October 1, 2012 7:02 PM
Obama okay with child soldiers in Africa
So in a public speech last Wednesday The Big 0 acts like the human rights big shot, then late Friday sneaks an Executive Memo waiving al sanctions against the three worst offenders - Libya, Yemen, and South Sudan. How can people who think themselves progressives swallow these lies? We're talking about the gravest human rights, where little boys are captured, drugged, brutalized and made into killers (see my 2008 post on African autobiographies .And by the way, Bush was the one who signed the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008.
Posted By Josh Rogin
Monday, October 1, 2012
U.S. President Barack Obama issued a new executive order last week to fight human trafficking, touting his administration's handling of the issue.
"When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that's slavery," Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty."
But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community.
Late Friday afternoon, Obama issued a presidential memorandum waiving penalties under the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 for Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen, penalties that Congress put in place to prevent U.S. arms sales to countries determined by the State Department to be the worst abusers of child soldiers in their militaries. The president also partially waived sanctions against the Democratic Republic of the Congo to allow some military training and arms sales to that country.
Human rights advocates saw the waivers as harmful to the goal of using U.S. influence to urge countries that receive military assistance to move away from using child soldiers and contradictory to the rhetoric Obama used in his speech.
"After such a strong statement against the exploitation of children, it seems bizarre that Obama would give a pass to countries using children in their armed forces and using U.S. tax money to do that," said Jesse Eaves, the senior policy advisor for child protection at World Vision.
Read more at Foreign Policy
Posted in Liberal Hypocrisy | Permalink
