Active Astonishment
Lest anyone lose sight of the true threat to world peace, who’s trampling all over human rights amid all this attention on Ahmadinejad, McClatchy Newspapers’ Washington Bureau goes sniffing around for some Bush-bash. Astonishingly, McClatchy finds activists astounded:
Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the president called for renewed efforts to enforce the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a striking point of emphasis for a leader who’s widely accused of violating human rights in waging war against terrorism.
Bush didn’t mention the U.S. prisons in Afghanistan or at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. practice of holding detainees for years without legal charges or access to lawyers, or the CIA’s “rendition” kidnappings of suspects abroad, all issues of concern to human rights activists around the world.
“At first read, it’s little more than an exercise in hypocrisy. His words about human rights ring hollow because his credibility is nonexistent,” said Curt Goering, the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. “The gap between the rhetoric and the actual record is stunning. I can’t help but believe many people in the audience were thinking, ‘What was this man thinking?’ “
Without doubt, the Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Syrian, Libyan, Zimbabwean, Myanmaran, Belarussian, Sudanese, Chinese and Russian delegates in the audience were thinking exactly that.
“I believe the president should be championing human rights at the U.N., but he’s lost his authority and credibility as a world leader because of his policies on rendition and Guantanamo,” said Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “His remarks would be more effective if the U.S. was practicing what it’s preaching.”
That’s funny. I’ve thought groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have lost their credibility due to their policies re, lack of perspective on and gross distortion of same.
OTB: “What kind of hack news organization can’t see the distinction …”
Topics: Bush
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:10 am on Wednesday, September 26, 2007
3 Responses to “Active Astonishment”
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September 26th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
The president did lose authority. But, different president. I guess McClatchy forgot about that whole “UN and Clinton turning their backs on the wholesale slaughter of 850K Rwandans” thing.
I supposed freeing 50 million people from brutal, repressive regimes is just not good enough for them.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
The amoral relativism of those who consistently end up vomiting on this country has gone so far beyond any reason that these people cannot be said to own a shred of credibility with any thinking person, and they point a finger at Bush?
September 26th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Anybody else find it ironic that the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA is named Curt Goering?
Honestly, why would any thinking person pay the slightest shred of attention to the likes of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch any longer? They sold their souls to the Appeasement Devil long ago.