Former president of Argentina Nestor Kirchner just died. Looking back on his career, he could have given Obama some advice on what to do when you're trying to recover from a predecessor who commits human rights violations and a devastating financial crisis.
To avoid tldrs, here's some excerpts...
Flags are flying at half mast in Argentina today after the sudden and unexpected death of former president Nestor Kirchner of a heart attack at the age of 60.
Serving as president of a nation with an unfortunate history of unstable periods of democracy sandwiched between decades of brutal U.S.-backed military dictatorships and taking the baton immediately following a devastating economic collapse, Kirchner took on a challenge with remarkable similarities to the challenges Barack Obama faces as president of the United States today, though perhaps, in domestic terms, even greater in scale.
But there have been improvements since the collapse, and this is because Kirchner's administration stood up to the IMF and the disastrous reforms they attempted to impose. Right now, the U.S. and many other nations around the world are responding to the economic crisis by pushing for so-called "austerity" measures, which will do untold damage to the economy by pushing more people into poverty, but will free up state funds for further handouts to the richest people in the world. Why is Obama surprised that the American left is upset with him when he himself creates a deficit commission to put Social Security on the chopping block?
Among those of us who believe torture should not be U.S. policy, the 2008 election became the focus of an important discussion to decide something which is a fundamental question into the nature of our democracy: do we open up a can of worms and punish war crimes, or do we attempt to move on for the sake of stability?
This is the way you fight against an ideology that runs contrary to the rule of law, not by showing the perpetrators of crimes against humanity that they are correct in believing they are above the law by offering them impunity, but by demanding justice, equal justice for all, regardless of how much political power they wield, regardless of how much wealth they control, regardless of what retribution they may promise (remember, in Argentina, these investigations were made knowing that the threat of another military coup always exists).
You don’t fight torture by classifying the documentation of torture to sweep it under the rug. You don't do it by claiming you will end all practices of torture and no longer hand over prisoners to entities that will torture them only to be caught in a lie when Wikileaks gets their hands on the documentation showing that these practices continue today. You don't do it by claiming the right to extrajudicial execution of anyone in the world, including your own citizens. And you don't do it by claiming you will close the most famous torture and illegal detention site ever built by your government, only to leave it in operation well after your own self-imposed deadline.
"Looking forward" is the way backward. Justice is the way forward.
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