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Civil Rights Make no Appearance in Obama NATO Afghanistan Address

May 21, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of George W. Bush’s real achievements in Afghanistan was his push for civil rights for Afghani women. Real successes were had as girls were at last allowed to go to school and women began to enter the realm of Afghan politics. Bush made equal rights for Afghan women a priority. Not so with his successor, Barack Obama, and his speech at the opening of the NATO meeting on Afghanistan was yet another missed opportunity to reassert that drive for civil rights in Afghanistan.

The address before NATO during the opening minutes of the first ISAF meeting on Afghanistan — one with Afghan President Hamid Karzai right there in attendance — was the perfect time to at least mention the ongoing quest for equal rights for women in that region. Sadly, even as these rights have slipped backwards in some areas of Afghanistan in the last few years, Obama eschewed any reference to the subject.

At the end of his brief and perfunctory comments, Obama spoke of the “opportunity to ensure our [that] hard-won progress is preserved” and this would have been the perfect chance to at least mention civil rights for women. Instead, President Obama hewed close to the US support for Afghan security forces. “(A)s Afghans stand up they will not stand alone,” the president said as he hailed the “long-term relationship with Afghanistan beyond 2014” that was being cultivated.
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Civil Rights Make no Appearance in Obama NATO Afghanistan Address”

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A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One

May 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

I was awarded press credentials for NATO’s 2012 Summit in Chicago and, having no idea what to expect, what I found on day one was a study in contrasts. What occurred was sometimes amusing, often mundane, and sometimes even violent. But it was all democracy in action.

Early on the morning of day one, Sunday, May 20, I boarded a western Metra train under threat of having my equipment bags confiscated or at least me prevented from boarding the train with them. I was not ruffed up the “the man,” though and downtown I went riding high on the rails. Literally. I took a seat on the top tier of the train.


The Summit didn’t start well as the NATO advance video called Chicago the Illinois Capital (It isn’t) and the place where Obama grew up (Again, it isn’t).

Upon reaching the gathering point for the press in beautiful downtown Chicago I boarded the super, double, secret press shuttle bus that took us down the service streets, steering well clear of the surface roads, straight to Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, site of the NATO Summit.

Of course, before I was allowed on the super, double, secret press bus, bomb-sniffing dogs were loosed to make sure I had no underwear-bomb on my person or in my equipment bags. After I was officially cleared, I boarded the bus with local Chicago TV newsreader Jay Levine.

Everywhere I went there were knots of security personnel. A LOT of security personnel. The last time I saw that many security people I was in Cancun, Mexico during the 2010 UN Climate Conference.

There were members of the FBI, Homeland Security, Chicago Police, the U.S. Marshals as well as U.S. Airmen and Army officers all there on duty to make sure our tender media people were safe and secure.

I was later to learn that out on the streets of Chicago the number of security of all sorts made the way to McCormick Place seem like it was lightly guarded!
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A Blogger at NATO 2012, What I Saw on Day One”