Jimmy Carter slams US human rights record

The first thing I thought after reading this was that there were no surprises in it. In fact it's what people have been saying for years and years already. After 911 you'd think the American gov would be trying to make friends around the world and to stop people hating them. All they've been doing is blowing up everything left right and centre, with the arrogant justification that it's a "War on Terror". Apparently you battle terror by creating more terror?

It's not rocket science. Blowing up innocent civilians in a foreign country with un-manned drones, calling those deaths "inevitable", and continuing to bomb the place without even declaring war, targeting and labelling people as "terrorists" because of their political beliefs. What do they reckon, people in that foreign country are going to get really pissed off really quickly? No shit Sherlock. 

It's good to hear finally from someone as influential as an ex-president a voice of reason. It's not so good though that it's taken so long for this to happen. And all he's doing is stating the bloody obvious, it's not like it's some sort of new shocking news. Too little too late?

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Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times. 

These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior. 

Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either. 

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends. 

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years. 

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. 

The New York Times