As reported in The Nation on April 24, in his remarks at the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, US President Barack Obama pledged to do whatever he can to prevent future holocausts, from speaking out against human rights abuses to stopping Iran from obtaining the means to make nuclear weapons. May I remind him that it was not Iran that committed the holocaust, but his European ally Germany, which keeps supplying nuclear capable submarines to Israel at subsidized price. Even if Iran acquired nuclear bombs, which intention it denies, it would pose no threat to the long-established nuclear power Israel, which additionally has the whole of Europe plus the United States and its president at its service. It is really a disgrace to see the president of super power America fall to such depths, just to be able to sneak into the White House a second time with the blessings and funding of pro-Israel lobbies.
As for killing own people, the Americans come out as the worst criminals, having hunted down the native 'Red Indian' population to near extinction, on whose graves they built their country. Even now, the condition of these people is no better and a human rights inquiry led by James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples, is scheduled to begin an investigation of the country's estimated 2.7 million Native Americans who live in federally recognised tribal areas which are plagued with unemployment, alcoholism, high suicide rates and other social problems. Moreover, a country which keeps people in detention for years without charging them, subjecting them to the worst form of torture in the meantime, and kills innocent people through drone and other attacks, without providing them a fair trial, can hardly qualify as a champion of human rights.
Obama went on to say "We're making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities." I am not so sure about structures and mechanisms to prevent mass atrocities but what I know for sure is that the United States does have, and continues to expand structures and mechanisms to commit mass atrocities on other people, like establishing and expanding its military bases and commands abroad, in the pursuit of its long-time hobby to keep attacking other countries, which it has been doing almost perpetually. Anyone interested in details can very easily get through the internet a list of countries invaded by the US, some more than once, after the Wold War II.
S.R.H. HASHMI,
Karachi, April 24.