Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Father as Friend, Daughter as Foe
On the eve of President Bush's visit to India, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on the Manmohan Singh-George Bush equation, which seems unruffled by the fact that Singh's daughter has emerged as one of the Bush administration's fiercest critics. For those who came in late, Amrit Singh is a staff attorney with the ACLU, and she's been very vocal about the systemic abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.
Among the ironies of the post-Sept. 11 world is the fact that this particular critic of the Bush administration is also the relative of one of its newest friends. Amrit, 36 years old, is the youngest daughter of Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. While the soft-spoken Indian prime minister and his daughter share views on many issues, according to acquaintances, their public personas stand on opposite sides of the debate over the Bush administration's foreign policy.
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"I tease her father that he has a diversified portfolio," says Jagdish N.Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia University. He has known Manmohan since their student days at Cambridge University in the 1950s. "He gets along with President Bush, while his daughter criticizes him!" For those tracking the twists and turns of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas Ms. Singh, educated at Yale Law School, is a familiar figure. In late September, she was part of a team that won a U.S. District Court decision in New York City ordering the release from the Defense Department of more photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison.
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Ms. Singh has spearheaded an ACLU effort that, to date, has obtained nearly 90,000 pages of government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, according to lawyers who work with her. The attorney's public comments about those documents -- in numerous statements and media interviews -- have been part of the sharp debate over the rights of detainees and U.S. civil liberties following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Ms. Singh also is among a cadre of lawyers fighting a case in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of six Iraqis and four Afghans. The suit alleges the 10 were tortured and abused by U.S. forces under the defense secretary's command.
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Those who know Manmohan Singh and President Bush say the two get along well.
