Post-Gazette Editorial – 12/10/06

This page was last updated on December 11, 2006.

Lost virtue: America no longer leads on human rights; Editorial; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; December 10, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Today is International Human Rights Day 2006, an event that sadly will mean nothing to those who languish in cruel confinement across the world. Their sorrow is compounded by America’s shame.”

[RWC] PG, speak for yourself. You may be ashamed of the U.S., but I’m not.

“Americans can still lecture the world on human rights -- old habits die hard -- but the representatives of oppressive foreign governments can now smile and dismiss our comments as so much hypocritical blather.”

[RWC] What must it be like to view the world through the eyes of the editorial author(s)?

“The fact is that the United States, for many years the hope of the oppressed, has lost its moral authority to speak out. To be sure, this nation is not North Korea or Sudan, but it is no longer the shining example it once was.”

[RWC] Hmm, then why do we have millions of legal and illegal immigrants and more coming each day? Being a communist country, I’m a little surprised the PG used North Korea as a bad example.

“This is not our opinion alone. It is what Amnesty International USA, the respected human rights organization, is charging on this International Human Rights Day.”

[RWC] Amnesty International? That the PG holds this group up as a “respected human rights organization” tells us a lot about the PG.

“When the United States faced down the Soviet Union, it had earned the right to condemn the gulags and the everyday suppression of people’s rights. After all, as Amnesty points out, America had played a critical role in convening the Nuremberg trials, which in bringing Nazi war criminals to the bar of justice established enduring principles.”

[RWC] Let me get this straight. The PG actually equates the USSR imprisoning millions of innocent people like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn over a period of decades with the U.S. imprisoning terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11?

“Later, the United States pushed for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. Eleanor Roosevelt was the head of the drafting committee. Indeed, International Human Rights Day commemorates the adoption of that landmark agreement.”

[RWC] Hmm, I wonder why the editorial failed to note the UN Commission on Human Rights had to be dissolved in 2006 because it had become a joke. If you recall, some of the world’s worst human rights offenders were members of the Commission and even held leadership positions (Libya held the chairmanship in 2003).

Predictably, the UN simply replaced the UNCHR with the UN Human Rights Council, which appears to have the same problems as its predecessor. As soon as it met, the UNHRC issued a condemnation of Israel.

“Although the record did not always match the performance, president after president championed human rights. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and all the noble words became hollow. Nineteen terrorists succeeded in getting us to do what other despots and desperate times could not -- turn our backs on the better angels of our nature, all in the name of a spurious security.”

[RWC] “[T]he record did not always match the performance?” What does this mean? Isn’t your performance your record?

“[T]he better angels of our nature?” What hooey and what does it mean?

“A respect for human rights meant little to an administration and a president who placed a higher priority on projecting toughness. Secret prisons, indefinite detention, even torture have become the American way.”

[RWC] Where are the secret prisons?

“[I]ndefinite detention?” Does the PG believe we should let prisoners of war go? When in any previous war did we release prisoners of war before the war’s end? FYI, some released prisoners were recaptured on the battlefield. How many of our military did these enemy combatants kill between their release and recapture?

“[T]orture [has] become the American way?” The last I checked, all torture charges are investigated and the accused parties are tried, and punished if found guilty. Remember, folks like the PG count placing panties on a prisoner’s head as “torture.”

“Wisely, although perhaps too optimistically, Larry Cox, Amnesty’s executive director, said in a statement to mark International Human Rights Day: ‘Americans want national security efforts that are consistent with the nation’s traditional values of justice and the rule of law. It’s time to reverse course and to return this country to the America we believe in.’”

[RWC] What a load of BS! Enemy combatants held by the U.S. have more rights than granted by anyone at any time in history, and somehow that’s inconsistent “with the nation’s traditional values of justice and the rule of law?”

“Last week Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, introduced the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act, which would reinstate federal court jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay detainees and other suspected enemy combatants. The proposal, which they plan to pursue in the next congressional session, would repeal two constitutionally dubious provisions of the Military Commissions Act that limited judicial review of detainee cases.”

[RWC] I hate to break the news to the PG, but the Constitution (Article III, Section 2) grants Congress the ability to determine which cases the Supreme Court can hear.

Historically we’ve used military commissions to try our enemies. Why was it OK for FDR, but not OK now?

Here are critiques of Post-Gazette and Beaver County Times editorials about the MCA of 2006.

“That alone won’t restore America’s voice as an evangelist for human rights, but it’s a start.”

[RWC] Though the editorial asserts, “America no longer leads on human rights,” it never says who the new leader is.

Does anyone care to guess why?