Bush Awards More Medals of Freedom

According to the UK Guardian's Johnathan Steele's article entitled, "All the president's men: George W Bush has awarded medals to Tony Blair – and some of the world's most ineffectual leaders. Are they his mirror?" Now we have Bush's final three foreign honorees. Who would the departing president tap to join him in a "war on terror" Gang of Four? Tony Blair, Australia's former prime minister, John Howard, and Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe. Selected "for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad", according to the White House.

Mr. Steele writes: Blair and Howard were already destined to go down in history as the only western leaders who joined Bush in his illegal and unnecessary war on Iraq. In earlier years, Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to his invasion commander, General Tommy Franks, and his occupation overlord, L Paul Bremer. Now comes the turn of two men who subordinated their country's national interest to Bush's war.

On human rights in general, Blair's record in office is as poor as Bush's. He supported Guantánamo Bay and extraordinary rendition for unjustly detained Muslims and since leaving Downing Street and becoming an envoy to the Middle East has kept silent on the arrest of Palestinian politicians and the growth of Israeli army checkpoints in the West Bank.
A Bush medal for the Colombian president is equally fitting. No one would expect Bush to honour the leftwing anti-Yanqui presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela, but he might have thought of awarding the leaders of Brazil and Chile, who have helped to strengthen democracy and revive their countries' faltering economies. Colombia, by contrast, is a country where journalists and democracy activists regularly fall prey to rightwing paramilitary death squads. It has the world's worst rate of assassinations of trade union leaders.

As for Howard, he left office just over a year ago, discredited, humiliated and unable even to retain his own parliamentary seat, as unpopular in Australia as Bush is in his country. Whether Bush's accolade will help Howard to regain his compatriots' respect remains to be seen.