Susan Herman, President of the ACLU...asleep at the wheel??? |
In my previous post, I responded to a comment from our dear friend Jody who, quite understandably being from New Zealand via London, wondered why some American women recoil from the term "Feminist" since Feminism is about "women's rights and equality" with my counterpoint that a number of Feminists too often use the Orwellian Animal Farm angle that "some women are more equal than others". I told Jody that the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is a far better example of an organization that consistently stands for it's principles regardless of the people involved by citing their famous case of fighting for an American Nazi group's right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, home to a large Jewish population and quite a few Holocaust survivors. By fighting for people they personally despised, they demonstrated how committed to the principles of Civil Liberties they actually are.
During the Bush Administration, the ACLU was quite predictably fiercely opposed to Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation (waterboarding), the treatment of detainees of Abu Graib, just to name a few. They have always been a stalwart for keeping our government's feet close to the fire regarding basic rights. Seconds after pecking out my response to Jody on my phone, I realized that the ACLU has recently gone soft on their own principles and are due a trip to The Den's woodshed. The ACLU response to The Obama Administration practice of executing Americans without due process of law has been quite muted and almost all those people who were apoplectic at the Bush Administration over waterboarding, Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, etc. are nowhere to be found. While the Obama White House has freely acknowledged executing 2 Americans via Drone strike and citing rather dubious legal authority they also admitted over the weekend to killing 2 more Americans back in January while also killing 2 hostages: an American and an Italian. The Obama White House says the 2 American ISIS members killed this time were not specifically targeted like the previous Americans they executed without due process.
Jane Addams' Hull House on Chicago's Near West Side. |
So tell me Ms Susan Herman, ACLU, and all those people who were foaming at the mouth angry over waterboarding, Guantanamo, and Abu Graib, etc: are you to remain true to your principles and vigilantly fight for the rights of ALL Americans or people, regardless of ideology and hold the US Government to the highest standards regarding Civil Liberties or are we going to just keep basically sitting this one out and issue a terse memo here and there?
US President Barack Obama accepting Nobel Peace Prize. Among Nobel Peace Laureates, President Obama holds a commanding lead in the category of: most countries bombed with seven. Jane Addams and the other 102 Peace Laureates are deadlocked in second place with zero. According to recent news reports, Obama has boasted to aides of being really good at killing people. pic from The Wall Street Journal |
What would Jane say?