{"id":6380,"date":"2009-01-21T10:59:10","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T18:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6380"},"modified":"2009-01-21T10:59:10","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T18:18:58","slug":"president-obama-did-something-good-today-121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6380","title":{"rendered":"President Obama Did Something Good Today &#8211; 1\/21"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Within hours of being sworn into office (by John Roberts, a man unable to remember 35 words in the right order at one time), President Barack Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/01\/20\/AR2009012004743.html?hpid=topnews\">ordered military prosecutors to suspend legal proceedings for 120 days<\/a> against prisoners held in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Considering that the entire Guantanamo Bay system has been tainted, I believe irredeemably, by the willful and knowing imprisonment of the innocent and the continued deceptions of the Pentagon and the Bush Administration, I believe this to be a good thing. We don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s coming next, of course, and it&#8217;s always possible that President Obama will institute a system that&#8217;s actually <em>worse<\/em> than the military tribunals, but I doubt it. If we ever expect to be taken seriously by Arab nations, this step was necessary as a bare minimum.<\/li>\n<li>And as <a href=\"http:\/\/lynch.foreignpolicy.com\/posts\/2009\/01\/21\/we_seek_a_new_way_forward\">Marc Lynch reports<\/a>,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>Al-Jazeera reported that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.net\/NR\/exeres\/36424639-788A-4A92-ACF2-B25EA03E199D.htm\">38 Islamic figures <\/a>(including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Rashed Ghannouchi, and other prominent personalities) offered an immediate response to his invitation to a new way of interaction between the U.S. and the Islamic world.\u00a0 Even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alquds.co.uk\/index.asp?fname=today%5C20qpt99.htm&amp;storytitle=ff%C7%E6%C8%C7%E3%C7%20%ED%D5%E4%DA%20%C7%E1%CA%C7%D1%ED%CEfff&amp;storytitleb=%D1%C3%ED%20%C7%E1%DE%CF%D3&amp;storytitlec=\">al-Quds al-Arabi<\/a>, a newspaper staunchly opposed to U.S. foreign policy, allowed that Obama&#8217;s inauguration demonstrates that for all of America&#8217;s flaws and hypocrisies, democracy remains the best form of government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Marc links this response largely to Obama&#8217;s hopeful rhetoric in his inaugural address, but notes that, &#8220;It will take some real effort to begin to demonstrate the credibility and sincerity of this new way forward.&#8221; I&#8217;d say that halting the Gitmo prosecutions is a pretty good first step towards demonstrating that (much needed) credibility and sincerity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within hours of being sworn into office (by John Roberts, a man unable to remember 35 words in the right order at one time), President Barack Obama ordered military prosecutors to suspend legal proceedings for 120 days against prisoners held &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6380\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-6380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever","tag-the-obama-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}