Speeches

Karl Barth and Human Rights

Prof. Dr. George Hunsinger, Princeton

June 4, 2011

The last decade or so in the United States has seen a steady stream of disquieting events. These include a possibly stolen presidential election, the momentous atrocities of September 11, 2001 and the many unanswered questions that still surround them. Afghanistan, the "graveyard of empires," was then invaded (something always dubious, though at the time widely supported), soon to be followed by the deception of the Iraq war and the shambles of the occupation, all at enormlous cost in treasure and lives.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and rendition to torture may also be mentioned along with yet another suspicious presidential election. Along the way there was the  staggering transition of the U.S. from being a major international creditor to the largest debtor nation on earth. Finally, but not least, we saw the false hopes raised by the Obama administration, which has not only grievously failed in its promise to dismantle the organizational infrastructure that made U.S. torture possible (though for now it has scaled it back), but which has also reinforced, by its gross inaction, a widespread culture of impunity in American politics. Under Obama no one in high places has been
held accountable for the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, the criminality of the Wall Street financial crisis, and the resort to torture itself. Most recently a third war, increasingly becoming a quagmire, has been launched for ostensibly "humanitarian reasons" in Libya, a country that like Iraq is rich in oil, while the long-sought Osama bin Laden, unarmed and non-resisting, was subjected to extra-judicial killing rather than being captured and put on trial, according to international law, as were the war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945 (who were not summarily executed and dumped into the ocean). It is not a pretty picture, and this is only a partial list. ...