COME BACK TO THE BELTWAY, JIMMY CARTER, JIMMY CARTER
Just when I think former President Jimmy Carter had faded from the world scene, he pops up and pens the brilliant and critically needed NY Times op ed "A cruel and unusual record". Octogenarian Carter, who turns 88 September 1, still travels the world seeking peaceful solutions to the world's most intractable political problems such as a peaceful settlement of the Israeli Palestinian dispute.
To this human rights loving American, his latest piece is almost too painful to read. In it Carter chronicles our catastrophic fall from championing passage of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights used by human rights activists and the international community to replace dictatorships with democracy and promote human rights and the rule of law. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US has abandoned ten of the Declaration's 30 articles. How? By allowing indefinite detention or even targeted assassinations of persons, including American citizens, suspected of affiliation with terrorists organizations or "associated forces", cancelling restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow wholesale violations of privacy rights, use of drone aircraft to bomb civilian dwellings in non war zone areas that have killed hundreds of innocent men, women and children, and use of torture including water boarding and intimidation tactics involving power drills, automatic weapons and sexual assault. Carter didn't mention US policy of launching immoral, illegal and criminal wars of choice, but the millions of folks in the Middle East devastated by those wars would surely have added that little tidbit of US inhumanity to mankind.
Carter has more moral courage and wisdom than any leader on the American political stage today. He continually holds up a mirror to show the grotesque caricature of a human rights beacon Uncle Sam has devolved into. Sadly, we find that these atrocious policies have been institutionalized into our political culture, so much so that no one in the government or the media or the citizenry mentions them. No one, that is, except James Earl Carter, Jr. As painful as it is, every American with a heart and a soul should read Carter's piece and ask whether this once great country has any future worth saving.
Though legally eligible, Carter is too old and too hated by the war and torture crowd to run for President. Maybe when the President is re-elected, he can appoint Carter to a new cabinet post: Secretary of the American Conscience.
Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, July 2, 2012
To this human rights loving American, his latest piece is almost too painful to read. In it Carter chronicles our catastrophic fall from championing passage of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights used by human rights activists and the international community to replace dictatorships with democracy and promote human rights and the rule of law. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US has abandoned ten of the Declaration's 30 articles. How? By allowing indefinite detention or even targeted assassinations of persons, including American citizens, suspected of affiliation with terrorists organizations or "associated forces", cancelling restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow wholesale violations of privacy rights, use of drone aircraft to bomb civilian dwellings in non war zone areas that have killed hundreds of innocent men, women and children, and use of torture including water boarding and intimidation tactics involving power drills, automatic weapons and sexual assault. Carter didn't mention US policy of launching immoral, illegal and criminal wars of choice, but the millions of folks in the Middle East devastated by those wars would surely have added that little tidbit of US inhumanity to mankind.
Carter has more moral courage and wisdom than any leader on the American political stage today. He continually holds up a mirror to show the grotesque caricature of a human rights beacon Uncle Sam has devolved into. Sadly, we find that these atrocious policies have been institutionalized into our political culture, so much so that no one in the government or the media or the citizenry mentions them. No one, that is, except James Earl Carter, Jr. As painful as it is, every American with a heart and a soul should read Carter's piece and ask whether this once great country has any future worth saving.
Though legally eligible, Carter is too old and too hated by the war and torture crowd to run for President. Maybe when the President is re-elected, he can appoint Carter to a new cabinet post: Secretary of the American Conscience.
Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, July 2, 2012
posted by Walt Zlotow at 3:40 AM
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