Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] Jimmy Carter v. Barack Obama
-----
View original article here:
http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2012/07/01/jimmy-carter-v-barack-obama
Critical reading [1]: A SocialistWorker.org blog
======== JIMMY CARTER V. BARACK OBAMA ========================================
July 1, 2012 2:04 am CDT
OK, so Carter's own human rights record when President was appalling [2], and
he carefully refrains from mentioning Obama by name, but has an ex-President
ever made a more searing public condemnation of the policies of a successor
in his own party? Virtually every word in Carter's article could have been
written by Glenn Greenwald [3]. I guess the retired peanut farmer from
Georgia should not be expecting an invitation to visit the White House any
time soon. --PG
Follow Critical Reading on Twitter: @CriticalReading [4]. Subscribe to
Critical Reading [5]'s public updates on Facebook.
.... A Cruel and Unusual Record [6]
Source: New York Times
June 24, 2012
By JIMMY CARTER
Atlanta
THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human
rights.
Revelations [7] that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated
abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing
proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This
development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been
sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions,
without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no
longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of
human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past.
With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights [8] was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would
no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established
equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal
protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced
exile.
The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the
international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with
democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It
is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our
government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least
10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against
“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person
indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or
“associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without
meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being
blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of
expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights
enshrined in the declaration.
In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or
indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints [9] in the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented
violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and
government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit
detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with
whom they associate.
Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy
terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as
inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in
Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but
the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not
in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have
been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in
Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.
These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and
military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm
that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families
toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and
permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own
despotic behavior.
Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay [10], Cuba, now houses
169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little
prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed
that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in
military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or
intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually
assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense
by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover
of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of
ever being charged or tried either.
At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States
should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of
justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead
of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human
rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.
As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and
regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we
had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.
/Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and
the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize./
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of
environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any
such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this
site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. For more, see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If
you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
[1] http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading
[2] http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/HR%26US_Chom.html
[3] http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/
[4] https://twitter.com/#!/CriticalReading
[5] https://www.facebook.com/criticalreading
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html
[8] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
[9] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/17/nation/la-na-watergate-legal-20120617
[10] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/guantanamobaynavalbasecuba/index.html
