An act of betrayal...

Guantanamo is a particularly significant issue because it demonstrates Obama’s fundamental lack of core convictions, contrary to what he had led us to believe during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

We were told to expect change, that the Bush/Cheney world view and approach belonged to the past…The rule of law, and civilized behavior worthy of a great democracy  would now be a political imperative for Obama’s America…

We were evidently misled…

The absolute ethical necessity to close Guantanamo may have reflected a belief he held at the time Bush/Cheney still wielded  (many would have said, abused) power in Washington.

Once he arrived in the nation’s capital, however, the issue was less significant because he was now in charge, presumably. The concept of justice for all was once again in safe hands, that is to say, his own...Those who took human and constitutional rights seriously no longer had anything to worry about…This conviction was so universally engrained that Obama actually won the Nobel Peace Prize his first year in office.

Closing Guantanamo, the modern-day Bastille, and an infamous symbol of abuse and of arbitrary detention, demanded the new President’s undivided attention and wholehearted support…Since the Obama Administration claimed that the facility was a recruiting tool for terrorists, many assumed the new President would not relent until he had reached the intended objective. Obama had vowed to close it at the conclusion of his first year in office.

The new, excessively popular president could have exerted the necessary pressure on a Democratic Congress to ensure this blight on America’s reputation would be forever obliterated….

And yet, he failed to do so…

The rule of law was no longer a priority, but conditioned by politics…

The rule of law was no longer a popular, political issue, thus expendable…

The notion of trying terrorist suspects in civilian courts, of transferring those held in Guantanamo to the US mainland, ceased to make political sense. It seemed more politically savvy to cater to the people’s fear, than  cultivate or educate their sense of justice and fairness…

We had hoped that a former professor of constitutional law would have done his utmost to promote the cause of justice, and not chosen the facile path of political expediency.  

He had too much else to do than to fight for such fundamental principles, we were told.

Pardon my naiveté, but what is more important than that?

Similarly, the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed was to have been a defining event, according to Attorney General Holder.

Our nation has had no higher priority then bringing those who planned and plotted the attacks to justice, Holder also recklessly declared.

Justice?

Caving in to pressure from local NY politicians ( including, alas, the Mayor of New York)  more interested in public opinion polls than principles, Holder relented.

KSM will be tried in Guantanamo, where justice is an alien concept, defiled by water-boarding, forced sleeplessness, other various “enhanced interrogation techniques” and arbitrary and indefinite detention...

Some have been held for nine years without charge, and will neither be tried nor released, thanks again to Obama who did not se fit to abolish the precedent set by his reckless predecessor …

Who would have thought that MM. Bush and Obama’s America would have resurrected les lettres  de cachet abolished by revolutionary France in 1789? Can anyone, alas, now take the US seriously when it sees fit to lambast another nation’s human rights record?

This, also, shall be part of Obama’s legacy…

How many of us shall be able to forget and forgive this grievous act of betrayal?

(the photograph of Guantanamo can be found here)

Assad sends tanks to crush uprising in Dara'a

In this military assault on Dara'a this morning, the Syrian army killed 25 protesters and left their bodies in the streets, according to a report by Euronews...
The army then combed the streets in an attempt to round up all potential demonstrators.
They are entering houses, they are searching houses. They are carrying knives and guns, one witness told The Guardian...
Assad has clearly opted for the Libyan option in response to his people's demand for freedom....
He is clearly his father's son, and reports that he was in fact a reformer capable of gradually transforming his country into a democracy were clearly misguided...
Assad and his clique must go and then be held accountable for their numerous crimes...
Some 400  Syrians have been killed since the beginning of the uprising last month...

Manning transferred to Fort Leavenworth

Bradley Manning, charged with providing the WikiLeaks whistleblowing site with thousands of classified US government documents, was transferred last Wednesday to Fort Leavenworth's Joint Regional Correctional Facility. He had previously been held in harsh conditions at Quantico Marine Brig, in Virginia, since May of last year.
Earlier this month, 250 distinguished legal scholars condemned the military's treatment of Manning, characterizing it as not only shameful but unconstitutional.
Mannign was being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, and deprived of his underwear every night, purportedly for his own safety.
Juan Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has been trying to evaluate Manning's conditions, but prevented from doing so by US authorities, who refuse to allow him an unmonitored visit with him.
I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture...until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely, he told The Guardian earlier this month...
Mendez would be authorized to meet with Manning, but only with a guard also present.
At such meetings, anything the prisoner says can then be used against him during his court martial...
Manning will be placed in a single cell in Fort Leavenworth, and he would not receive abusive treatment, officials said, according to Reuters.
It seems therefore, that the Obama administration no longer considers it useful to abuse Bradley Manning, as the young man's case receives ever gretaer attention...
It is also evident however, that it is convinced that Manning is guilty as charged, even though his trial is still many months away, and that, as such, he is considered innocent.
On Thursday, President Obama made this extraordinary statement: we're a nation of laws. We don't let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.
Can we now reasonably expect Manning to receive a fair trial, since the verdict is already known?
Is the US still a nation of laws, when serious offenders such as those responsible for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, "enhanced interrogation techniques", indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, secret prisons, ghost detainess and so forth are not prosecuted, let alone investigated, while a Private First Class accused of revealing information that the State Department itself concluded did little lasting damage to the US is already considered guilty before his trial has even begun?
(the photograph of an activist protesting against Manning's detention is by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Things you should know, take two

The Assads do not take lightly any concerted attempt to question their authority.
In 1982, President Hafez al-Assad sent 12,000 soldiers to besiege the city of Hama in open revolt against his regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood had taken control of the city, and declared it liberated.
Assad, a member of the Alawite, a Shiite minority in Syria, shelled the city for weeks.
His troops then entered the town, eliminating all Muslim Brotherhood militants that they could find.
Some 1,000 were slaughtered.
Overall, Assad killed approximately 40,000 Syrians, displaced another 100,000 others, in order to reassert his authority.
Some 15,000 still remain unaccounted for…
The foreign policy analyst Robin Wright called the Hama Massacre the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. That is no small achievement in a region that has had to endure the regimes of thugs the likes of Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi…
In many ways you can look at the Arab world over the last few decades and really if you want a turning point, I think the turning point was the terror unleashed on the Syrian people in the city of Hama in 1982.
For about 25 years the Arab people have been terrified of their rulers and the security states have really marginalized them and demolished their sense of dignity, Fouad Ajami, of John Hopkins University, told PBS.
It is that sense of dignity that the Syrians, following the lead of the Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis and Libyans, are seeking to retrieve.
Yet, they are still facing the same ruthless regime, now led by Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father after his death in 2000.
The revolt against the Assad tyranny began some five weeks ago in Deera, a city near the Jordanian border.
Last Friday, thousands of Syrians took to the streets anew, after prayers, to demand the fall of Assad.
The people want the overthrow of the regime, they chanted near Abbasside Square in Damascus.
Security forces shot and killed 109 demonstrators, clearly not hesitating to fire into the crowd.
Demonstrators raised their hands to show that they were unarmed. The fire intensified, wrote Reuters’ Khaled Yacoub Oweiss.
Many were shot in the head and chest, wrote Katherine Marsh of The Observer.
Yesterday, funeral processions for the preceding day’s fallen turned into angry demonstrations against the regime in Damascus, Douma, Barza, Maadamiah and Qabon, according to the NYT.
Bashar al-Assad, you traitor! You coward. Take your soldiers to the Golan, many chanted on Saturday (The Golan Heights were seized by the Israelis during the 1967 war, and remain under Israeli occupation).
In Barza, a witness who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said that at least 1,000 mourners came under fire as they prepared to bury four men and two children, one 7 years old and the other 14. The witness said security forces aimed directly at the mourners, many of whom sought shelter in the nearby Al-Salam mosque, wrote Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
A further 11 were killed on Saturday, throughout Syria.
To date, 280 demonstrators have been killed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising.
Coverage of the events by traditional media has been difficult, as foreign journalists are not authorized to operate freely in Syria.
Yesterday, Carl Perry of Aljazeera was expelled from the country.
Hence, most reports of the events originate from the Syrian activists themselves.
Satellite phones, laptops and modems have been donated by the Syrian Diaspora to ensure that Assad’s brutal repression does not remain unreported.
The opposition movement also has a Facebook page, Syrian Revolution, to rally its supporters.
Assad has made several attempts to assuage the anger of the demonstrators.
He abolished the state of emergency in place since 1963, did away with the security courts, fired several provincial governors and released some political prisoners…
Yet, the fact that his security forces are unabashedly firing on unarmed demonstrators and that activists are still being arrested in midnight raids clearly evince the fact that Assad is more interested in saving his regime than reforming it…
In any case, since Assad has shed the blood of his own compatriots, and considering the brutal legacy of his Baath Party regime, nothing short of its elimination is likely to quell the unrest…
We want the toppling of the regime, a resident of Ezraa told The Observer.
The blood of our martyrs makes this our responsibility now.
Can Assad survive?
How many Syrians is he willing to kill in order to do so?
Will the Syrians persist and topple his regime?
Not all Syrians welcome the uprising.
Several religious minorities, including the Christians, fear that a post-Assad regime could be even worse…
Nevertheless, Assad is clearly unfit, both morally and politically, to rule Syria.
His fate, as well as the nation’s, is in the hands of the Syrian people…
(The photograph above of a demonstration in the Syrian city of Banias on Friday is by AFP)

Things you should know, take one...

Is Misrata the new Sarajevo?
If so, then we should already be ashamed of ourselves.
How many times can the civilized world make the same mistake?
That it is a chillingly dangerous place, furthermore,  was made abundantly clear yesterday for those not paying attention...
Two prominent and intrepid war photographers, Tim Hetheington and Chris Hondros were killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack instigated by pro-Gaddafi forces, according to the BBC.
Xan Rice, of The Guardian, manages to convey the current horrendous conditions in Misrata...
To date, some 1,000 have been killed, 90% of which are civilians, the journalist reports...
President Obama yesterday authorized US forces to use drones  in order to enhance NATO's camapaign to protect Libyan civilians...
Some, including Glenn Greenwald, construed this move as an escalation of the war in Libya.
As the war in Libya escalates on a seemingly weekly basis,  I think it's time for another urgent speech about how imperative it is we all tighten our belts. It's also probably time for another Nobel Peace Prize (and yes, I know: these drone attacks are designed to bring about peace-because War, as we know, is Peace),  he wrote in his blog...

Al Jazeera reported the following today:Predator drones have routinely been flying surveillance missions in Libya, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

He said the US will provide up to two 24-hour combat air patrols each day by the unmanned Predators.

Is the introduction of two drones an escalation?

In essence, what is the welfare of the people of Misrata and Libya worth?

Is it our problem, and if so, how far should we go?

As Chirac said in 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, war is always the worse solution...

Yet, after Bosnia, Srebrenica and Rwanda, can we simply remain on the sidelines and watch a ruthless thug resort to heavy weaponry and cluster bombs in order to submit a people that is courageously fighting for its freedom and dignity? 
(the photograph above of a Libyan revolutionary on the front line in Misrata is by Chris Hondros)