The painful truth in former Vice President Dick Cheney's spat with President Obama is that there are still far too many places where Obama's policy resembles Bush policy on the terrorism war. In the waning days of his last term Bush scrapped some of the worst of the legally and morally obscene interrogation tactics. He partially emptied the bulging cells of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. He even tried to do a half-hearted kiss and make up with European allies who vehemently opposed US torture tactics. The courts ruled that the Bush administration grossly violated constitutional and legal precepts by scooping up and holding terror suspects with no or flimsy charges and no trials.
The Bush shifts and changes dovetail with Obama's position on the most blatant abuses. But Obama hasn't yet gone much further than that. During the presidential campaign he strongly hinted that he'd dump most if not all of Bush's executive orders that infringed on civil liberties rights and protections in the war on terror and the Iraq war. There were 31 in all.
The best known and most controversial was the executive order that granted wide latitude in loosely defining what and who is a "terrorist combatant," where and how long that individual could be held (indefinitely) and how they should be legally disposed of (none of the standard constitutional protections).
Bush didn't stop there. He issued Executive Order 13440 in July 2007. The order was deliberately vague and did not spell out what interrogation practices were permissible. The order gave the green light to interrogators to dodge the safeguards spelled out in the Geneva Convention against illegal and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The military took the cue and didn't miss a beat in their prisoner interrogations. That was only the most naked example of using an executive order to subvert the law. More than two dozen other executive orders that Bush signed into law and that quickly became operational between 2005 and early 2008 slipped far under the public radar scope and got little if any public attention but were just as abusive.
Bush signed another executive order the same week he signed the executive order that subverted the Supreme Court's ruling against him on prisoner interrogation practices. That order blocked the sale and transfer of property of any individual deemed a threat to the stabilization efforts in Iraq. Translated, that meant that anyone who spoke out against the Iraq War could be branded a terrorist and have their property seized. This legally dubious executive order received passing press mention and little lawmaker scrutiny, and as far as is known is still on the books.
It is still subject to individual interpretation of who is a terrorist (suspect) and worse who makes that determination. The courts for sure don't make that determination. The core of the Bush terrorism war is firmly embedded in the executive orders that permit suspects to be held without trial, gives the military the right to determine what interrogation tactics can be used and when, reinforces the paranoid secrecy that encases the military's dealing with terror suspects. The executive orders were clearly designed to keep the victims from having their day in court, and keeping the courts from giving it to them. Under Bush policy, targeted killings of terrorists wherever they were or deemed to be, was sacrosant. Obama has not changed that policy. Nor has he dismantled Bush's patently illegal domestic surveillance policies.
Bush made a deliberate legal mess of the terrorism war, and his executive orders horribly show that. Cheney's media grandstanding ploy to rap Obama and absolve himself and his boss from legal and moral culpability for their abuses won't change that. Obama's arm tussle with Cheney then really serves no purpose, especially since some of Cheney's charges about his embrace of Bush policy on terror war are not that far off the mark.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com
Bama ain't weak-spined, or misguided as some of his more fervant, but disappointed worshippers would describe him. Obama is a Clintonian (a more cute and cuddly version of their neoconservative Republican counterparts) and he knows exactly what he is doing. One of his mentors was Dick Lugar, which should worry anyone who hopes that the M.I.C.'s strangehold on this country will end some day.
Once again the Democrats have manipulated the US with a cheap dog and pony trick into thinking they will change things. Of course if one advocates genuine change, as do 3rd party types, then they are brushed aside as being unrealistic or even "crazy." Because giving out 2000 dollars per dead Afghan child is sane, oh yeah.
Face it folks, this country ain't gonna change. We've got deep structural problems that have never been addressed because we've all been too busy dealing with the red herring that is the culture wars.
They talk for the sake of it and feel that they have to comment on every living thing...but as the late great Miles Davis suggested 'Less is More'!
I haven't heard much praise for Obama from that rat's nest, other than the most superficial, such as "he speaks well," " what a lovely family," that sort of thing.
More importantly, whether they praise him on substance or not, drawing inferences from any statement of that nature is a risky business.
Besides, who cares what they say? From now on, it's going to be "tell it to the judge" and "let me remind the witness, you're under oath."
If anything, Obama needs to start comprehending these matters from the perspective of prosperity, for if he keeps pussyfooting the Bush-fanatics while committing himself to undoing the policies of the Bush administration ever-so-gradually, he'll eventually come to be remembered as on par with the Northerners who, during the immediate aftermath of the civil war, prioritized healing the nation's divide rather than finalize the elimination of systematic oppression in the American South. As a result, the South was permitted to persist in rabid discrimination policies if only without the extremity of slavery, and thus Northern politicians have since been justifiably condemned for their complicity.
Obama should realize that, a decade from now, future generations will come to reflect upon Bush policies as the byproduct of sheer insanity and thus the bare-minimum of what could be expected of any sensible successor would include undoing each and every one of the aforemenioned parameters as quickly as possible. Thus, the questions prosperity will continue to ask will include persistent quieries as to why Obama took his sweet time in counteracting policies which never should have been instigated to begin with.
noun
all future generations of people : the victims' names are recorded for posterity.
• [in sing. ] archaic the descendants of a person : God offered Abraham a posterity like the stars of heaven.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French posterite, from Latin posteritas, from posterus ‘following.’
What most U.S. citizens do not understand is that the Patriot Act, the suspension of habeas corpus and the acceptance of preventive detention without cause or legal rights and protections negatively affects them, too, not just the suspected terrorist.
During the early to mid 1900s, The U.S. Supreme Court decided several landmark cases that became the Bill of Rights. These rights protected us from unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and inhumane treatment, self-discrimination and prevented any government from wrongly holding a person against his or her will. Likewise, the Bill of Rights also granted everyone the right to an attorney, the right to confront an accuser, the right to a speedy trial, the right to remain silent, the right to self-expression, speech and the right to assemble (to name a few). The 14 Amendment, although not a part of the Bill of Rights, protected civilians' liberties. In the name of the "War on Terrorism, we have traded our freedoms and protections. We are vulnerable without them and no better than a directorship or a police state. We have lost so much progress.
We should not make any excuses for Obama; there is too much at stake.
While he doesn't do that, he implicitly agrees to the content and use of his antecessor's orders.
If Obama doesn't understand and correct that, he's too .d.u.m.b. to be president.
What spat is the President having? I am not aware of any.
What I do know that Dick Cheney is, alone with the media, doing everthing they can to undermine the President. While the President is just trying to do his job. Which ticks off the haters even more.
The sad part is that Cheney and what passes for media are willinggly help alone by those who have their own agenda.
Ask yourself why he hasn't.
To be fair, he has done (and is attempting to do) some wonderful things for the country, and I agree with his positions on education and energy dependency. Nevertheless, he appears granacious with respect to gays in the military, restoring our Constitutional rights, helping Katrina victims, and achieving complete transparency (e.g., torture).
In many instances it may not have been the policy that flawed but, the way it was set up, executed and ran.
Take Afghanistan. That would have been a quick war and Bin Laden most surely would have been caught and we would not still be there if someone else was in the Oval Office.
But, 8 years later the war is dragging on, the Taliban is at full strength and able to act with impunity and Bin Laden is cozy in a cave.
So, is that war bad and wrong or was it the way it was handled and executed?
the same with say the Military courts. Actually they are suppose to be quite good and fair but, with Cheney and Bush, they became kangaroo courts and a joke.
That was because of Bush and cheney and not because of the court itself.
We democrats are too quick to judge, fly off the handle immediately and make charges of 'just like Bush' without examining whether the policy was bad or the way it was done was what made it bad.
"So this is how Liberty dies...... with thunderous applause"- Star Wars.
I also think that many here love to judge without thinking about why a certain policy, ect., was bad in the first place.
Or that in some cases they cannot be overturned in the snap of a finger but, have to be untangled carefully over a long period of time.
Try using common sense and research into why something is the way it is before flying off the handle and not just ass--u--me
Come on, people, think about it. Obama wants to be another Bush? Is part of a big conspiracy? We know what kind of a person he is. We saw it for 2 years. Grow up and become part of the solution,not the problem.
BS, pure and simple. He is a thoughtful, intelligent person who has insights far beyond the people here who just spout simplistic answers and theories.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/22/preventive_detention/index.html
I'll let a Constitutional lawyer in good standing to win the first Izzy Award for outstanding Journalism excellence explain it to you. Maybe you'll l-ear-n something.
If he truly wanted to reverse the Bush policies as reflected in Bush's executive orders, he has the power to do so by issuing his own executive orders.
If someone wants to believe that Obama wants to reverse Bush's policies but that he is somehow being frustrated by Congress, that belief has to be based upon faith. That faith is not supported by any facts.
Hutchinson is right: "The painful truth in former Vice President Dick Cheney's spat with President Obama is that there are still far too many places where Obama's policy resembles Bush policy on the terrorism war."