The US regularly releases reports on the state of affairs of human rights and other issues on each and every nation on earth. However, it fails to issue a state of affairs of the same rights within the US, fearing the backlash that this would create. The rights and liberties situation in the US is indeed at its lowest ebb and a report on this by the US department of state will surely put the G. W. Bush regime in great embarrassment.

The US would always cause trouble with the rest of the world with speeches from its top leaders on the democratic record of nations that it is either wooing – thus forcing them to adopt some changes – or its enemies.

Such speeches has only damaged relations between China, Russia, Azerbaijan, Egypt or even Indonesia and Malaysia and Washington. Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George Bush would make critical remarks about other states rights records, ignoring the fact that this policy was one of interference in the affairs of these states.

Speaking to the US Peace Corps 2008 Worldwide Country Director Conference on April 29, Rice said, “[In] the Caucasus … not so much Georgia, but Azerbaijan [and] to a certain extent Armenia… there is important work to be done…to bring that part of the Caucasus closer to [democratic] standards that we thought they were once meeting. And it has been a disappointment.”
President Bush, in a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 1, underlined the country’s poor record on detention of journalists. "In 2007, for the ninth consecutive year, China remained the world's top jailer of journalists, followed by Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, and Azerbaijan," he said.
Nevertheless, a recent report from the US department of state criticized countries like Azerbaijan and Myanmar for their poor human rights records. It is a fact that human rights in those countries are deeply flawed but it is hard to understand the impressments of the US department of state to issue such a report annually.

In an interview in the Azerbaijan online media http://www.today.az Eldar Zeynalov a famous human rights activist in Azerbaijan, the latter said to a question on whether the US department was rather soft towards Armenia and tough towards Azerbaijan on rights issues, that the US as a strategic partner had the right to criticize.

Eldar Zeynalov said the US Department of State does not carry out the comparative analysis in the said report but points at the problems, existing in each country and not to forget that the United States are a strategic partner of Azerbaijann, dealing with ways of settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict and are the most influential state in the country, which is enough to listen to the criticism by this country.

It is known that in Armenia, which is considered the Russian outpost in the Caucus region, recent murders of people in the streets of Yerevan, the introduction of censorship, mass arrests of opposition representatives during the presidential elections went unnoticed by the US department of state.

It is not to say that Russia had anything to do with the unrest in Amernia, which took the political measures on its own indeed.

This shows the double weight double measures that the US always applies in its foreign policy. Israel, another country which is violating the rights of Palestinians on a daily basis did not fall in the category of nations that should be criticized by the US department of state.

Eldar Zeynalov agreed though that people should not forget that there are the same bureaucrats in the United States that are used to reacting on definite announcements of human rights organizations and different documents. What he meant was that the US had definite double policies though he seems to support the criticism of his country by the US.

On the other hand, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an interview to the Associated Press (AP) said that the US should conduct a ‘serious review’ of its foreign policy after the upcoming presidential elections in the US.

"We don't want to make a problem for the American presidential candidates, but this election is among a limited number of American presidential elections where foreign policy plays a key role," Mottaki said a day after a U.N. conference on Iraqi reconstruction held outside Stockholm.

"The American people need change," he added.

Speaking through an interpreter at the Iranian Embassy in Stockholm, Mottaki said Iran was less concerned with "parties and people" than the course of U.S. policies after the election.

"The United States of America needs a serious review of its foreign policy toward the Middle East," he said. "These policies in ... Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and generally speaking the Middle East are mistaken policies."

Mottaki said the next resident of the White House must break with "the mistaken and failed policies" of the Bush administration or risk a further decline of the United States' standing in the Middle East.

American politicians, he said, are spending taxpayer money to "buy the hatred of other people in other parts of the world."

Mottaki was also among delegates from more than 90 countries and organizations who gathered to review security and economic progress in Iraq. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mottaki ignored each other at the meeting.

Rice was seen on live television snickering as Mottaki told delegates that the "the occupiers of Iraq" — the United States — were pursuing "mistaken policies" that are responsible for violence there.

China remains one big punching bag in the attacks led by US presidents and its secretary of states. It is expected that the next four years will see an increase in such verbal attacks against China, possibly India and surely Russia.

The US uses these attacks in an attempt to bend its opponents ahead of talks and negotiations such as weapons reduction talks and trade talks. It is understood that the US would want to gain the edge, the advantage before any talks with other nations, but to inhere in their local affairs to make political and economic gains is certainly called mal-practice.

For example on the war on terror, the US would propagate the idea that its policies are better and that there is a contest that is going on, an ideological battle, which spills over the proxies and military fighting as said by Rami Khouri, head of the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

To the US, the ideological battle must be won by its government and to achieve that it presses the Arab states to declare Iran as the enemy, thus influencing not only these nations’ internal affairs but also their foreign policies. Bending the friends and the foes altogether to win at all cost is the essence of the US foreign policy.

In Lebanon, it pressed the parties involved in local politics to attack the Hizbullah group – which is said to be the most powerful group in the country – but when they failed, the US backed the army to attempt at taking control of HIzbollah territory, an attempt which backfired into the Hizbullah showing its strength in the streets of Beirut recently.

The US was the nation that pressed the UN to adopt resolutions that would force the Hizbullah to give up their arms and surrender to the Lebanese army. This policy backfired and the US backed an Israeli war against the Lebanese people which ended with a defeat for the Israeli military and the total destruction of large areas in Lebanon.

Aggressive, one sided and bullish is the foreign policy of the US but today it found a new silver lining which is the ‘pre-emptive’ approach in both diplomacy and in interference in the affairs of other nations. Myanmar faced the intensity (the Asean too in the process) of the US pressures after it was affected by the cyclone Nargis which left several thousands of dead.

The US insisted that Myanmar should accept its aids – which surely come with strings attached – but when the Myanmar regime refused to recant the US pressed the Asean defense Ministers during a meeting in Singapore in May this year. It is only when this failed that the US decided to give up on the Myanmar issue. Washington tried to take advantage of the desperate situation in the country which it considers as an enemy state.

More or less the same situation developed with the recent UN resolution to allow foreign war ships to enter Somalia’s territorial waters to combat piracy. The U.N. Security Council on June 2 unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing foreign warships to enter Somalia's territorial waters with the government's consent to combat piracy and armed robbery at sea.

Resolution 1816, under discussion since late April, was adopted by the council's 15 members after the sponsors reassured Indonesia that the proposed anti-piracy drive would specifically target lawless Somalia.

Indonesia’s fears were that this resolution could be used by the US and other nations such as Australia or Singapore to enter its own territorial waters to combat piracy. The Indonesians were also worried that this would be used as a tool to allow US forces to target Muslim militants inside Somalia. The innuendoes are plenty in such situations and this is worrisome for many nations.