Way back at the beginning of February, just a few weeks into his presidency, Barack Obama shocked his supporters by sending his lawyers into court in an attempt to maintain some of the extraordinary autocratic presidential powers created under George W. Bush. The case involved torture, kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, government secrecy, and Executive Branch dominance over the other branches of government. People had been kidnapped by agents of the Bush Administration, flown to secret prisons in foreign countries where they were tortured, without any trial through which they could defend themselves – and now, those people were suing the American government for compensation, and in order to expose the truth.
President Barack Obama opposed them. Obama’s lawyers declared that, as President, Obama could hide evidence of the extraordinary rendition, the kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of the plaintiffs. Obama could refuse to comply with a subpoena for information about these terrible abuses, his lawyers said, just because he’s the President. Obama could just declare the information a state secret, without providing any evidence to support the connection of the information to national security interests. Obama, like Bush before him, was claiming that the President could act without any Judicial Branch check on his authority.
It was plain as day that Barack Obama’s actions were not matching his rhetoric. Obama’s high minded speeches about change were being followed by Obama’s actions to preserve the worst abuses of power under George W. Bush. So, Obama’s supporters were faced with a choice: They could continue to support the ideals that had led them to support the 2008 Obama campaign, or they could continue to support Obama, the individual. The two were no longer compatible.
Most Obama supporters chose to support Obama, the individual, rather than to hold true to their ideals. Of course, they didn’t describe this decision in those terms. Instead, they came up with excuses for Obama. Prime among these was that Obama just needed more time to clean up the messes Bush had made. Just wait, they told us, and we’d see Barack Obama doing the right thing.
Now, months later, has Obama done what he promised? Has he changed course? Has he now moved to right the wrongs associated with extraordinary rendition under George W. Bush?
No. Not at all. Instead, President Obama is expanding his defense of George W. Bush’s attacks against the Constitution.
On Friday, Obama’s lawyers intervened again in a court case brought by people who had been kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured through Bush’s rendition program. This time, in the case Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen, lawyers sent by Obama told the court that the legal rights of the plaintiffs should be disregarded. Obama’s assertion: Allowing information about the Bush Administration’s program of illegal imprisonment and torture through extraordinary rendition “would pose an unacceptable risk to national security”. Obama claimed extraordinary rendition as a state secret that no one could force him to reveal.
Think about the implications of this argument. If exposing American methods of extraordinary rendition really would create a risk to national security, that would mean that the government, under Obama, is still engaging in extraordinary rendition, or plans to in the future.
Is this what Obama supporters voted for? Did they work to elect a new President in order to see that President defend the policies of George W. Bush?
Barack Obama is charismatic. He has a pleasant demeanor. When he gives speeches, he speaks of high ideals.
The President of the United States is not, however, the Speaker-in-Chief. The President is the chief executive. It is the deeds, not the words, of the President that matter.
Obama’s deeds are matching Bush’s deeds, and it’s not because Obama hasn’t had enough time to get it right, or is too busy with the economy. President Obama is taking extra time to uphold the politics of fear established under President Bush.
People who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, if they are to be honest, need to stop denying the problem. They need to make a moral choice: They need to decide whether they will accept the rotten ideas of George W. Bush simply because they are now embodied in the more stylish person of Barack Obama.
There are some who are choosing to remain true to their ideals, rather than following the amoral Obama cult of personality. Among these people is Ben Wizner, attorney with the ACLU. Responding to Friday’s action by Obama’s lawyers, Wizner made the following observation:
“The Obama Administration has now fully embraced the Bush administration’s shameful effort to immunize torturers and their enablers from any legal consequences for their actions. The CIA’s rendition and torture program is not a ‘state secret;’ it’s an international scandal. If the Obama administration has its way, no torture victim will ever have his day in court, and future administrations will be free to pursue torture policies without any fear of liability.”
Obama supporters, are you okay with this or not? If not, what are you going to do about it?
Maybe he isn’t as smart as everyone thinks, and he just has no idea what his people are doing or what’s going on. He voted really liberal in the senate, but maybe it was just kind of a team mentality or something.
Voted really liberal? Come on, qs. You call voting to expand offshore drilling for oil really liberal? How about voting for the FISA Amendments Act? That was not a really liberal thing to do.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
the Who
What we need is a nation of independent agents, not a nation of bosses and workers.
Maybe after seeing the information that the general public does not see Obama realizes that Bush was right in what he did and had few other options. I find it amazing that the leftists are so transparent and empty that they would be picketing Bush but complete silence for The Savior Obama. Hilarious.
Personally, Obama makes me puke and I think he will be a terrible President.
Chris? Hello? What did you just read? We leftists here at Irregular Times are not, for our part, being silent.
It doesn’t matter what Obama’s personal opinion is about whether Bush was right or wrong. The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of leaders above the law. If Obama really thinks it’s so important, let him push Congress to amend the Constitution so that the three branches of government are not coequal. Until he does that, his justifications are without merit.
Hey, look on the bright side, Chris. This administration is great for weight loss!
The Obanma administration continues the rendition policy, increases the number of US troops in Afghanistan, send drones to bomb areas in Pakistan, Somalia, and now reportedly Venezuela, and refuses to sign the Anti-Land Mine Treaty. As Larry Pinkney of the BlackCommentator.com wrote so many months ago:
This is a man who has enjoyed the fruits of America at the blood and expense of Black Americans and others, but who has paid virtually no dues.
This is a man whose father had also enjoyed the fruits of university schooling in America but subsequently returned to his native Kenya.
This is a man, who also like his father before him, neither served in a branch of the US military nor in any organization in America opposed to US military adventurism.
This is a man who as a deeply corporate military industrial complex US Presidential candidate, has called for “unilateral” US military actions in other nations. [And why not? After-all, his father, himself, or his wife and children were not and will not be the ones killing and being killed.]
This is a man who, in Chicago, pretended to support the human rights of the Palestinian people but who is now known to be a huge supporter of the apartheid Zionists and their powerful and insidious political lobby in America.
This is a man who dares opportunistically to feign admiration for the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but does not share the collective memory, pain and deep concerns of Black America, other people of color, or even of numerous white Americans for that matter – in the ongoing struggle for equality and justice in this nation.
This is a man who has de facto contempt for the past supreme sacrifices made by thousands of activists from so-called “militant” organizations such the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party (BPP), Students For A Democratic Society (SDS), the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), etc.
(SNIP)
This man, Barack Obama, is but a more articulate, younger, and shinier version of the current and infamous US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, adorning himself dangerously and abundantly in superficiality and double-speak.
If Larry Pinkney cannot tell the difference between Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas, he needs to get his glasses checked. The two may be equally unsatisfactory to Pinkney but have rather different political philosophies.
Come on Jim, It’s not what he says, it’s how he says it. Isn’t it?