Human Rights: Jimmy Carter Denounces Barack Obama as a Fraud

The successor to one of the most unpopular presidents in American history, the winner of the Nobel Prize for his words alone, the iron man in his administration and the lucky guy facing a Republican opponent who is off to a rocky start. Barack Obama ignores the criticism of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, who has recently rejoined the American realist camp.

On July 3, a poll by Newsweek and the Daily Beast showed that Barack Obama did not make the top 10 list of American Presidents. Abraham Lincoln remains in first place, followed by Ronald Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George Washington and Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter, for his part, is also ahead of the current president. Though unpopular at the end of his term, Carter has since acquired the status of an elder statesman in American politics, becoming a peace ambassador and negotiator in many conflict areas around the world. That’s why his recent statements about Obama have not gone unheeded, especially given their publication in a New York Times column titled “A Cruel and Unusual Record.”

Jimmy Carter wrote that the U.S. is “abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights,” and harshly criticized the current administration. He denounced the past decade’s “widespread abuse” of human rights and complained that the administration is plotting murders abroad, including murders of American citizens. He also complained about the American law giving the right to hold individuals for an unlimited time on the sole ground that they could provide links to a person or entity suspected of terrorism (“This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty”), the numerous drone attacks sponsored by the White House (“We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed”) and the Guantanamo prison situation, where 169 prisoners are languishing without any international status (“American authorities have revealed that …some of the few being tried…have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times….Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried.”). “As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues,” Jimmy Carter asserts.

Hillary Clinton Pressures Obama

Although Jimmy Carter is hardly the first former president to criticize one of his successors, as USA Today reminds us, his charges against Barack Obama pack a double-punch. First, the criticism comes from within the United States. Although Obama enjoys some popularity in the West, that is disregarded by his honest predecessor. Second, the criticism strengthens the voices of hundreds of human rights organizations that have for years pointed fingers at the 44th president and the drift into which he has led the entire country. This human rights drift has hitherto been almost completely masked by the economic crisis and Obama’s rare oratory gifts.

Above all, Jimmy Carter’s attack is well-timed, coming at the moment when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided, against Barack Obama’s initial wishes, to apologize officially to Pakistan for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers killed in a raid last November. Obama had been unwilling to apologize, standing firm on his requirement that Pakistan reopen NATO supply routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The American president held out, trying to find the means to open new routes around Pakistan. But pressure from NATO and Pakistan’s inflexibility ultimately got the better of him, as did Hillary Clinton’s apology. Hillary also increasingly betrays her impatience to retire at the end of Obama’s term. In any case, the apology was viewed as a great victory and cause for national pride in Pakistan; those in power have announced the reopening of the routes.

Lately, Washington has also faced rising anger in Afghanistan and Yemen, as well as elsewhere in Pakistan, from people demanding an end to the incessant drone strikes in their territories. The drone policy indeed has resulted in a disastrous upsurge of protests in populations where cries for vengeance against Americans multiply.

In contrast to all this, the American president has welcomed the likely illegal election of his new Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto, and new revelations continue in the Fast and Furious affair.

A Nobel Prize Winner Obsessed with Electronic Warfare

But the worst part of Obama’s situation is that he is caught in his own trap. Rarely has a U.S. president benefited from such a high level of trust even before taking the oath of office. Obama was a young senator with a meteoric career who promised to get America back on track. He was the first black president, who sought to make good on his promises to close Guantanamo and to reconcile with the people and nations devastated by George W. Bush’s eight years in power. He invoked human rights and justice in all of his speeches to the nation. He promised a vast system of immigration reform, which has turned into a true manhunt in the U.S. He also enjoyed a spectacular reception from the international community when he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize just one year after taking office for, according to the Nobel Prize Committee, “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Less than four years later, just when he is poised to obtain re-election by default, Republicans are struggling to fight him on grounds where they themselves are hardly at ease and are failing to draw the clear economic line desired by the American people. Even in this context, Obama’s shortcomings are nevertheless overwhelming.

A Hyper-President Avenger

In 2010, Barack Obama chose to reaffirm the Patriot Act, which allows the president to take arbitrary measures, outside all control of Congress, for the unlimited detention of all individuals suspected of meeting vague criteria, such as engaging in activities related to terrorism. The act also allows the president to decide to kill any individual, including U.S. citizens, who in his eyes constitutes a threat to the United States. Obama did this in the face of strong criticism of torture in other countries by governmental agencies — for example, a recent case of official torture has recently been revealed in Poland. Even if Obama announces the closing of Guantanamo in the final stretch of his first term, it was never a priority, for reasons unknown. This is ironic given the case of Private Manning, suspected of having given information to WikiLeaks. Obama makes no secret of his desire to see justice strike hard against the young soldier, who will be brought to trial in January 2013, when Obama’s administration can barely muster the necessary elements to refute his defense. Obama dreams of trampling the American criminal procedure code and of getting the head of Julian Assange on a plate.

On the immigration front, Obama has turned ICE brigades into the armed wing of his administration. These brigades sow terror among illegal immigrants in America. Young children must witness the violent arrest and deportation of their parents to their country of origin, while they are detained for weeks in “deportation centers,” as they are called, and often left to fend for themselves before being sent to orphanages. Half a million immigrants are arrested that the courts refuse to see, some because the arrests are denounced as arbitrary, others because the courts don’t have the human or technical resources to deal with such congestion. Half a million people expelled from the country without being able to exercise their right to a hearing before an immigration judge.

Above all, Obama’s promised reform, if it remains unwatched, will only grow to exist in a more pernicious form. Over $500 million has been allocated to USCIS, the government immigration agency, for a vast publicity campaign praising “meritorious” immigrants, even though the allocation of visas for skilled workers has been reduced to such a point that hundreds of American businesses and startups are facing labor shortages. In fact, the Obama administration has set in motion a reform that redefines immigration according to financial criteria. For example, obtaining the famous E5 visa, which softens immigration requirements for entrepreneurs, is no longer a matter of how skilled the entrepreneur is but is a question of cold, hard cash. At present, a visa for the U.S. can be obtained almost as a matter of routine for the sum of $1 to $5 million. The law on reunification of families has suffered setback upon setback. It currently takes an average of 27 years for the family of a Filipino immigrant to join him in the United States. The result: nationalities such as Indians, who typically move to the U.S. market after they graduate in fields such as engineering, medicine or research, are no longer asking for their visas to be renewed and are leaving to return to their home countries. And the recent amnesty in favor of 800,000 illegal children who were born in the U.S. and should soon get the right to be naturalized is a joke. Not only are the methods through which this would be accomplished unclear, but there is no guarantee given to potential applicants of the consequences for their families. A purely election-focused measure, it now creates a lot of mistrust.

It is critical to remember that each day, ICE brigades across the U.S. round up illegal immigrants who have committed minor crimes and create obstacles to their naturalization. Such minor crimes include possession of marijuana, driving without a license in a country where it is nearly impossible to survive and work without a car and even wandering on public roads.

The Daily Death Game

American drones can now fly over U.S. territory. The TSA ramps up its abuses in the country’s airports. The NSA’s resources are deployed across the country to eavesdrop on its people. Location systems, including GPS, do not require any administrative or judicial mandate to be used. Filming or photographing the police can become a misdemeanor. In Puerto Rico, incidents of police violence and obstruction of the First Amendment — sacrosanct freedom of expression — multiply.

Meanwhile, those in power remain in a state of denial. Obsessed with his reelection, Obama has lit as many fires as he can against his opponent Mitt Romney, describing him as the candidate of the rich. He does this at the risk of being denounced himself by the extensive network of journalists and researchers who scrutinize the statements of U.S. public figures. Obama’s broken promises number in the dozens.

This Fourth of July, the Washington Post celebrated Independence Day in its own way. It commented on a tweet from American actor Chris Rock that said: “Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed the fireworks.” It is shocking that the media and commentators still do not find it disturbing that the man who sits daily in the Oval Office also chooses the “baseball cards” — the names and faces of those who, a few minutes later, he sentences to death.