Guantánamo horrors
The United States faces severe problems in attempting to avoid federal trials for Guantánamo Bay detainees. The very first case is that of Omar Khadr, a Canadian now aged 23. He was inducted by his father into al-Qaeda at the age of 15; was seriously injured in a battle with U.S. forces in Afghanistan; and has spent eight years in prison. His [...]
In On The Great Game
Throughout the 19th century, Russia and Britain sparred for control of Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan. The "Great Game" ended in stalemate. The Afghans remained fiercely independent. As the saying goes, you can rent a Pathan but you can't buy one. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and new national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon the same [...]
Evasions on torture
On the ABC News programme ‘This Week' on February 14, former United States Vice-President Dick Cheney openly advocated torture, and confirmed that while in office he authorised it in over 30 cases. In the United Kingdom, the Court of Appeal accepted a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) request on February 8 that a passage be removed from a [...]
Amnesty: caught with strange bedfellows
The debate sparked by Gita Sahgal’s dispute with Amnesty International over its controversial alliance with a far-right Islamist pressure group goes to the heart of the all-too-familiar conflict that arises when an organisation struggles (and is seen to fail) to reconcile its stated principles with its tactics. The row erupted when Ms Sahgal, [...]
ND Batra: Mr Obama And The Dream Of Exceptionalism
THE hope that Barack Obama the presidential candidate raised in the hearts and minds of his ardent supporters, who saw in him a redeemer like Abraham Lincoln, has begun to fade. Mr Obama has turned out to be more like Cardinal Barberini in Bertolt Brecht’s play Life of Galileo, who unlike the Church would not “set myself up against the [...]
The Politics of Fear
An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists. Readers' Comments It’s nonsense, of course, but effective. The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at [...]
Many ex-Guantanamo detenus return to terror
About one in five ex-detenus has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity. Administration officials said on Wednesday that a classified Pentagon report concludes that of some 560 detenus transferred abroad from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging [...]
Bagram, the other Guantanamo
Images of caged and shackled detenus at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and of the Gulfstream jets that were used to transfer detenus to secret prisons around the world, have been seared into the public consciousness and become indelibly linked to the U.S. response to the attacks of September 11, [...]
Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal
Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It’s not torture if you don’t mean it to be. It’s not torture if you don’t nearly kill the victim. It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture. It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court [...]
Closing Guantanamo: an assessment
By now, it is clear that the Obama administration will miss its self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010 to close down the Guantanamo prison, as President Obama himself has admitted. With this, the United States could begin to look like it is sliding back to its bad old days of lawlessness when seen as part of a troubling trend of worsening human [...]