GWOT’s End?

Mandate author, John Feffer evaluates the Obama administration’s recent efforts to reform the ‘global war on terror’ in weekly ezine World Beat.

Last week, shortly after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama ended the “global war on terror” (GWOT). Or so The Washington Post reported. The new president countermanded the Bush administration’s extralegal approaches by mandating the closure of Guantánamo within a year, outlawing the use of torture in interrogations, and putting the CIA out of the secret prisons business. Obama announced that he wanted to “send an unmistakable signal that our actions in defense of liberty will be as just as our cause.”

Sounds good. But the Post’s declaration might be just as premature as President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Lincoln that signaled the “end” of the Iraq War.

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Launch a Human Rights Restoration Initiative

The United States needs to restore its leadership role in promoting and protecting human rights both nationally and internationally. Over the past few years the protection of human rights has degraded, and despite the fact that many human rights treaties have recently been signed, many have yet to be fully implemented. In order to make the US a world leader in human rights once again, it should:

• Fully implement and ratify all human rights treaties.
• Develop an economic and social rights agenda to protect housing, health, and education.
• Promote comprehensive Human Rights Education.
• Take into account whether nominations to the judiciary consistently support international human rights law.

Author: Catherine Albisa, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative