From the Department of ‘Do As I Say, Not As I Do’ comes this from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
“President Obama gave an interview earlier this week to an Indonesian television station in lieu of the scheduled trip to that country which was canceled due to the health care vote. In 2008, Indonesia empowered a national commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by its own government under the U.S.-backed Suharto regime “in an attempt to finally bring the perpetrators to justice,” and Obama was asked in this interview: “Is your administration satisfied with the resolution of the past human rights abuses in Indonesia?” He replied:
We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed. We can’t go forward without looking backwards . . . .
Did I miss something or isn’t that the polar opposite of Obama’s policy toward officials in the Bush administration accused of human rights violations by way of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) in pursuit of the “war on terror?”
Greenwald:
“Why, as Obama sermonized, must Indonesians first look backward before being able to move forward, whereas exactly the opposite is true of Americans? If a leader is going to demand that other countries adhere to the very “principles” which he insists on violating himself, it’s probably best not to use antithetical clichés when issuing decrees, for the sake of appearances if nothing else.
[…]
Nothing enables the glorification of crimes, and nothing ensures their future re-occurrence, more than shielding the criminals from all accountability. It’s nice that Barack Obama is willing to dispense that lecture to other countries, but it’s not so nice that he does exactly the opposite in his own.”
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