Page 112 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on the Oromo National Struggle
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the OAU to create an eminent persons group to study the recent genocide in the
Great Lakes, examine the international community’s response, and propose ways we
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can all do better in the future.”
Her remark that the Meles regime has “a good human rights record”
recognize reports by human rights organizations regarding Ethiopia’s violations of
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human rights.
In 1997 Meles Zenawi was “regarded as one of Africa’s ‘new leaders’:
he recently won an award in the United States for good government. . . .Their [West-
ern] governments tend to give priority to the Prime Minister’s economic reforms
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Susan E. Rice,Assistant Secretary of State
rather than his record on human rights.”
for African Affairs, announced the end of wars in the Horn of Africa and the emer-
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gence of a democratic form of government in Ethiopia
despite the fact that almost
all ethnonational groups in the Ethiopian empire charge that they suffer under the
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Tigrayan ethnocratic and terrorist regime.
She claimed that the United States fa-
cilitates “Africa’s full integration into the global economy” through the promotion of
“democracy and respect for human rights” and resolving conflict and promoting
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peace.
There is no question that the globalization of Africa is being intensified; but,
as the conflict between Oromos and the Tigrayan regime indicates, the United States
has failed to promote even its policy of “democracy promotion.”A gap exists between
what U.S. policy elites claim as their policies and what they practice. 114 refuses to
Albright has emphasized the importance of democracy for development, saying,“It
is essential to sow the seeds of prosperity if Africa is to become a full participant in
the world economy. It is necessary to build democracy. In this decade, people every-
where have learned that democracy is a parent to development. For people who are
free to choose their leaders,publish their thoughts,organize their labor and invest their
capital will build richer and more stable societies than those shackled by repression.” 120
One of former President Clinton’s four goals for his trip to Africa was to promote
democracy in Africa, 121 but the U.S. government policy does not promote democracy
in Ethiopia and Oromia. Oromia has been integrated into the global economy with-
out its own political leadership and democracy; consequently Oromos have been bru-
talized and peripheralized. Unfortunately, the U.S. government contributes to the
peripheralization and misery of Oromos by supporting a regime that violates human
rights through state terrorism. Most Americans have no sympathy for the enslaved and
subjugated peoples since they see them as inferior or uncivilized peoples who do not
have the capability to be like them. Since this mind-set flourished with the ideologies
of whiteness and cultural superiority that caused the destruction of Native Americans
and enslaved Africans, and since these ideologies also have been “recycled” by Amer-
ican institutions, Americans do not realize that U.S. foreign policy can have detri-
mental effects on a people like the Oromo.American President Theodore Roosevelt
openly justified colonial violence and expansion in a racist discourse.Considering Na-
tive Americans to be an inferior race, Roosevelt argued that the elimination of Native
Americans was necessary “for the benefit of civilisation and in the interest of
mankind.” 122 Further, since the ideologies of whiteness and cultural superiority de-
valued the humanity of Native Americans, the treaties that were signed with them
were not respected. In 1830, one U.S. politician said that “treaties were expedient by
which ignorant, intractable, and savage people were induced without bloodshed to
yield up what civilized peoples had a right to possess.” 123 Probably the reason that the
U.S. government ignored the violation of the Transitional Charter of Ethiopia and
supported the emergence of the Tigrayan ethnocratic minority regime was that it