Obama's America: Two Missed Dates with History
Published in Le Nouvel Observateur
(France) on 22 September 2011
by Daniel Salvatore Schiffer (link to original)
By refusing to pardon Troy Davis and recognize Palestine, the Obama administration has missed two occasions to go down in history.
The United States must never again assume to give lessons in democracy, and certainly not in the name of human rights, to the rest of the world, while it still practices the horrendous ancestral practice of capital punishment!
Because the United States, by coldly executing Troy Davis last night, just proved to the whole world that it has nothing but contempt and indifference toward the millions of men and women who raised a hue and cry for a more humane and compassionate justice, something "fairer" for an innocent man.
Silence
From here on, this will be an indelible stain on America in the horrified eyes of true democracies. Far from being the great modern nation it claims to be, the U.S. is no better, under the circumstances, than countries that rely on barbaric methods of justice redolent of the Middle Ages — methods such as stoning or hanging, commonly carried out in places where the horror-evoking, obscurantist Sharia is in place.
What's more, it's apparently better to be sentenced to death in Iran, where one's hide can still be saved, than in the United States. Case in point: Sakineh, for whom the international community implored clemency from political and religious authorities. No one can come to your rescue in the U.S., as was demonstrated with Troy Davis when the same international community begged for the same type of clemency from political and judicial authorities.
It is an appalling paradox that the turban-wearing ayatollahs in Tehran, for as fundamentalist as they are, turned out to be less fanatic at the end of this sordid account, than the judges in suit and tie of Georgia!
As for Barack Obama, let's not even go there. His shattering silence, in addition to his lack of political courage and intellectual foresight, on the painful matter regarding Davis is unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize granted by the Oslo committee. The prize was awarded a bit too soon and was based solely on his beautiful, yet merely theoretical discourse.
Am I exaggerating? Let's consider the even more incomprehensible declaration of this very Nobel Prize winner to the Palestinian National Authority president, made on dreary Sept. 21, of a flat refusal and threat of an implacable veto of the president's desire to finally see his country officially recognized by the United Nations.
It’s undeniable: By obstinately refusing to pardon Troy Davis and then by refusing to recognize Palestine, the U.S. under Obama has missed two historic appointments!
The United States must never again assume to give lessons in democracy, and certainly not in the name of human rights, to the rest of the world, while it still practices the horrendous ancestral practice of capital punishment!
Because the United States, by coldly executing Troy Davis last night, just proved to the whole world that it has nothing but contempt and indifference toward the millions of men and women who raised a hue and cry for a more humane and compassionate justice, something "fairer" for an innocent man.
Silence
From here on, this will be an indelible stain on America in the horrified eyes of true democracies. Far from being the great modern nation it claims to be, the U.S. is no better, under the circumstances, than countries that rely on barbaric methods of justice redolent of the Middle Ages — methods such as stoning or hanging, commonly carried out in places where the horror-evoking, obscurantist Sharia is in place.
What's more, it's apparently better to be sentenced to death in Iran, where one's hide can still be saved, than in the United States. Case in point: Sakineh, for whom the international community implored clemency from political and religious authorities. No one can come to your rescue in the U.S., as was demonstrated with Troy Davis when the same international community begged for the same type of clemency from political and judicial authorities.
It is an appalling paradox that the turban-wearing ayatollahs in Tehran, for as fundamentalist as they are, turned out to be less fanatic at the end of this sordid account, than the judges in suit and tie of Georgia!
As for Barack Obama, let's not even go there. His shattering silence, in addition to his lack of political courage and intellectual foresight, on the painful matter regarding Davis is unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize granted by the Oslo committee. The prize was awarded a bit too soon and was based solely on his beautiful, yet merely theoretical discourse.
Am I exaggerating? Let's consider the even more incomprehensible declaration of this very Nobel Prize winner to the Palestinian National Authority president, made on dreary Sept. 21, of a flat refusal and threat of an implacable veto of the president's desire to finally see his country officially recognized by the United Nations.
It’s undeniable: By obstinately refusing to pardon Troy Davis and then by refusing to recognize Palestine, the U.S. under Obama has missed two historic appointments!