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Opinion | Gaza, Ukraine, TikTok: US double standards are eroding its global power
- From US support for Israel in Gaza to Biden’s turnaround on using TikTok for his re-election campaign, America’s breathtakingly transparent double standards are killing its credibility
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The beloved phrase “city upon a hill”, cited by America’s forefather John Winthrop, is often used to denote the exceptionalism of America’s power, founded on “universal” human values and principles for others to follow.
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In the late 1950s, I was a great fan of the United States. Having a rudimentary command of English, I remember reading a Chinese translation of Little House on the Prairie from the now-defunct US Information Agency Library in Macau.
In the summer of 1990, my faith in America was manifest when, as an “international visitor” invited by the US government, I shared my outlook on China post-Tiananmen Square with several captains of industry, including Steve Forbes personally.
In recent years and months, however, my faith has been almost completely shattered as American double standards become breathtakingly transparent.
US President Joe Biden’s attempt to restrain Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military excesses has struggled against an influential lobby supported by an entrenched military-industrial complex, the reach of which was forewarned by president Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. This complex has since become well-oiled by what award-winning New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer calls Dark Money in her 2016 bestselling book.
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Today, the US remains the indispensable backer of Israel’s all-out and brutal operations to eliminate Hamas in pursuit of “total victory”, oblivious to what has been described as “a humanitarian catastrophe of biblical proportions”. Following the latest Rafah incursions, some 1.3 million Gaza citizens remain trapped and in want of water, food and medical care, including innocent women and children.
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