What the US could learn from Thailand

[tocqueville]

By Shawn W Crispin

BANGKOK - The similarities between the Thaksin and Bush administrations in Thailand and the US respectively were always striking as the two erstwhile allies drew closer in recent years. It's all the more so now that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been bumped from power by a people-power movement that complained about his government's moral bankruptcy.

Both Thaksin and President George W Bush rose to power under legally dubious circumstances: while the US leader muscled his way to the top through a Supreme Court intervention, the Thai premier won a landslide victory two weeks after being convicted of concealing his assets by an anti-corruption agency.

Both tough-talking leaders professed themselves to be "CEO-style" leaders, a reference to their business backgrounds before entering politics. That has often entailed running roughshod over the law in pursuit of controversial policies, not the least state-sponsored killing sprees. Thaksin's "war on drugs" campaign in 2003 witnessed the extrajudicial killing of more than 2,200 drug suspects; the death toll of Iraqis related to the US invasion now runs into the tens of thousands.

Thaksin's bloody counter-insurgency campaign against Thai Muslims, where more than 1,000 people have been killed since 2004, jibed nicely with Bush's global campaign to ferret out extremists among Muslim populations - seemingly at any human or moral cost. Ralph "Skip" Boyce, the garrulous US ambassador to Thailand, has maintained that Washington has in no way assisted Thaksin's controversial counter-insurgency efforts, which, similar to US military operations in Iraq, have been attended by allegations of torture and abuse of Muslim detainees.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HD08Ae01.html

[NorCalDem]

1. And you can have sex with children in both countries

well...

anywhere in Thailand

same if you work for the DHS :D