Land of the Safe and Home of the Cruel

Between May 15, when President Obama announced that he would keep the Bush-era Military Commissions to try enemy combatants, and May 21 when he replied to the opponents of his decision to close Guantanamo, we had an opportunity to judge the temper of this administration on issues of national security and the defense of civil liberties.

Obama's May 21 speech at the National Archives combined a general repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies with a surprising concession to methods that the former vice president, Dick Cheney, tried to graft onto the Constitution. This approach the Constitution repels as surely as a healthy body rejects poison; for in the Cheney interpretation, the common-law right of prisoners to be charged with a crime and to have due process in challenging the accusation was abridged in cases specified by the executive. Cheney singled out for detention as "enemy combatants" persons suspected of being hard-core terrorists without there being sufficient identification to charge or sufficient evidence to convict them.

We may think ourselves a safe country, but we can hardly be the United States of 1776, of 1865, and of 1945 so long as we retain a power imported by Dick Cheney and his lawyers from the 17th century into the 21st -- the power of government to imprison and keep in jail a person against whom nothing has been proved and nothing charged. It is a bondage as complete as slavery; and like slavery, it can last for life.

Immediately following President Obama's speech on May 21, the former vice president spoke against liberty and due process at the American Enterprise Institute. But the logical order of these speeches was not their chronological order. Obama was giving an answer to earlier charges by Dick Cheney and his allies in Congress and the right-wing mass media; Cheney, meanwhile, was reinforcing the charges and giving them a semblance of coherent or, at least, official formulation. It seems proper therefore to consider Cheney's speech first.

Like many of Dick Cheney's utterances, it was above all a self-vindication. He began with a reminder that his overriding duty after the attacks on the U.S. in September 2001, had been, as he saw it, "not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America, and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse." Regarding what he calls "our enhanced interrogation program," the former vice president said: "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do." The first of these statements was not altogether free of anticipatory gloating -- a hint made far more explicit in the last few weeks on right-wing radio. When the next catastrophe comes, they are saying, Obama will be to blame.

It was a low hit; and a gracious politician would have spared it. Cheney's second point, however, about the interrogations being confined to hardened terrorists had an involuntary effect alongside its tactical value. It made one realize just how long the former vice president has lived in a world of his own -- not merely in the isolation bunker under the Naval Observatory which was his preferred residence through much of two terms (while President Bush insisted on no such elaborate precautions). No: in those years and after, Dick Cheney also withdrew from the world of external opinions and information, with a consequent impairment of his cognitive ability to know what other people know. Americans now for example can easily know that Abu Al-Libbi and John Walker Lindh, among others, were tortured yet were by no means high-value detainees. We have also had time to learn that torture is the word other countries (like America before Cheney) have long used as a description of the procedures which he authorized. And so when he says, "to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims," it is no longer a clever play to the gallery but an easily exposed private dodge. Thousands of Americans are aware today, because John McCain reminded us in 2007, that "Following World War II, war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding."

President Obama did not mean to copy the tenor but he did curiously echo the phraseology of the Bush presidency. Obama said: "my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe." Such talk about safety rather than liberty and justice, as the paramount value of American life, had almost no history before the Bush-Cheney administration. There can be no doubt that safe was the favorite adjective of George W. Bush, just as protect was his favorite verb. Yet there is not one word in the Constitution about protecting the people. The good of safety is assumed, of course, and the words of the preamble say the constitutional framework will (among its other purposes) "provide for the common defense." Yet that is a purpose for which any government might be formed. The American government is admirable and original not in its ideas about defense but its ideas about liberty and justice. And the president's powers in time of war are so far from the essence of his duty that they are not included in the presidential oath, or even, very prominently, in the enumeration of the powers of his office. The president is required to see that the laws are faithfully executed. In the presidential oath, he swears to do his best "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Italics added, and italics, apparently, necessary. The president protects the people by protecting the laws. He does not protect the laws by protecting the "safety" of the people. Indeed, not the safety of all the people, every moment, but the substance of the laws themselves makes the value of the way of life of a free people over time. How odd to forget this. At the National Archives, Barack Obama was speaking in front of a copy of the Constitution itself.

But he told us first about safety: "That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night." He then did his best to play a part he likes far too much, that of the national healer. He urged Americans to believe that, in ordering the torture and imprisonment of persons whom they had deprived of legal rights, the leaders of the Bush administration may have done bad things but always did them entirely from good motives. "Our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people."

Is this true? And should we sincerely believe it? When we look at the leaders of other countries that have gone wrong -- Argentina, say -- do we assume the leaders could only have acted badly from the most pure and selfless love of the good? This exertion of fellowship flies in the face of honesty and a common knowledge of human nature.

Obama added:

I also believe that -- too often -- our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us -- Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens -- fell silent.

The result, he concluded, was that "we went off course." But: "I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans."

This casting away an evil of the past by moderately changing the policies and ignoring the crimes of one's predecessor -- this is in fact impossible to do. The reason is that some of the people who took us off course have not yet given up the steering wheels at which they sit, in one sub-cabin or another of the republic. The only way to face the future is to understand the present, and the only way to understand the present is to inquire into the past.

That need not mean the president himself must express an "interest" in "litigating" this or that case. But his actual autonomy in devising a new policy will depend on his success in scouring his administration of the executors of the old; and the old policy is an instrument to which some of its movers are attached by a sinister piety.

President Obama went on to indicate that he would use military commissions only for those who had violated laws of war. Yet we who have captured and imprisoned persons wrongly, and treated them in a way the Geneva Conventions expressly declare to be criminal -- we who thus prosecute, stand also under the accusation of war crimes. President Obama has indicated that his commissions will no longer seek to use torture or hearsay evidence. They will also incorporate stronger protections for a refusal to testify. But such amelioration holds only for the category of prisoners we think we can convict by legitimate means.

President Obama committed himself, in this speech, to hold in indefinite captivity persons the United States does not charge with specific acts, and whom it does not mean to bring to trial. The reason for such indefinite detention can only be that we do not know who the prisoners are, exactly, and therefore do not know what the charges would be; or that we know we have given the prisoners cause to resent us, after their capture if not before. This points to a darker category: persons whom we cannot bring to trial because all of the evidence against them was obtained under torture. These people either are abused but guilty, or if originally innocent, may reliably be supposed full of hatred toward the people and country that did such things to them.

This last is the fifth of Obama's five categories: "those who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." What species of twilight creature is alluded to here? Someone, it seems, whom we know to be certainly dangerous to the American people but about the danger of whom we cannot possibly open evidence at a trial, or even venture to make specific charges.

Insight into this category of prisoners may be gained from William Glaberson's May 23 article in the New York Times on President Obama's detention plan.

"Some proponents of an indefinite detention system," writes Glaberson, "argue that Guantanamo's remaining 240 detainees include cold-blooded jihadists and perhaps some so warped by their experience in custody that no president would be willing to free them." Note the words so warped by their experience in custody. So once we have ruined them body and soul, with or without tenable initial grounds of suspicion, we grant ourselves the right to go on harming them forever. Set free, they would wreak too sure a vengeance or stand as too glaring a testimony against us. Note well: it is worse, in some ways, to have been innocent than to have been guilty at Guantanamo. The guilty man can at least stand trial. Regarding the innocent, our own guilt is so complete that to prevent its effects we must keep him in prison indefinitely. Thus we compound our crimes before trying the persons we think we can succeed in convicting as war criminals.

The problem Barack Obama has had to face in the strange, almost posthumous, self-defense of Dick Cheney is admittedly unique. Cheney now has adopted in the open a character he showed earlier to those who knew him well: the character of a usurper. His siege of volubility and accusation, after years of silence and self-concealment, points to a moral defect in the Republican Party more broadly, for which it will be hard to find a remedy. They have ceased to understand that legitimacy extends to their opponents as well as to themselves. They do not know what it means to be honorable losers, generous in defeat and proud to be members of a loyal opposition. All their actions out of power move toward the delegitimation of those in power.

"The civic genius of our people," said William James in his Dedication Speech on the St. Gaudens monument of the Civil War,

is its only bulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, neither battle-ships nor public libraries, nor great newspapers nor booming stocks; neither mechanical invention nor political adroitness, nor churches nor universities nor civil service examinations can save us from degeneration if the inner mystery be lost. That mystery, at once the secret and the glory of our English speaking race, consists in nothing but two common habits, two inveterate habits carried into public life,-- habits so homely that they lend themselves to no rhetorical expression, yet habits more precious, perhaps, than any that the human race has gained. They can never be too often pointed out or praised. One of them is the habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings. It was by breaking away from this habit that the Slave States nearly wrecked our Nation. The other is that of fierce and merciless resentment toward every man or set of men who break the public peace. By holding to this habit the free States saved her life.

Neither of these two habits of civic conduct in a democracy was ever learned by Dick Cheney. And what his party once had of them, it lost at some point between the end of the Cold War and the repeal of welfare. The convenient old enemies had dropped from view. All that was left was the principle of enmity itself.

Under the partial but real accommodation of the former vice president by President Obama lies the drama of a collective loss of faith in justice. We are in danger of losing track of the distinction between a suspect and a terrorist. It has already been lost by Harry Reid, who, in a speech of abject capitulation, spoke of the suspects in Guantanamo simply as terrorists. There are, at present, two million prisoners in the United States. A public error of these proportions sets us on the path to forgetting the difference between a suspect and a criminal, and between an accusation and a proof, and forgetting the axiom that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty.

In the week before this Memorial Day, we saw a new president under unseemly attack, trying to catch his balance. He shared some good thoughts at the National Archives. Yet this speech was one more speech by Barack Obama that deferred action. It suggested the comprehension of an enormous wrong which it decided only partly to remedy. And it set several plainly unconstitutional designs on the way to enactment, for no better reason than that the public morale has sunk so low as to expect such action. But the idea of prolonged detention without charge or trial was new. It gave a shock that will last; that should not be absorbed. And the move was unexpected by lawyers with whom the president had conferred just before giving the speech. As Vincent Warren, the executive director of Center for Constitutional Rights, put it in an interview with Amy Goodman:

the idea of detaining people not because they've committed a crime, but because of their general dangerousness or that they may commit a crime in the future: that's something that the documents that President Obama was standing in front of, particularly the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, simply doesn't permit. And when I heard that in his speech, I was deeply, deeply shocked that he would go in that direction.

Let us say it: something is seriously wrong in this administration -- though we are not yet in a position to judge the cause. We do not know who the lawyers are that gave Barack Obama advice that goes against a long career of ostensible commitments. And it is too early yet to say at what point a new president, confused by the depth of his burdens and uncertain how much even now he believes of what he used to say, becomes instead a man we are compelled to see as lacking in convictions. It cannot be a virtue that he sheds the Constitution with a gentler demeanor than George W. Bush.

The former vice president is engaging in a public refusal of the transfer of power. He embodies to perfection his party's failure to learn "the habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings." Yet President Obama is unconsciously abetting that refusal when -- out of fear, or a wish for leverage elsewhere, or a wish to stand in the middle -- he treats justice as a desirable but not an all-important good.

A misjudged statesmanship has allowed Obama to think himself magnanimous when he declines to expose the wrongs he has come to know. The way to right a wrong is not to install a somewhat reformed version of the wrong. People, by that means, may be spared embarrassment, but their instinct for truth will be corrupted. It is a false prudence that supposes justice can come from a compromise between a lawful and a lawless regime. On the contrary, the less you tell of the truth, the more prone your listeners will be to commit the next barbarous act that is proposed to them under the cover of a national emergency or a necessary war.

Comments

[ProgressiveVoice]

It has been policy in some states to indefinitely hold sex-offenders, particularly pedophiles, on the basis of their potential harm.

It is ALWAYS morally wrong to imprison anyone based on what they might do if left free. It is equally wrong, morally, to wage a "preventative" war and that is why it was US policy, up until 2001, to prohibit "preventative" military action.

[Eyeheartfreedumb]

Reading this article and the comments that follow it, I can't help but feel like the American experiment is over. We are a changing country, but we are certainly no longer America. All of the things that defined this country BEFORE is was a superpower are gone. Television is largely to blame as more and more former-Americans watch a 22 minute show about WWII, sponsored by a weapons manufacturer, and think they understand history. People hear something repeated over and over and think it's true.
Truth is dead. We dismiss "facts" because they aren't factual (it starts small, like with toothpaste... 9 out of 10 dentists recommend every toothpaste out there- - obviously this isn't possible, but no one questions it because they knew the claim was bogus from the start... it's the same with bigger "facts"). So when the president says things that we all know to be B.S., we shrug because it's expected (and watch everyone shut up when the t.v. starts saying that something is "inevitable"- - nobody argues when it's inevitable).
Welcome to the United States of Whatever-c­omes-next. I'm sure 9 out of 10 television pundits will recommend it.

[ProgressiveVoice]

It saddens me to say you've described exactly how I feel. When people ask what civil liberties were violated, etc. as so many of these comments did, the answer is not specific charges - it is the loss of our country's values, the heart of the nation, so to speak, that has been lost.

It isn't just Obama. I think anyone that was elected to change the wrongs wrought by Bush&Co. would have experienced the same problems and proved just as ineffectual.

The country we hand over to our children is not, the country we were handed.

[MrJoyboy]

I'm afraid that Obama likes being President too much and that he will sacrifice a lot to maintain his position. The thought of being blamed for some terrorist attack, and thereby losing the election in 2012, is too much for him, and he will do almost anything to preemptively deflect the blame.

[marco01]

Whatever Pres Obama is, I doubt he went after and achieved the presidency just to satisfy his ego. He is no narcissist like Clinton.

[meast36]

I think that Obama is the absolute best I have ever seen at being everything to everybody. For example, during the Saddleback debates, he brilliantly answered the abortion question without pidgeon holing himself and drawing the ire of any pro-abortion or anti-abortion groups. He never really did answer the question at all but he phrased his answer in such a way that it sounded like he did. Another example, President Obama has the exact same stance on gay marriage as Miss California, Carrie Prejean. They both have said, on the record, that marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman. However, the blogs and the media went after Ms Prejean as if she just murdered a litter of puppies, yet not a word about Obama. I think the pro gay marriage people give Obama a pass because in the back of their minds they think he doesn't really mean it. Yet another example of how he can be everything to everybody, regardless of your stance on an issue. He has to be the best EVER at that.

[viper234]

The People of the United States should never trust the government. The job of the People is to keep the power of the government in check and that means demanding accountability at all times. This "sit back and let the government do as it likes," is the mindset typical of nations run by dictators and monarchs. And if you think any legal framework for "preventive detention" will be reserved for the likes of "suspected terrorists," think again. This is the kind of legal framework that will be designed so that any individual, including American citizens can be held indefinitely for practically any reason the government wishes as long as that reason meets the government's definiton of why the detained individual "might commit a crime in the future." No doubt this framework will also define what "threat" meets the critera for such detention. Perhaps dissent, or political demonstrations will be on that list. This is an affront to liberty. This is a hallmark of tyranny. It is time to severely restrict the powers of the Executive Branch.

[bayside]

I honestly thought we voted for a dem with obama..If we wanted a republican we would have voted for him..Perhaps some dem. thought will come out in time, if he puts some dems around him..

[john456]

meast36,
Your point about naming one person might be considered valid, except that because of the Patriot Act (what a Orwellian name) and the Military Commissions Act we don't have access to the names of those taken under these acts. They have no recourse to a day in court. The question arises, Are you willing to accept the possibility that you or someone close is taken under these laws, albeit, mistakenly? Do you believe that these laws limit the chance of being attacked and outweigh the possibility of citizens being taken without recourse? If you do I suggest you read what has occurred in the past where these types of powers were in place. One of the reasons for the "Bill of Rights" was that the King of England's "Star Chamber" had this power. Hence, the founding fathers had a fear of a strong central government with unlimited powers.

[meast36]

John...first of all thank you for attempting dialogue as opposed to just attacking me because my beliefs might not line up with yours. I think that anytime you get into crime and punishment there lies the possibility that an innocent man or woman could be punished for a crime they didn't commit. If that is the case should we just do away with the criminal justice system? I understand that if an innocent person was picked up under the Patriot Act guidelines that their name would not be released. I also understand that should any innocent person at all get taken away that it would be a great miscarriage of justice. However, I couldn't imagine that if an innocent person was picked up that their family, friends, co-workers, associates, etc. wouldnt raise hell and go directly to the media. If I was picked up tomorrow, my wife, mother, brother, kids would all go directly to the media exposing this issue. That would be the scoop of the century if the Post or the Times were to get their hands on that story. Yet, we have not heard of one American citizen's family, friends or companions going to the media with such a story. That doesn't mean it hasn't happened but I think it would be a lot tougher to keep quiet than you may believe.

[texanna]

I completely agree with the points of this article, except the assertion of shock and disappointment in the Pres. Anyone that was paying attention during the campaign had only to look at his FISA vote to know that what he said was not what he would actually do.

[goldcoastsailor]

This damned if you do damned if you don't dilemma is a traditional conflict in literature. Obama certainly must feel trapped. He must be artfull to find a way to resolve this, in light of the constitutional implications.

[goldcoastsailor]

If these 240 detainees are prisoners of war, and that war is not over until the Taliban agrees it's over, then do not they remain prisoners until such time? If there are people here who were wrongfully detained, shouldn't that be investigated and they be considered for release? Are we capable of determining who is a danger and who is not? If we closed Guantanamo and scattered these detainees throughout the federal prison system, they would still be prisoners of war, not felons. If these people are only suspected of being "enemy combatants" and locked up indefinitely, then I agree, the constitution is at risk.

[COPerez]

"If these 240 detainees are prisoners of war..."

But they are not. BushCo. deemed them "enemy combatants," a category for which no legal or treaty definition existed. And as far as I know, Obama's administration has not moved them to POW status.

I fear that by not addressing this issue and letting Cheney continue to frame the issue - at which Republicans have always bested progressives - everything which we want and need Obama to accomplish will be forfeit.

[meast36]

For those who say that they have "Lost civil liberties during the past administration", please name one civil liberty that you don't have now that you did in 1999. And please don't say wiretapping. Do you really think that the government is the least bit interested in what someone in New York is saying to a family member in Connecticut? Wiretapping is strictly for calls FROM SUSPECTED TERRORISTS coming into and going out of this country. Obama knows that ordinary citizens are not the focus of these taps and that is why he supports them. Any other civil liberties lost? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I am trying to gain an understanding of what rights people believe they lost. Maybe you have a legitimate concern.

[DasBoot]

Spectacular naivitee. Once you start listening in, you can't draw the border. We already have evidence that NSA personnel listened targeted Americans without any hint of evidence that they were engaged in anything resembling terrorist activity.

As for lost civil liberties, how about habeas corpus? Bush claimed, and the Military Commissions Act confirmed, that the executive could proclaim any American an enemy combatant and therefore deny civil rights forever. If that doesn't make you concerned, what would?

[COPerez]

As long as meast36 feels like daddy is protecting him, he doesn't care about his or anyone else's rights.

[meast36]

Habeus Corpus? Name one single American Citizen where Habeus wasn't honored. No that doesn't make me concerned when people who want to kill you and I, and are not citizens of this country aren't extended habeus. Why should I be concerned? Furthermore, there has not been any cases where an American citizen has been detained indefinitely under this act. Also, if there was an American citizen who conspired to kill Americans through terrorist acts and essentially wage war against the US, then I wouldn't have a problem holding them indefinitely either. Because really they could be tried and executed for treason and it would be 100% legal.

[texanna]

Name one? OK, Habeus Corpus. Don't think so? Check the fine print of the PATRIOT ACt and all of its iterations. You can be picked up off of any street in this country or any other country or even from your home IF the President says you are a war criminal. Once in detention, you can be held indefinitely without being formally charged in a court of law and allowed to confront your accuser(s).

[meast36]

Thats great texanna. I said NAME ONE PERSON THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED TO. Bottom line is that it hasn't happened because that language was put in there for extreme circumstances. You mean the Patriot Act that the entire Congress, with the exception of Russ Feingold, passed unanimously in 2001 and had the support of 90% of Congress again in 06? Furthermore, for someone to be "picked up" as you say then they must have done something or conspired to do something that they deserve to be picked up and held indefinitely. Here is an idea, if you don't want to "get picked up and held indefinitely" then don't conspire to kill thousands of American citizens or wage war against the United States government. See how easy that was to avoid detention.

[pleadthe5th]

So, Texanna, you have been arrested and not tried or released? Are you still in prison? Do you have representation? OMG!!! Somebody stop the presses. Texanna is in jail and won't be tried or released because of Bush the devil. Somebody call Al Sharpton. The left always talks about fear tactics by the Republicans and for much of that I do agree. However, when it comes to the Patriot Act the left does the same thing. They say "OMG, the government is listening to all of our phone conversations! They know that I spoke to Uncle Jack about taking me to dinner on Saturday!" When in fact, 99.999999% of Americans will never be effected by the Patriot Act in their entire lives.

[WorldofTomorrow420]

I think you're not up on the latest news - journalists have been wiretapped. Wiretapping was NOT strictly for calls from suspected terrorists, although that was the rationale the government sold us. Once you start believing and trusting the government, you're lost. Especially the Bush Admin.

[pleadthe5th]

I agree that the government shouldn't be believed or be trusted. I think that they should stop trying to ban firearms, I think they should have let those banks go bankrupt, I think the government should stay out of the auto manufacturing business, I think the government should not take taxes from the successful and give that money to those who refuse to try to better themselves, I think the government is wroing for forcing doctors to perform abortions when it is against their religious beliefs. But I guess the government should only be questioned when it is a Republican administration, right?

[pleadthe5th]

You mean the press that deliberately aired forged documents as authentic in order to discredit the President? That example wasn't something that came out of the Patriot Act. Those things would've happened regardless of the Patriot Act. Dan Rather's quest to discredit GWB overtook his personal integrity and ultimately cost him his career. If that did happen to journalists then that was definitely worng, however, I didn't hear any outrage when Joe the Plumber's personal information was hacked and published. I freaking hate Joe the Plumber but that was an example of the government hacking into databases and publicizing personal information such as tax records, plumbing licenses, personal expenditures even addresses and phone numbers. Where was the ACLU there? My point is that lefties act outraged when these things happen to them but act as if it is in the public's interest when the shoe is on the other foot.

[CelticMajic]

Meat36, I asked a similar question in previous post. Same theoretical answers. No concrete example. Not one has personnally lost any liberties--"but it could happen at any time". Jose Padilla I believe fits your discription of making war on his own country and you are not alone in your conclusion ref his circumstances.

[meast36]

Celtic...Jose Padilla definitely fits my description. He also fits the description of those criminals which the Patriot Act was designed to protect American citizens against. Padilla was originally held without charge but was transferred to Federal court after 3 years. Once in Federal court he was found "guilty of conspiring to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism." The Federal Court system is obviously 100 times more transparent than any closed door military tribunal. Padilla was found guilty beyond a resonable doubt. Which is to say that there is no doubt that his intentions were to kill Americans and fund terrorism. Jose Padilla is the poster boy for why the Patriot Act works in my opinion. But I have yet to get one example on an American citizen who is being held indefinitely without charge. I have only been told that Habeus Corpus has been suspended without proof.

[mostlyharmless]

president obama tipped this hand when, as a senator and presidential candidate, he voted for the current version of fisa, assuring us that the law would be administered and reviewed conscientiously when he became president . . . never mind that he was not yet guaranteed the presidency, never mind that we did not yet know who john mccain would pick to be a heartbeat away from administering that law, never mind that we did not yet know the fulls facts behind the telecoms' participation in domestic spying, and never mind that the people effecting fisa would still be those who had sat around giggling together over tapes of innocent americans' phone sex

president obama seems not only to think that he can "fudge" the constitution because he is an upright man but that his personal righteousness will reassure the rest of the world about our continued violations of international law . . . but there are no exceptions to the rule of law, and it is arrogant and short sighted of president obama to believe that tyrants and lesser men will not take advantage of this precedent . . . no good will ever come of violating our most sacred principles

[Michael Katims]

Thank you for this razor-sharp, elegantly written and insightful post. It serves as a much more complete and carefully crafted reply than the one I made to to Lamarche's "Obama and the Left," also in this forum. I saw Vince Warren of CCR on Amy Goodman and I was struck by his contention that Obama hadn't brought up the prolonged detention legislation in his meeting with civil rights activists. According to a 5/20 article in the Times, written by Joyce Stolberg, the "Preventive Detention" plan was reportedly evoked in that meeting. Could Warren have missed it? What do you think that meeting was about?

[Poboy]

What do you think that meeting was about?

...and why was it off the record?

[Gib]

How can you "re-litigate" policies that were never litigated?

[underoath]

Here is a great article on who is guilty and gives a very detailed timeline.http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/18/torture/index.html

[meast36]

Waterboarding is not torture, therefore you just wasted your time posting that timeline. And if you people who are so gung-ho to bring the Bush Administration to trial actually think that there will ever be so much as 1 single day in court then you are deluding yourselves. Before Obama took office he was against tribunals, indefinite detention and said he would bring our troops home from Iraq as soon as he took office. Now he agreed with Bush's original timeline for Iraq withdrawal, is restarting the tribunals and has come around to indefinite detentions. It is obvious that from the outside looking in Obama was trying to please the left, but after taking office and getting ALL of the facts, he realized that what some on the left are calling for would actually be damaging to our country. He said "Wow, these people really are crazy and really would do anything within their power to kill as many Americans as possible, I can't allow them to be realeased on my watch". In my opinion he has matured in his decision making ability.

[DasBoot]

Nope. Obama in his campaign did not promise to discontinue the military commissions, he just said he would change them. And that's what he's doing. Some on the left are disappointed because they didn't listen carefully enough.

Also, waterboarding is torture. The U.S. prosecuted it as a war crime after WWII. Everybody who underwent it says so. Ask Jesse Ventura.

[Eyeheartfreedumb]

How telling that "matured" means thinking like you. How mature.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

If the current administration were going to do something, I think it would be best if Obama stayed above the fray and let someone else, like the Justice dep't, take the case. If Obama himself took the lead on this the political cost might leave him bankrupt and hamstrung.

I guess I'm hoping he is saying one thing while letting the case build.

Small chance maybe, but even if prosecution was in the works I think he would still be saying exactly what he's saying.

[AbbieXHoffman]

Let someone else take the case to avoid going politically bankrupt? This is perhaps the most important thing the POTUS should take a firm stand on. Anything less would be weak, void of leadership, dangerous and irresponsible.