Conservatives are ambivalent about Communist China. Before he became President, George Bush (the one folks kind of like), was the US Ambassador to the People’s Republic, as it is inaccurately called. He is still well regarded by those in control of that totalitarian state. Commerce benefits US mega-businesses. Trade provides cheap goods for sale in the US. Setting up factories in Communist China provides direct access to dirt cheap labor. Anything that hurts US labor unions is dear to the hearts of Republicans.
There are drawbacks, to be sure. Poisonous substances are less expensive to produce, so lead painted toys are sometimes found in the mouths of American babies. Chinese espionage is rife, targeting industrial information and classified defense secrets.
And then there are the Uighurs, pronounced WEE-ghers. This is a foreign word to Republican politicians, and unfamiliar to most of us. They are scattered all over central Asia. The western part of China is the closest Uighurs have to a homeland. The area was traded back and forth among different empires until the Communist Chinese captured it in the late 1940s. It has been in tyranny ever since. Uighurs are vicious anti-Communists. They are also fanatically pro-American. They love our country.
Well, what is the United States to do? Go to war over the region? Oppression is pretty much an internal matter. None of our business. Until recently.
In Afghanistan, some local Uighurs accepted rifle training from former freedom fighters against the Russian occupation. Much later, the Afghan trainers joined al Qaeda. When the US liberated Afghanistan, the Uighurs were turned in for bounty money. The ferociously pro-American refugees were accused of being with Osama bin Laden.
It was a silly charge, which the GOP administration found to be completely false. Even so, they were thrown into Guantanamo. The Bush/Cheney White House was afraid to let them go because the Peoples Republic of China defined them as terrorists against Communism. When the Obama administration decided to release them, in spite of Communist objections, Republicans went berserk. They accused Obama of being soft of terrorists.
The courts have ruled that the Uighurs were wrongly imprisoned. Oddly, the Obama administration has appealed it to the Supreme Court. The high court may declare it a moot point, since the Uighurs have been released and resettled in small pacific island countries. The Obama White House, in a play to to preserve executive power, wants the original ruling overturned on the grounds that lower courts did not know the Uighurs would be resettled.
Here’s to the fond hope that the Supreme Court somehow supports the lower courts and spits right in the eyes of Obama and his critics, all at once. US treatment of the Uighurs is what puts the “GROSS” into “gross injustice.”
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