It seems the Obama administration is "expressing alarm" that thousands of political separatists and Taliban insurgents have "disappeared" at the hands of the Pakistani security forces and may have been tortured or killed. [1]
The issue came to the surface as a result of a State Department report sent to Congress last month arising from accounts by human rights groups that Pakistan's security services had rounded up thousands of people over the last decade. [2]
The State Department report concluded, "There continue to be gross violations of human rights by Pakistani security forces." [3]
The irony of moral outrage in that report seemed astounding to this observer, considering our own culpability in doing the very same thing!
Our own CIA has disappeared suspects worldwide, whisking them off the streets, flying them to secret sites, detaining them without charges or sending them to countries where they will be tortured and sometimes killed, is our own ongoing outrage that receives little or no attention in our Congress and even less in our media.
How can we condemn others when we are committing the same human rights offenses? It is the height of hypocrisy.
But this is where we have descended to. In the name of fighting an endless "war on terror" and before that the cold war against Communism, we have committed atrocities i.e. assassinations, coups, extraordinary renditions, warrantless wiretapping, drone attacks and missile strikes that kill and maim innocents, initiate pre-emptive wars and occupations et al, all in the name of freedom and democracy and defending the American people.
The Obama administration early on could have chosen to investigate and prosecute those who authorized the illegal excesses committed by high officials in the Bush administration, the torture, the pre-emptive wars based on lies et al. It chose "not to look back."
In so doing, instead of cleansing the stain of his predecessor's moral and illegal outrages, Obama chose to continue on the same path. He is just as culpable.
It is all a cruel ruse which (it seems) the majority of the American people accept or at least acquiesce in.
Well Pakistan may be indulging in and carrying out its own atrocities. It pales in comparison to our own despicable behavior committed all over the world.
