocrites in the White House and US Congress. Sadly, many Hong Kong protesters don’t know the first thing about the United States and the vileness of its foreign policy.
This is Mr Assassination talking. According to a report in The New York Times, America’s top diplomat “was the loudest voice in the administration pushing President [Donald] Trump to kill Iran’s most important general”.
But somehow, it’s not assassination if it’s done by a pilotless drone, which was what killed the general and his entourage. But actually, those nefarious methods tend to kill just the targets, whereas drone bombing gets a lot of innocent bystanders too.
Refresh my memory, please. How many Muslims has the US military killed or caused to die in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya? And its backing of Saudi Arabia’s merciless intervention in Yemen?
Pompeo is quite comfortable with assassinations, so long as they are done by allies or friends. The brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post columnist and Saudi Arabian dissident, inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was linked by US intelligence agencies to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East. Pompeo was the point man charged with defusing the international outrage.
But this is just whataboutism on my part, you say. Not really. China does have serious human rights problems. But suppose Beijing criticised the brutality of US police forces and its prison system, extreme inequalities and mass shootings. They are all true, but you would roll your eyes and dismiss them.
Well, that should be your reaction to the likes of Pompeo when they talk about China.
