Tag Archives: Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald: Obama Gutting Core Democratic Principles

22 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by in Democrats, drone strikes, George W. Bush, Libya, Medicare, Obama, Social Security, Wall Street

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Yet another gem from Glenn Greenwald in today’s Guardian:

“[I]n 2009, clear signs emerged that President Obama was eager to achieve what his right-predecessor could not: cut social security. Before he was even inaugurated, Obama echoed the right’s manipulative rhetorical tactic: that (along with Medicare) the program was in crisis and producing “red ink as far as the eye can see.” President-elect Obama thus vowed that these crown jewels of his party since the New Deal would be, as Politico reported, a “central part” of his efforts to reduce the deficit.

The next month, his top economic adviser, the Wall Street-friendly Larry Summers, also vowed specific benefit cuts to Time magazine. He then stacked his “deficit commission” with long-time advocates of social security cuts.

Many progressives, ebullient over the election of a Democratic president, chose to ignore these preliminary signs, unwilling to believe that their own party’s leader was as devoted as he claimed to attacking the social safety net. But some were more realistic. The popular liberal blogger and economist Duncan “Atrios” Black, who was one of the leaders of the campaign against Bush’s privatization scheme, vowed in response to these early reports:

The left … will create an epic 360-degree shitstorm if Obama and the Dems decide that cutting social security benefits is a good idea.

Fast forward to 2011: it is now beyond dispute that President Obama not only favours, but is the leading force in Washington pushing for, serious benefit cuts to both social security and Medicare.

[…]

The same Democratic president who supported the transfer of $700bn to bail out Wall Street banks, who earlier this year signed an extension of Bush’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and who has escalated America’s bankruptcy-inducing posture of Endless War, is now trying to reduce the debt by cutting benefits for America’s most vulnerable – at the exact time that economic insecurity and income inequality are at all-time highs.

Where is the “epic shitstorm” from the left which Black predicted? With a few exceptions – the liberal blog FiredogLake has assembled 50,000 Obama supporters vowing to withhold re-election support if he follows through, and a few other groups have begun organizing as well – it’s nowhere to be found.

Therein lies one of the most enduring attributes of Obama’s legacy: in many crucial areas, he has done more to subvert and weaken the left’s political agenda than a GOP president could have dreamed of achieving. So potent, so overarching, are tribal loyalties in American politics that partisans will support, or at least tolerate, any and all policies their party’s leader endorses – even if those policies are ones they long claimed to loathe.

[…]

He has gone further than his predecessor by waging an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, seizing the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process far from any battlefield, massively escalating drone attacks in multiple nations, and asserting the authority to unilaterally prosecute a war (in Libya) even in defiance of a Congressional vote against authorizing the war.

And now he is devoting all of his presidential power to cutting the entitlement programs that have been the defining hallmark of the Democratic party since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The silence from progressive partisans is deafening – and depressing, though sadly predictable.

[…]

Obama is now on the verge of injecting what until recently was the politically toxic and unattainable dream of Wall Street and the American right – attacks on the nation’s social safety net – into the heart and soul of the Democratic party’s platform. Those progressives who are guided more by party loyalty than actual belief will seamlessly transform from virulent opponents of such cuts into their primary defenders.

And thus will Obama succeed – yet again – in gutting not only core Democratic policies, but also the identity and power of the American Left.”

The War in Libya Drags On….Illegally

26 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in Congress, Constitution, Libya, Obama, Obama administration

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As, “days, not weeks” in Libya enters its fourth month, and now that the top U.S. admiral in Libya has admitted that the goal is regime change, despite this…

“Of course, there is no question that Libya – and the world – will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”

…and this:

“Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, issued a statement acknowledging that President Obama would like to see a democratic government in Libya, but explained that the aim of the U.S. military’s intervention there is not to enact regime change.”

Glen Greenwald asks this question:

“Would this be an example of a President misleading the nation into an (illegal) war?  Or did the goal of the war radically change oh-so-unexpectedly a mere few weeks after it began?  Everyone can make up their own mind about which is more likely.”

Greenwald also has an explanation for the failure of Friday’s de-funding bill in the House. One that I hadn’t considered, but which makes sense:

“The so-called “de-funding” bill the House rejected yesterday was not really a de-funding bill.  It would have barred the spending of money for some war purposes, but explicitly authorized it for others.  That’s why… dozens of anti-Libya-war members in both parties voted NO on the de-funding bill: not because…they were cowards who did not have the courage of their anti-war convictions; and not because the bill would have approved some spending for a war they oppose (though that is true), but rather because they were worried (appropriately so) that had that “de-funding” bill passed, Obama lawyers would have exploited it to argue that Congress, by appropriating some money for the war, had implicitly authorized Obama to wage it.

As Ron Paul — echoing the spokesperson for House progressives — said in explaining his NO vote on “de-funding”, the bill “masquerades as a limitation of funds for the president’s war on Libya but is in fact an authorization for that very war…instead of ending the war against Libya, this bill would legalize nearly everything the president is currently doing there.

That was the reason so many anti-war members of Congress — including dozens of progressives — rejected the “de-funding” bill despite opposition to the war in Libya: because it was a disguised authorization for a war they oppose, not because they cowardly failed to check executive power abuses.”

And as Greenwald also points out, regardless of the outcome of the de-funding vote, the war in Libya is still illegal:

“Congress does not need to de-fund a war to render it illegal.  Under the law (and the Constitution), military actions are illegal if Congress does not affirmatively authorize them (either within 60 days or at the start, depending on one’s view).  The fact that the President has failed to obtain that authorization renders his ongoing war-waging illegal — period.  

[…]

Of course it’s true that Congress should act to stop a President who is waging a war in violation of the law and/or the Constitution, but Presidents shouldn’t wage illegal wars in the first place.  It is frequently asserted that Article II of the Constitution vests the President with the power and obligation to defend the nation, even though nothing in Article II (or any other provision of the Constitution) actually does that.  But there is an obligation which Article II does explicitly impose on the President: “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”  That includes, by definition, the War Powers Resolution (and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution).”

Obama Invokes “State Secrets” in Assassination Plot

26 Sunday Sep 2010

Posted by in Bill of Rights, Constitution, Justice Department, Obama administration, torture, war on terror

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“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”—James Madison, often referred to as the father of that antiquated, outdated, document known as the Constitution of the United States, which is now little more than an a la carte menu.

When the president of the United States has the power to order the assassination of an American citizen suspected of terrorist activities but charged with no crime, that is tyranny. And that is exactly the power President Obama is seeking, under the ever-increasing justification of preserving “state secrets.”

“The Obama administration on Friday asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit seeking to stop the government from killing an American citizen [Anwar al-Awlaki] accused of ties to Al Qaeda…In a legal brief, which was filed shortly before midnight, the administration included the contentious argument that litigating the matter could reveal state secrets.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

“…in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate its legality.”

From the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (remember those?):

“The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy.”

Obstruction of Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller:

“If al-Awlaqi wishes to access our legal system, he should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions.”

Why would al-Awlaki, who is thought to be in Yemen, surrender to authorities when he has not been charged with, or indicted for, any crime? Sure, give himself up and be on the next plane to Jordan or Morocco or wherever the latest outsourcing torture extraordinary rendition site is, to be tortured and meet an untimely, accidental death. Oops.

But few people will notice and even fewer will care. Republicans don’t care because it’s one of “them” who is being targeted for assassination, never mind that al-Awlaki is a US citizen. He don’t look like a reel ‘Murrican. And they’ll take full advantage of the expanded powers of the Executive Branch the next time a Republican occupies the Oval Office. Democrats don’t care because their guy is in there now and they trust him with this power, for some reason that escapes me. Never mind that they would be screaming about the president shredding the Constitution if George Bush was still in office.

The Rule of Law Loses Another Round With Johnsen Withdrawal

13 Tuesday Apr 2010

Posted by in George W. Bush, Justice Department, Obama, Politics, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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In what has become SOP for this administration, President Obama has once again capitulated under the slightest pushback from the GOP obstructionists, although without too much of a struggle I might add. After leaving his nominee to head the OLC, Dawn Johnsen to “twist in the wind for more than a year,” Ms. Johnsen withdrew her nomination.

“The struggle between President Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill has claimed a fresh victim — Dawn Johnsen. She was Mr. Obama’s choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen withdrew her nomination after more than a year. It was clear that the White House was not going to fight to save her from Republicans who were refusing to allow a vote on her confirmation.

Ms. Johnsen’s problem was not that she lacked strong qualifications to be the legal adviser to the executive branch, informing the White House about what the law requires and what it prohibits.”

Ms. Johnsen’s “problem” was that she is a staunch advocate for the limitation of executive power and an opponent of the president’s “look forward, not back” policy in relation to dealing with abuses of power by the previous administration. In a March, 2008 piece in Slate she wrote:

“The question how we restore our nation’s honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists.”

[…]

“Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation’s past transgressions and reject Bush’s corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes:

“What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do — from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of “state secrecy” in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that “opennees will empower terrorists” to the overarching Obama dictate that we “simply move on.”

Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President “must not do”?

A rhetorical question, I presume. The answer is painfully obvious.

President Obama to Indonesians: Look Backward, Not Forward

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by in Obama, Politics, torture, war on terror

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From the Department of ‘Do As I Say, Not As I Do’ comes this from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

“President Obama gave an interview earlier this week to an Indonesian television station in lieu of the scheduled trip to that country which was canceled due to the health care vote.  In 2008, Indonesia empowered a national commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by its own government under the U.S.-backed Suharto regime “in an attempt to finally bring the perpetrators to justice,” and Obama was asked in this interview:  “Is your administration satisfied with the resolution of the past human rights abuses in Indonesia?”  He replied:

We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed.  We can’t go forward without looking backwards . . . .

Did I miss something or isn’t that the polar opposite of Obama’s policy toward officials in the Bush administration accused of human rights violations by way of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) in pursuit of the “war on terror?”

Greenwald:

“Why, as Obama sermonized, must Indonesians first look backward before being able to move forward, whereas exactly the opposite is true of Americans?  If a leader is going to demand that other countries adhere to the very “principles” which he insists on violating himself, it’s probably best not to use antithetical clichés when issuing decrees, for the sake of appearances if nothing else.

[…]

Nothing enables the glorification of crimes, and nothing ensures their future re-occurrence, more than shielding the criminals from all accountability.  It’s nice that Barack Obama is willing to dispense that lecture to other countries, but it’s not so nice that he does exactly the opposite in his own.”

“Villain Rotation” in the Senate

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, health care, Obama, Politics, special interests

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I hesitate to even comment on the health care reform charade any more because that’s exactly what it is and has been from the get-go, a charade. But Glenn Greenwald had a piece in Salon yesterday which nailed the situation perfectly. The bottom line is this–there will be no real reform for one reason–those in power don’t want it. Sure they, meaning the president and Democrats in the Senate, want to give the appearance of being for substantial reform, but the fact is they all benefit too much from the status quo. They aren’t about to kill the corporate goose that lays the golden campaign contribution eggs, and especially now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations, like the insurance industry, to spend unlimited amounts on advertising for and against candidates.

Greenwald cites Sen. Jay Rockefeller as the latest example of what he calls “Villain Rotation.”

“They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.”

From Politics Daily on October 4, 2009:

“Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He’s a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor — and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”

Jay Rockefeller Monday:

“Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .

“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that.”

Greenwald:

“In other words, Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can’t do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor it doesn’t have 60) But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process — which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option — Rockefeller is suddenly “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.”  What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its enactment.

The Obama White House did the same thing…[B]ack in August the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it).  Yesterday, Obama — while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary–finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include?  The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted:  Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just don’t have 60 votes for it; what can I do?.”

The problem was, and is, that the president and the Democrats in Congress are getting exactly what they wanted to start with. The backroom deal with PhRMA is intact. The individual mandate remains, forcing people to buy from private insurance companies. The president’s plan also raises the subsidies, which shovels taxpayers dollars to the same private companies, which in turn keeps the corporate contributions flowing and away from the Republicans.

If this plan passes, I would suggest buying stock in Aetna, WellPoint, United Health Care, et al. Maybe the dividends will help cover the cost of the premiums.

Are We No More The Home of the Brave?

18 Thursday Feb 2010

Posted by in Justice Department, Obama, Politics, terrorism, war on terror

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Glenn Greenwald has an interesting contrast in Tuesday’s Salon. How the rest of the world deals with accused terrorists as compared with the United States. A few cases in point:

May 12, 2003:
“DENPASAR, Indonesia — The first suspect charged with the October 12 [2002] Bali bombings, which killed over 200 people, has gone on trial in an Indonesian court.”

February 15, 2007:
“The trial of 29 people accused of involvement in train bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004 has opened in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”

April 11, 2008:
“LONDON — Three British Muslims accused of helping the suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on London’s transportation system in July 2005 went on trial on Thursday, in the first case against people accused of helping plan the attacks.”

July 21, 2009:
“The sole surviving gunman from last year’s Mumbai attacks, a Pakistani national, on Monday pleaded guilty at his trial, admitting for the first time his part in the atrocity that killed 166 people.”

Monday:
“SYDNEY – Five Muslims were sentenced Monday to 23 to 28 years in prison in Australia for stockpiling explosive chemicals and firearms for terrorist attacks on unspecified targets…The men, aged 25 to 44, were found guilty last October on charges linked to preparing a terrorist act between July 2004 and November 2005.”

In contrast, January 22, 2010:
“WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.”

And February 1, 2010:
“WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham plans to introduce a bipartisan bill Tuesday to block funding for civilian trials of five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who are now being held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a military lawyer, said that eight other GOP senators had signed onto his legislation, along with Democrats Jim Webb of Virginia and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.”

Home of the brave?

Continuing the Bush / Cheney "War on Terror" Policies

01 Monday Feb 2010

Posted by in Justice Department, Obama, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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As someone who voted for Barack Obama in 2008,  I’ve been disappointed in many of the actions of the Obama administration. None more so than their continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies of dealing with those accused of terrorist activities. I expected much better from a president who professed to be something of a Constitutional scholar, and the administration bowing to pressure over the weekend from those who are against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 4 others in New York City has only renewed that disappointment.

It also didn’t help that, in a Newsweek article on Friday, the Obama Justice Department has, what Newsweek called “downgraded” but a better term would be “whitewashed,” a Bush DOJ recommendation that Jay Bybee and John Yoo should be investigated for committing ethical violations in connection with authoring the 2002 torture memos. The Obama DOJ now calls their actions simply “poor judgment.”

In light of that, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece in Salon which is a must-read for anyone who shares my concerns, and which compares the Bush/Cheney policies with those of the current administration. The sad fact being that there isn’t much difference. Greenwald writes:

“From indefinite detention and renditions to denial of habeas rights, from military commissions and secrecy obsessions to state secrets abuses, many of the defining Bush/Cheney policies continue unabated under its successor administration.

...it’s now crystal clear that the country, especially its ruling elite, is either too petrified of Terrorism and/or too enamored of the powers which that fear enables to accept any real changes from the policies that were supposedly such a profound violation “of our values.”  One can only marvel at the consensus outrage generated by the mere notion that we charge people with crimes and give them trials if we want to lock them in a cage for life. Indeed, what was once the most basic and defining American principle — the State must charge someone with a crime and give them a fair trial in order to imprison them — has been magically transformed into Leftist extremism.”

…there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately:  ongoing preservation)  of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism:  that because we’re “at war” with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated.

That “Leftist extremism” would by today’s standards include that noted leftist, Ronald Reagan, whose policy on dealing with terrorists, as stated by L. Paul Bremer, the top Reagan State Department official in charge of  Terrorism policies, was this:

“Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against them.”

Greenwald also has the just-released policy of another country in dealing with al-Qaeda, along with some quotes from that country’s leader. See who this sounds like:

“_____ will hold up to 300 al Qaeda members in jail indefinitely after they have completed their prison terms to stop them staging fresh attacks.

“These people are heretics. They are followers of (Osama) Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. They killed a number of civilians and police…It is a necessity to keep them in prison. They are very dangerous as they are ready to resume killing people in our streets here or travel…elsewhere to stage attacks…These people constitute a danger even when the court had pronounced its verdict. Security authorities are the ones who are responsible for this matter to say whether they are dangerous or not. The court verdict is void of reason in such cases.”

The country is Libya. The speaker is Muammar Gaddafi.