Do As I Say Not As I Do

The President likes to talk about looking forward.  He says we need to look to the future rather than dwell in the past.  He says that to examine the past too closely can be divisive and distract us from the more important work that lies ahead. 

This is the response provided to those who want to see former Bush administration officials prosecuted for crimes against humanity stemming from their implementation of “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo and other secret CIA detention facilities across the globe.  The Justice Department has refused to pursue the matter.  Simply put, the administration has decided that to prosecute the perpetrators of these violations of federal and international law would destroy the very fabric of the country; particularly since the defendants would include the former President and Vice President of the United States.

So we find it interesting that administration officials feel embolden to lecture foreign countries on their violations of international law and crimes against humanity.   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently warned Indonesian officials that any security assistance from the United States would be based on an improvement in Indonesian policies on human rights.  Apparently we informed them that any substantive dialogue about the future requires an honest examination of the past.  Hmmm!

It would appear that the Obama administration’s policy on international law and crimes against humanity is “do as I say not as I do."  The hypocrisy of lecturing foreign governments about their bad behavior while turning a blind eye to our own is both cowardly and shameless.

We are better than this.