President Obama’s failure to prosecute Bush-era torturers created an impunity that has encouraged some Republican presidential candidates to tout new plans for more torture if they reach the White House, a grotesque example of “American exceptionalism,” as Nat Parry explains.Two huge fails for former constitutional law professor now President Barack Obama: the decisions not to prosecute torture or control fraud.
Both are serious failures that will have repercussions into the future until they are addressed, but of the two, the failure to address torture is the most serious since it undermines American moral authority and therefore soft power internationally.
Without moral authority and soft power, the US can only lead through threat of force backed by readiness to apply it.
Whatever else Obama has done for the good is cancelled by these monumental failures, which are both strategic failures and, worse, moral failures, proving that the man was not fit for the office.
Consortiums News
New GOP Plans for Torture
Nat Parry
6 comments:
Tom why cant the Contol Fraud people just walk in to any seated Grand Jury and provide state's evidence?
"The function of a grand jury is to accuse persons who may be prima facie guilty of an offence, but the institution is also a shield against unfounded and oppressive prosecution. It is a means for lay citizens representative of the community to participate in the administration of justice. It can also make presentments on crime and maladministration in its area."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury
Seems pretty straightforward....
Tom why cant the Contol Fraud people just walk in to any seated Grand Jury and provide state's evidence?
Should ask Bill Black.
Did the US ever have moral authority? Surely many Americans thought it did, but cold war antics pretty much exposed the depravity. Looking back at the moral failures over time from race, native issues, to the quack/fraudulent economic ideas the country worked to spread around the world (gold standards, imf, world bank and other stupid ideas), with devastating consequences [Probably caused WW1 & 2 indirectly], environmental problems, and a corrupt two-party system that pretends to be a democracy while it is really an oligarchy and oppresses most, most of the time, how could the country claim moral authority? It isn't the worst political system on the planet, but probably in the bottom 50% of governments in terms of long term performance.
It was a rhetorical question Tom....
Did the US ever have moral authority?
My remembrance is that post WWII it did for some time. Vietnam blew that up, and it was downhill from there.
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