The Obama administration, or as Angry Arab aptly calls it, the Bushama administration, continues to side with the Bush White House. Last week, it decided that preserving state secrets was actually a great idea. Now this week, it agreed that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.
In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
The AP quotes one Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Airfield. “The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we’d hoped,” she said. “We all expected better.”
They expected better from Obama, they say. But why? What did he ever say or do that would make them think he’d be any better that Bush? And why are they shocked? Did they really never listen to the stuff he actually did say? He’s actually doing a smashing job in keeping his campaign promises to destroy Afghanistan.
Like lawyers rarely ever think to question the concept of law, like business students are never asked to learn what capitalism is, so it is that human rights activists rarely stop to wonder what “human rights” are.
How do “human rights” function? Why they were invented? And more importantly, exactly who are these rights are for?
If they knew (and cared about, might I add) the answers to these questions, they wouldn’t be fighting the front on the attorney level. If they really cared about social justice as their chosen line of work portends to, they certainly wouldn’t be surprised when the President of the United States does the same exact shit the President of the United States been doing for the past 200+ years.
“Human rights” are supposed to be universal and so the idea of them, they way they’re discussed, they way they’re acted upon are deemed separate from civil rights. They are not supposed to be judicial rights, they are not supposed to be the same thing. So it makes you wonder, what exactly does a “human rights attorney” actually do?
The U.S. can carpet bomb an entire region out of “political” reasons, yet nothing essential is violated in terms of “human rights” on the bodies of those who are maimed or on those whose lives are ripped from existence. In these cases, the suffering inflicted onto them as citizens is distinguished from the suffering he or she would undergo as a human being. No human rights have necessarily been violated when an untold number of human lives is destroyed in this way.
Human rights only come into question when the political nature of the violation has been stripped of the question. Yet when we investigate how human rights are identified and applied, we come to see that they have absolutely no meaning independent of the judicial institutions that enforce said rights. Human rights are political. The person is necessarily a political subject by way of the enforcement of human rights. And so this is, I suppose, why the paradox of the “human rights attorney” even exists.
I borrow from Talal Asad’s chapter “Redeeming the ‘Human’ through Human Rights” in Formations of the Secular (2003).
Asad highlights Malcom X’s famous speech at the UN in the 1960s to illustrate this point. Critical of the civil rights movement, Malcom X decided to take up the situation of African Americans to the United Nations as a question of human rights as to transcend the limitations of the state.
“We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level — to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil-rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it’s civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.”
Although the UN has a “universal” charter of human rights, there is no escaping the fact that the UN is only but an entity made up of other states. Therefore, Malcom X could not escape dealing with states and more than that, he could not escape dealing with the United States — among the most powerful of these in the UN. To accuse the United States of being the violator was never going to work out.
If you’re never going to be convinced of the danger states pose to social justice, then at least accept that as a US citizen speaking at the UN, the route that Malcom X sought to take the struggle was doomed to failure from the beginning. The General Assembly — that body of African, Asian, and Latino brothers who would speak on the behalf of the Black struggle in the US — that body’s powers are, frankly, almost non-existent.
The real power — the power of enforcement – lies in the Security Council, of which the US has been from the very beginning a permanent member with veto power. If the UN believed in democracy at all, its powers would lie in the General Assembly.
So to Malcom X’s question of human rights, the UN basically told him to take it to the country where he held citizenship. Human rights are only as good as your government; only as enforced as your country is powerful; and only as applicable to you personally as your government says they are.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdCsoQPu5bg]
Related posts:
- Zionism Must be Defended (or, Barack Obama’s AIPAC speech)
- US Defeated on Human Rights Stance
- Allawi Running on Human Rights Platform
- Sarah Silverman: If Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States I’m gonna blame the Jews
- Poor Barack Obama
The same forces that controlled policy pre-Obama are the same ones that control policy now. In order to get elected Obama had to sell his soul and “play ball”. That’s just how it is…especially with foriegn policy. The current mid eas policy is the same as it has been for decades…the Bush 2 administration simply sped things up. The goals are the same, just minor differences in the paths they take.
Also, PC, nice rap man, you’re pretty talented…beyond the talent you’ve been touting to everyone on this blog for quite some time.
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Posted by John1085 | June 30, 2009, 12:31 amits not just foreign policy its also policy at home and all that crap by the name of a “stimulus” package.
Posted by Mo | February 21, 2009, 5:18 pmDoes anyone believe in “human rights”, per se?
I’ve always thought the whole concept was silly. It makes much more sense to talk about “human obligations” and “human goods” than human rights.
After all, human beings are animals, different from other animals in *degree*, not in *kind*. If one animal eats another, has that animal’s “animal rights” been violated? Who enforces such a thing?
Well, societies do, as manifested by governments.
I am, unlike QuiQui, a statist, though I’d consider myself a relatively libertarian statist. The establishment of states, with governments, represents the best hope of achieving human goods in a world where motivations often conflict and resources are scarce.
The accomplishments of states are real; the amount of happiness and comfort in the world for human beings today is almost inarguably higher than it’s ever been in human history.
The accomplishments of anti-statists are… well, I’m not seeing any, though I’m sure they’ve had a few obscure ones somewhere.
I think QuiQui’s previous post indicating that she’d no longer stand alongside the Palestinians once they become “a nation like any other nation” is very telling.
I’d argue I’m a better friend to the Palestinians than she is.
Posted by Joe | February 22, 2009, 12:02 amSorry, Joe. You lost me at “human beings are animals”. Some people never finished kindergarten… go figure.
Posted by Anonymous | February 22, 2009, 2:31 amOne time my teacher told me that life is not fair. I shouted back indignantly, “That doesn’t mean you have the right to be unfair!”
If Obama was perfect, he’d be dead or not president. I applaud this administration’s accomplishments and weep for its failures.
Joe-humans-are-animals-especially-my-friends-the-Palestinians, you make me laugh every day. For that, I thank you. Mr Might is right, winner take all, law of the jungle in state form, with a little libertarianism to make our coffee sweet and creamy, ends of your vision of the world justifies the means of murder, you are all cliche and arrogance and excuse and ridiculous.
Posted by American Muslim Girl | February 22, 2009, 3:54 amthere is no “different path”.
you cant get elected without support of pro-isreali lobbyist.
any elected member showing disconcern with the conflict,(against isreal) doesnt get re-elected.
15k a plate at pro-Isreal fund raisers for obama. with that type of money, you cant give away.
Same people hopping from one elected member to the next.
Posted by Anonymous | February 22, 2009, 10:40 amKabob isn’t reporting videos like this. I wonder why. Remember when we heard about Hamas breaking legs of Fatah collaborators in Gaza? It’s all so neat and clean in black and white letters. Behind each pair of those broken legs is a human being.
Watch for yourself how acts the Palestinian government of Gaza.
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