Radio Australia Today Editorial
Barack Obama. The first 100 days.
30 April 2009
So it’s 100 days today since Barack Obama’s inauguration.
It makes you realise just how transitory life is. JFK only survived 1000 days in office. Obama is already a tenth of the way there, and if he wins the next election, he will have another 2820 days before he becomes a memory and a writer of yet more memoirs.
The fact is that his first three months have been dominated by a rabid economic crisis, wars in two countries, a cold enemy that insists on firing rockets, and now a swine flu epidemic that is getting to critical levels and has caused , this morning, a death in his own country. And he hasn’t yet had to deal with the looming climate change disaster.
Amnesty International has come out with a report card on Obama’s first 100 days and its assesssment is that he has been good and bad. The Obama adminstration has ordereed the closure of the Guantanamo Bay military facility in Cuba, but has gone short of banning torture techniques for American military interogators. He has also not gone as far as to say that the Guantanamo Bay inmates should be released. These are people who have never been charged. There may be terrorists among them, but habeas corpus rules of law suggest that someone is entitled to be brought before court, face a charge and have it dealt with. This hasn’t happened in the years that some of these people have been held in custody, and Amnesty says its time to put up or release them. We are talking about the land of the free after all.
We know that some released detainees have gone to work with terrorist cells. That’s the price of having a justice system. Bad people go free in every good justice system, but a good justice system will stop good people from wrongly convicted.
Only 2820 days to go, Barack. No-one said it would be easy.
– Phil
David
"...I've read Obama's ' The audacity of hope '. Frankly, it's a really interesting book even though the theme throughout the book is politics. I bet Georgy W's never gonna have the intellectual carliber to write a book like this and Bill clinton's certain not a capable writer, that's why i am eagerly waiting for a new edition of US presidental memoir. Hopefully i could have the book 2820 days later. I suppose one term presidency might not be a huge seller ~~~ 'JFK only survived 1000 days in office. Obama is already a tenth of the way there....' this sentence is spooky, Phil, what are you implying ? LOL..."
Stephanie
"...I hoped Barack Obama would do great things. Maybe you're right that three months is too short a time to make a judgement. He's got a lot to do and not much time to do it...."
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