Reuters reports that the head of the Syrian Red Crescent, Abdulrazak Jbero, was shot while traveling from Damascus to Idlib. Though too early to speculate over whether or not this was an assassination, circumstance remain unclear.

WATCH: Hamza Al-Khatib, Syrian Boy, Brutally Killed In Custody [GRAPHIC VIDEO]

A 13-year-old Syrian boy detained by government forces has been brutally killed, his wounds displayed in a shocking video. The boy, identified as Hamza al-Khateeb, was shot, burned, and had his penis cut off when his body was returned to his family.

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The more we read about the Obama administration’s choice to continue the assault on due process, rule of law, and human rights started from the Bush regime, the more we are convinced that the President is not the principled politician we thought we had voted in. Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald wrote today in ‘The U.S. wins the right to abduct innocent people with impunity’ of the Supreme Court’s misguided denial of a petition of review by Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen abducted by the U.S. government, deported to Syria where he was tortured though he was guilty of no crimes. The High Court therefore upheld the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision to dismiss Arar’s lawsuit (which sought compensation for the US government’s role in what was done to him) on the grounds that “courts have no right to interfere in the decisions of the Executive Branch.”

The larger political issue though is accountability, or rather the total lack of accountability, for abuses of executive power by the previous administration. Greenwald contrasts the handling of Arar’s case between Canadian and US governments:

The Canadians, who cooperated with the U.S. in Arar’s abduction, conducted a sweeping investigation of what happened, and then publicly “issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured,” and made clear he had done absolutely nothing wrong.  Then, Canada’s Prime Minister personally and publicly apologized to Arar, and announced that Canada would compensate him with a payment of $ 8.5 million.

By stark contrast, the U.S. Government, which played a far more active role in his abduction and rendition to Syria, has never apologized to Arar (though individual members of Congress have).  It has never clearly acknowledged wrongdoing (the only time it even hinted at this was when Condoleezza Rice called U.S. conduct in this case ”imperfect” — you think? — and generously added:  “We do not think this case was handled as it should have been”).  In fact, it continuously did the opposite of providing accountability:  in response to Arar’s efforts to seek damages from the U.S. Government, the U.S. raised — under two successive administrations — a slew of technical arguments to persuade American courts not to hear his case at all, including the argument that what was done to Arar involved “state secrets” that prevented a judicial adjudication of his claims.  The U.S. even continued to ban Arar from entering the U.S. long after it was acknowledged that he had done nothing wrong, thus preventing him for years from appearing before Congress or in the U.S. to talk about what was done to him.  Indeed, after the Bush administration spent years arguing that courts were barred from hearing Arar’s case on the ground of “state secrets,” the Obama administration embraced those same arguments and then urged the Supreme Court not to hear his appeal.

This last part is yet another example of how Obama’s rhetoric on the restoration of the rule of law is exactly just rhetoric that allows progressives to give him leeway on what amounts to the suppression of justice.

This, however, must stop. Progressives can no longer indulge the president with time when elections are upon us and obstructionist Republicans look to regain seats in both chambers of Congress. But it isn’t just politically important for us to pressure the government, but morally too. By not demanding justice for all those victimized by Bush and now by Obama, we are complicit and accept that their innocent suffering/torture is somehow justified.

When Gandhi said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ,” he was critiquing the failure of Christians to abide by the spiritual principles of Jesus’ teachings. Likewise, the world is captivated by the United States’ political principles like rule of law, due process, secularism, etc. that are embedded in our Constitution; however, American politicians have fallen staggeringly short in being able to “narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time”—to quote President Obama. And though democracy isn’t in peril (though teabaggers might have you believe otherwise), American-style democracy certainly seems endangered.