Oh, the irony is just dripping off the pages here… the NYT has a harsh editorial lambasting the lunatics in Tehran for their conduct in the ongoing “errant hikers” affair. Agonizing over their 264 days in jail, the editorial highlights how:
The Americans were hiking in the Kurdish region of Iraq when they crossed into Iran accidentally, according to family members. Detained since late July, they were sent to the infamous Evin prison, where political prisoners are routinely incarcerated and often abused.
Really? They where “hiking”, huh? And “accidentally” crossed into Iran, huh? How do we know that they’re not enemy combatants? Why should the Iranians treat them any differently than the Americans continue to treat hundreds of prisoners in Bagram and Guantanamo?
The fact that Iranian officials cannot agree on charges against the hikers, or back them up, is a sure sign that something fishy is going on.
Really? Using the logic of the NYT, doesn’t that mean “something fishy” is going on when the United States holds dozens of people for going on a decade now, with no charges? Where’s the moral outcry in an editorial about the conduct of the current administration? Or the previous one, for that matter, since the strategy appears to be largely the same. Because rather than change this unconscionable policy from the Bush era (as he promised during his campaign for the job as leader of the “free” world), Sir Change-A-Lot and his justice department continues to fight tooth-and-nail to maintain the right to treat prisoners exactly the way Tehran is treating these so-called American “hikers.”
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out recently, the hyporisy just grows richer when we wag our big finger in Pakistan’s face and tell them that we’re upset about them doing the same thing and will cease giving them billions of dollars in military aid if they don’t stop doing things the way we do.
Really, now. Ahmedinedjad may be a complete whackjob surrounded by even whackier mullahs, and Pakistan clearly is a runaway ex-democracy headed over the cliff. But as long as they are merely following our own example when it comes to “prolonged detention” with no apparent cause, no right to representation, and a bit of random torture thrown in for good measure, then Obama and his fellow travelers in the “do as we say, not as we do” clown car really need to STFU.
