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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Obama Not Seeking A Preventive Detention Law




Obama Not Seeking A Preventive Detention Law.

President Obama has decided not to seek a preventive detention statute from Congress, despite having suggested he would during his national security speech at the National Archives earlier this year, reports the New York Times. Instead, the administration will continue to detain terror suspects under the authority given by the Authorization to Use Military Force. It's not clear whether the authority would apply merely to the "hard cases" left over by the Bush administration--people who were either tortured or were detained on the basis of intelligence that might not hold up as evidence in court--or whether they'll try to detain more suspects indefinitely in the future.

This development marks a pretty significant victory--if not the end of the war--for civil liberties advocates, who had been fighting furiously against any attempt to pass a new preventive detention law. Under the current system, lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees have won 30 out of 38 habeas cases, meaning that the administration's preventive detention authority is far from absolute, and less airtight than it might of been with a whole new statute.

That said, former military commissions defense lawyer Major Eric Montalvo (Ret.) called the move "a political decision, not a legal one," and warned that the habeas process was inadequate for providing due process to detainees. "The burden of proof in habeas proceedings is low," Montalvo says, adding that "most of the "bad guys" are not represented by military counsel so their cases have not been referred, and therefore no military/civilian defense counsel has access to the case to develop the information necessary to effectively debunk the government's position." Montalvo represented former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohammed Jawad in his military commissions trial.

Other civil liberties advocates were similarly unsatisfied. “It may be one of the better results we could hope for, but in reality indefinite detention continues,” said Michael W. Macleod-Ball, Chief Legislative and Policy Council for the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office. "That’s antithetical to the American justice system.”

ACLU Lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who also represented former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohammed Jawad, in his Habeas case, was even more critical. "This hardly constitutes meaningful change," Hafetz said. "In fact, Obama is continuing to make the same core assertion Bush did: the right to seize individuals anywhere in the world and deny them a fair trial based on the notion of a global "war on terror....[T]he best way to fight terrorists is to treat them as criminals, not combatants."

Ken Gude, a human rights expert at the Center for American Progress, was present at a White House meeting with civil liberties advocates regarding changes to the military commissons where the decision not to pursue a preventive detention statute was relayed. “I’m pleased that it doesn’t look like they’re going to go to Congress for any new detention authority," Gude says. "But I think we have to remember that that would have been the worst case scenario, because what would have resulted, regardless of the administration’s intentions, would have been a broad preventive detention scheme that would have been disastrous."

The question now Gude adds, is whether or not the administration will stick with its rather broad assertion of detention authority outlined in its March 13 filing or whether it will go further than that.

-- A. Serwer

Obama Adviser Signals White House Giving Up on Climate Change Treaty


Obama Adviser Signals White House Giving Up on Climate Change Treaty

Is Copenhagen Dead?

by David Corn

Is the Obama administration giving up on reaching a comprehensive international climate change agreement this year? A statement released on Friday by John Podesta, who headed Barack Obama's presidential transition, is a big hint that the White House is looking to dramatically downplay expectations.

[The sun sets above a cement factory in Sai Son village, outside Hanoi September 23, 2009. A summit of world leaders has dimmed hopes for a strong new U.N. climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen in December, with details looking ever more likely to be left for sometime in the future. REUTERS/Kham]The sun sets above a cement factory in Sai Son village, outside Hanoi September 23, 2009. A summit of world leaders has dimmed hopes for a strong new U.N. climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen in December, with details looking ever more likely to be left for sometime in the future. REUTERS/Kham
In the statement, Podesta, the head of the Center for American Progress, and Rajendra Pachaur i, the chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, declare, "The world's leading economic powers remain inactive in preventing an increase in the serious impacts of climate change." The pair do not explicitly criticize the United States and the Obama administration. But their statement suggests that the Obama administration has not succeeded in leading the major global powers toward effective action:

While current impacts of climate change may not have reached alarming proportions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that will happen soon enough if we do not take early action. What is causing increasing concern, as the December UN climate summit in Copenhagen draws ever nearer, is the continuing deadlock in political action to deal with this challenge.

Podesta and Pachauri note that the commitment reached last July by G-8 countries-including the United States-to reduce global greenhouse emissions by 50 percent by 2050 is not sufficient and that the ongoing negotiations in advance of the Copenhagen conference do not "reflect this imperative."

The two paint a bleak picture of the road to Copenhagen:

The interim U.N. meetings over the summer leading up to Copenhagen have not gone well. Still unresolved are fundamental differences between developed countries about whether the Kyoto Protocol should be continued or be abandoned altogether for an entirely new treaty. The document under discussion at the U.N. is some 200 pages of contradictory provisions from a variety of submissions from different countries. Practically every sentence contains bracketed language still needing debate and revision. The prospect of shaping this up into a coherent document by December, with only two more interim meetings to go, appears grim.

They conclude that the negotiations have reached an impasse, with the developing and developed countries disagreeing about how far each side should go to reduce emissions: "While it is true that developed countries carry the burden of historical responsibility, and must prove to be the first movers in mitigation, developing countries will become bigger emitters in the future; this intractable dynamic is proving unconstructive."

Looking for "a more positive track," Podesta and Pachauri urge the G-20 countries meeting in Pittsburgh-nations that together produce 80 percent of global warming emissions-"to focus on a series of mini-agreements that could be reached at or before Copenhagen." Their wish list includes measures that set-up multilateral collaborations to develop low-carbon technologies and that create financing arrangements to assist developing countries in meeting energy-efficiency goals and in slowing deforestation.

For enviros holding out hope for Copenhagen, the Podesta-Pachauri statement is a major downer. The two are dramatically depressing expectations-and plotting out an alternative track to the Copenhagen process. What makes Podesta's pessimism especially noteworthy is that for years he was a mentor to Todd Stern, who is now the senior US negotiator for Copenhagen. The two are close friends, and it is unlikely-make that, unimaginable-that Podesta, an experienced political player in Washington (who was a chief of staff for President Clinton), would express such a discouraging position on Copenhagen without consulting Stern.

Given that Podesta is quite well-informed on these matters, this appears to be a strong signal that the Obama administration-as the Senate puts off acting on climate change legislation-is giving up on achieving any grand accord to redress climate change this December. It's a stinging vote of no confidence in Copenhagen-and a sign that Obama administration officials, believing they cannot steer the nations of the world toward a meaningful treaty, are looking for a Plan B.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Obama to detain suspects indefinitely



raw story

By John Byrne

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.

The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.

Obama's decision was buried on page A 23 of The New York Times' New York edition on Thursday. It didn't appear on that page in the national edition. (Meanwhile, the front page was graced with the story, "Richest Russian's Newest Toy: An N.B.A. Team.")

Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions -- including the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

"The administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban," the Times' Peter Baker writes. "In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies."

Constitutional scholar and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald discussed the policy in a column in May. He warned that the ability for a president to "preventively" detain suspects could mushroom into broader, potentially abusive activity.

"It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding," Greenwald wrote. "That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, 'preventive detention' allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally 'dangerous' by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they 'expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden' or 'otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans'). That's what 'preventive' means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be 'combatants.'"

"Once known, the details of the proposal could -- and likely will -- make this even more extreme by extending the 'preventive detention' power beyond a handful of Guantanamo detainees to anyone, anywhere in the world, alleged to be a 'combatant,'" Greenwald continues. "After all, once you accept the rationale on which this proposal is based -- namely, that the U.S. Government must, in order to keep us safe, preventively detain "dangerous" people even when they can't prove they violated any laws -- there's no coherent reason whatsoever to limit that power to people already at Guantanamo, as opposed to indefinitely imprisoning with no trials all allegedly 'dangerous' combatants, whether located in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, Western countries and even the U.S."

The Obama Administration appears to have embraced "preventive detention" in part because of problems with how Guantanamo prisoners' cases -- and incarceration -- were handled under President Bush. Military prosecutors have said that numerous cases could not be brought successfully in civilian courts because evidence was obtained in ways that wouldn't be admissible on US soil. The Bush Administration originally sought to try numerous detainees in military tribunals, but the Supreme Court ruled that at least some have the rights to challenge their detention in US courts.

Baker notes that Obama's decision to hold suspects without charges doesn't propose as broad an executive authority claimed by President Bush.

"Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress," Baker writes.

In a statement to Baker, the Justice Department said, “The administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress [and] is not currently seeking additional authorization.”

“The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting last week broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee,” the statement added.

Roughly 50 detainees of the more than 200 still held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are thought to be affected by the decision.






In Obama We Trust?


In Obama We Trust

Reluctantly, I part company with top labor leaders, the “left wing of organized labor,” and activist-filmmaker Michael Moore, for all still “trust” the president. I don’t question this report’s accuracy, last week from Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron’s editor-in-chief, only his comment, “labor’s trust of Obama appears to be genuinely reciprocated by the President.”

I don’t yet see much reciprocation, mindful of D. H. Lawrence’s line, “Never trust the teller. Trust the tale.” Obama’s “telling” is full of poise, personality, and eloquence, but what realized tales of action benefit union workers or offset falling membership – or relieve distressed blue-collar families, for that matter? What’s even on the domestic table for all of labor, now that health reform looks at best like a general no-decision between industry and patients?

Trust for me is not about feel-good, pie-in-the sky projections. Trust needs confirmation to sustain confidence partners or leaders advance mutual interests: it is, for the prudent, more about the past and present than future. Thus, surveying his Senate career, campaign, and eight months as president, I have less trust now than ever Obama will propose or achieve substantial, structural reforms. I don’t trust top Democrats have the independence, courage, or wisdom to restore good government, let alone the working middle-class. There are broken dikes untended well beyond New Orleans.

Where’s the beef for labor?

Why does big labor “trust” Obama, or the Democratic Party, except by default (not the worst defense)? Where’s the New Deal for non-auto workforces, or poor people outside New Orleans, or millions of hurting Main Streeters. Is $75 billion budgeted for foreclosure relief enough? Cash for Clunkers succeeded, but whether such costly subsidies simply enable staggering dinosaurs – or delay the worst – remains to be seen. Check out Obama broken promises; the president didn’t end income tax for seniors making less than $50K, toughen rules against revolving lobbyist doors, create a $3K new job tax credit, or allow penalty-free hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts. Over a trillion dollars for bankers and brokers, ungodly billions more for unpopular, failing wars – and small change for workers (modest tax cuts, health benefits for needy children). In short, average Americans feel besieged because they are besieged.

So far, this president and his party (it’s never just about Obama) are hitting under .200, timidly battling for their own agenda. Is this shocking from a low-achiever, ex-junior senator close to Big Ag (ethanol producers), coal and nuclear energy, softer on health care and more hawkish on Afghanistan in primaries than Hillary? Obama the ambitious politician won statewide office thanks to the Chicago machine, then brashly ran for Congress (and got thumped), before lucking out when his GOP Senate foe imploded. Notably, the president rode one premature anti-war comment into effective anti-Iraq rhetoric, wrote an elegant, cagey manifesto, The Audacity of Hope, gave a great ’04 Convention speech, and leaned right in Democratic primaries. No complaints or excuses, folks: what we got is what we saw, if we looked behind his glitzy, brilliant campaign.

How many who bet on Obama the reformer are counting winnings? Or those still hoping for often promised boldness? Politically, Obama’s risk-taking peaked 15 months ago, after dispatching Hillary (tougher vote-getter than any living Republican), then his steady march rightward to consensus, as if allergic to controversy. For lovers of irony, considering Obama’s extreme campaign caution (except in fundraising), his greatest, single gamble, a true long-shot, happened three years ago when this unknown threw his hat in the ring. That was this president’s chutzpah highpoint, bolder than anything since, especially today’s knee-jerk party and administration rulebook, “Play it safe, then punt when blitzed” (even by idiot teabaggers!). What contradicts this past and present won’t be prologue?

Greatness feeds, not chokes, on crises

I’ve been soliciting Obama loyalists – and readers – to stick up for the president. I don’t relish bashing incipient greatness. After all, I could be wrong. Yet my simple question, “What has Obama done that delights you?” has gone unanswered. Was the question tricky, too hard? All excuse low performance with inherited quagmires from Bush-Cheney’s Age of Cronyism, Ineptitude and Demagoguery (that’s A.C.I.D., burning from the inside). I concede birth calamities, but how does more of the same produce hope or change? Does Obama deserve lots of leeway because the problems are great? Isn’t the opposite more logical: the worse the conditions, the greater the pain, the more the hue and cry, then the greater the opportunity to renovate capitalism? Opportunity makes for greatness, not the other way around.

If Wall Street crashed from rotten, high-risk eggs in too few baskets, doesn’t further concentration into still fewer hands invite depression? When the predatory status quo turns into unregulated quo vadis (literally, “who goes there”?), won’t a great president defy, not subsidize establishment disasters? FDR was excoriated for taking on big banks and big business. Obama caves to budding monopolies in finance, colludes with Big Pharma, even props up corrupt governments in broken, no-win states instead of cutting counterproductive militarism. A third straight administration in denial, refusing to confront failed schemes and systems, is no improvement, nothing that deserves our hard-won trust.

Treating sickness, not symptoms

If saving capitalism is the goal, fine, but the price must include fixing conspicuous excesses with enlightened reforms, like Glass Stiegel. We have a government, and increasingly a country, ready for life support, and we’re arguing which aspirins to take. Don’t Bush’s plague of treacheries mock Obama’s cordial bedside manners, the band-aids delivered with a smile? Doesn’t survival depend on surgery, mandated after facing the causes of really big problems, especially the domestic delusion the business of America is catering to big business? Eventually, adults must confront the context and values behind huge meltdowns, the brutality of torture, and endless imperial wars – educating about terrorism, global warming, pandemics, endangered food production, and population growth.

Gridlock before apocalypse, with one party in power, defines paralysis, the opposite of the “can do” spirit informing every healthy nation. Otherwise, bank on getting steamrollered by lean and hungry nations that fund productivity, education in science and technology, infrastructure and workers’ skills – then master economic power, access to resources, and intellectual capital – as the U.S. of A. did for 150 years. External dangers aside, like those raising ocean levels, our own internal deluges from wrecked economic and political systems threaten our affluence – while leaders argue whether to pass out swim trunks, build a few life boats, or hope the wind changes. Teabaggers, I fear, are not our only citizens suffering from magic thinking.

Robert S. Becker is a former university teacher (Rutgers College, B.A., UC Berkeley, Ph.D.) who learned to write by running a high-end audio business (SOTA Industries), then working as business consultant, before returning to a kind of remote teaching with essays on political and cultural topics. He resides on the north coast of California, offering perspective on two of the world's power centers, New York, and Washington, D.C. He can be reached at: rbecker@cal.net. Read other articles by Robert.

The Mystique of 'Free-Market Guy' Obama



The Mystique of 'Free-Market Guy' Obama

by Jeff Cohen

No matter what the facts are, some liberal activists and leaders persist in seeing President Obama as a principled progressive reformer who lives and breathes the campaign rhetoric about "change you can believe in."

When he compromises, it's not Obama's fault - it's the opposition. Retreat is never a sell-out but a shrewd tactic, part of some secret long-range strategy for triumphant reform.

He's been in the White House eight months. It's time for activists take a harder look at Obama. And a more assertive posture toward him.

Because if Obama believes it's okay to pass healthcare "reform" that subsidizes insurance firms without a robust public option and he dispatches still more troops to Afghanistan, it could demobilize progressive activists while emboldening the Teabag & Beck crowd to bring the GOP back from the dead in low-turnout congressional elections next year. That would be a rerun of the 1994 rightwing triumph brought on by President Clinton's weakness (e.g. healthcare reform) and corporatism (e.g. the business-friendly NAFTA).

Some activists still see Obama as a brilliant political superhero who - although maddeningly slow to fight back against his opponents - always manages to win in the end . . . like Muhammad Ali defeating George Foreman.

But watching Obama last weekend on the news shows gave little reason for confidence. It's hard to win the public toward reform if you accept - as Obama often does - the rightwing terms of debate. The right frames healthcare as a debate over a dangerously over-intrusive government taking away individual freedom. The left says it's about greedy insurance and drug companies - with CEOs getting paid $10 million or $20 million per year - putting profits above public good.

Last weekend, when he was repeatedly asked to comment on Jimmy Carter's view about anti-Obama animosity being racially motivated, Obama kept wielding the rightwing frame about big "intrusive" government. On ABC, Obama talked about people being "more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right. I think that that's probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol."

On NBC, Obama said: "This debate that's taking place is not about race, it's about people being worried about how our government should operate." He asked: "What's the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look out for one another?"

The president has a huge bully pulpit, which he's largely squandered. I've heard him discuss healthcare close to ten times in recent weeks without once hearing him rally the public against the corporate greed that leaves our country No. 1 in healthcare spending and 37th in health outcomes, on par with Serbia. Without a populist challenge to corporate profiteering, what's left is either a bloodless debate about "cost containment" or a rightwing debate about "big government." Neither mobilizes the public toward progressive change.

Recent U.S. history shows that you can't serve corporate interests at the same time you're seeking reform - of healthcare or Wall Street or any other sector. Not when big corporations are the problem . . . and the major obstacles to change.

Placating big business en route to social reform is like downing a flask of whiskey en route to kicking alcoholism.

Yet there was the Obama White House this summer entering into secret deals with the pharmaceutical lobby protecting that industry's outsized profits.

If Obama is radical about anything, it's about NOT rocking corporate boats.

That's why he received more Wall Street funding than any candidate in history and why - before he was a front-runner in early 2007 - he was raising more money from the biggest Wall Street banks than even Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, presidential candidates from New York.

That's why - as soon as Hillary left the race - he went on CNBC and assured big business: "Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

That's why he declared to the New York Times last March that his economic policies were absolutely not socialist, but rather "entirely consistent with free market principles."

That's why during his 2008 "I love the market" interview on CNBC, he shunned the "populist" label.

President Franklin Roosevelt showed in the 1930s that major reform is possible if a populist upsurge of ordinary people is mobilized to overcome the entrenched opposition of business interests - derided by FDR as the "economic royalists."

The problem today is that Obama doesn't seem to have a populist bone in his body. A smart guy, he should know that it's absurd - in an era when a shrinking number of ever-larger corporations dominate Congress and regulators as they deform markets in industries like banking and healthcare - to keep believing we have a "free market." Yet he waxes on about being a "free-market guy."

I guess he's smart enough NOT to call himself "a corporate guy."

Liberal activists need to be smart enough to see Obama for the status quo politician he is - and to act accordingly.

Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

Obama Administration Won't Seek New Detention System


Administration Won't Seek New Detention System

by Peter Finn

The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.

Leading congressional Democrats and members of the civil rights community had signaled opposition to any new indefinite-detention regime, fearing that it would expand government powers and undermine the rule of law and U.S. legal traditions.

The administration's decision avoids a potentially rancorous debate that could alienate key allies at a time when President Obama needs congressional and public support to transfer detainees held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial or continued incarceration.

The administration has concluded that its detention powers, as currently accepted by the federal courts, are adequate to the task of holding some Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely. And although legal advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are unhappy with the existing system, they acknowledge that it has enabled some detainees to win their release and limited government power in ways that any new law might not.

"This is very welcome news and very big news," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU. "Going to Congress with new detention authority legislation would only have made a bad situation worse. It likely would have triggered a chaotic debate that would have been beyond the ability of the White House to control -- and would have put U.S. detention policy even further outside the rule of law."

In a speech at the National Archives in May, Obama, noting that there may be some detainees held at Guantanamo Bay who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes but who are too dangerous to release, said any system of prolonged detention will involve "judicial and congressional oversight."

"We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall into this category," said Obama, speaking of protracted detention. "We must have fair procedures so that we don't make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified. . . . And so, going forward, my administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime."

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Obama's comments did not necessarily imply that he was seeking legislation, despite interpretations to the contrary by some advocacy groups.

A number of academics and legislators had called for the creation, through legislation, of a national security court that could provide legal backing and regular review in cases in which detainees are held without charge. The administration also weighed the possibility of issuing an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects, according to senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations, but that route was ultimately rejected.

Senior Justice Department officials first told legal advocates and representatives of human rights organizations at a meeting last week that the administration would not pursue new legislation either.

Mark D. Agrast, deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, and Brad Wiegman, a principal deputy and chief of staff in the National Security Division who heads an interagency task force on detention policy, told a group of about 15 activists that the government has all the detention authority it needs and will neither propose nor support any new legislation, according to several people who attended the meeting. None of those who described the exchange was willing to be identified because the meeting was private.

"The position conveyed by the Justice Department in the meeting you reference broke no new ground and was entirely consistent with information previously provided by the Justice Department to the Senate Armed Services Committee," a spokesman for the department told The Washington Post in a statement. "Specifically, that the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress under the [Authorization for Use of Military Force] as informed by the laws of war in justifying to federal courts in habeas corpus litigation the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees. The Administration is not currently seeking additional authorization."

Those held by the government can challenge their detention in habeas proceedings in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, which has effectively become a national security court through its ongoing review of the evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees.

About 200 detainees have filed suit under habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal doctrine that allows prisoners to challenge their confinement through the courts.

The government has lost 30 of 38 habeas cases in U.S. District Court, with the judges often citing a lack of evidence to justify continued incarceration. However, 20 of those detainees continue to be held at Guantanamo Bay because the government has not found countries willing to take them, according to statistics compiled by David H. Remes, a habeas lawyer.

Separately, a Justice Department-led review team is also examining the cases of the 226 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and recommending many for repatriation or resettlement in third countries. The panel will decide which detainees should be prosecuted and whether some should be held in prolonged detention.

Federal judges in habeas cases have also circumscribed the government's rationale for continued detention but have not challenged its fundamental power to detain.

In federal court in March, the Obama administration cited the 2001 congressional authorization of force to assert that "the president has the authority to detain persons that the president determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The president also has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaeda forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in aid of such enemy armed forces."

That recast the Bush administration's broad claim of inherent executive authority to hold any person who was "part of or supporting" the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Obama Tightens State Secrets Standard



Published on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by The Washington Post

Obama Tightens State Secrets Standard

New Policy May Affect Wiretap, Torture Suits

by Carrie Johnson

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced a new policy making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping.

The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive information would present significant harm to "national defense or foreign relations." In the past, the claim that state secrets were at risk could be invoked with the approval of one official and by meeting a lower standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful.

That claim was asserted dozens of times during the Bush administration, legal scholars said.

The shift could have a broad effect on many lawsuits, including those filed by alleged victims of torture and electronic surveillance. Authorities have frequently argued that judges should dismiss those cases at the outset to avoid the release of information that could compromise national security.

The heightened standard -- described in a memorandum issued by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. -- is designed in part to restore the confidence of Congress, civil liberties advocates and judges, who have criticized both the Bush White House and the Obama administration for excessive secrecy. The new policy will take effect Oct. 1 and has been endorsed by federal intelligence agencies.

"This policy is an important step toward rebuilding the public's trust in the government's use of this privilege while recognizing the imperative need to protect national security," Holder said in a statement. "It sets out clear procedures that will provide greater accountability and ensure the state secrets privilege is invoked only when necessary and in the narrowest way possible."

The policy, however, is unlikely to change the administration's approach in two high-profile cases, including one in San Francisco filed by an Islamic charity whose lawyers claim they were subjected to illegal government wiretapping. That dispute, involving the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, provoked an outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union and other public policy groups this year after the Obama Justice Department followed the Bush strategy and asserted "state secrets" arguments to try to stop the case.

In a separate lawsuit filed by five men who say they were transported overseas to CIA "black site" prisons, where they underwent brutal interrogation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit this year criticized the Justice Department for making a sweeping argument to scuttle the case and keep even judges from reviewing materials.

To side with the government, the court ruling said, would mean that judges "should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

In a news conference the day after the court's ruling, Obama told reporters that he thought the privilege was "overbroad" and could be curtailed.

"There are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety," the president said in late April. "But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument." Under the new approach, a team of career prosecutors must review and the attorney general must approve any assertions of the state secrets privilege before government lawyers can make that argument in court. Officials said the new policy will ensure that the secrecy arguments are more narrowly tailored and that they are not employed to hide violations of law, bureaucratic foul-ups or details that would embarrass government officials.

The policy will also severely limit the government's ability to claim that the very subject of some lawsuits should trigger the state secrets privilege, except when necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm.

It is unclear how the new policy will affect pending legislation on Capitol Hill, where Democrats in the House and Senate Judiciary committees have introduced bills that would give judges more authority to sift through sensitive evidence when the government has invoked the legal privilege. The legislation would raise the standard for state secrets to instances when the release of material "would be reasonably likely to cause significant harm to the national defense or the diplomatic relations of the United States."

That standard closely tracks language in Holder's memo.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a co-sponsor of one state secrets bill, said reforms are a "priority . . . to bring a greater degree of transparency and accountability to a process that has been shrouded in secrecy."

The Justice Department officials said Tuesday that their agency would give regular reports on their use of the state secrets privilege to oversight committees on Capitol Hill and that the attorney general would pass along "credible" allegations of wrongdoing by government agencies or officials to watchdogs at the appropriate agencies, even if the administration had decided to invoke the legal privilege in sensitive cases.

The new policy was welcomed by Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit that promotes government transparency. He said it was "enormously consistent with open-government recommendations" from himself and other advocates.

Since February, a Justice Department task force of eight lawyers has been sifting through about a dozen pending cases in which state secrets arguments have been made.

So far, they have reversed course in only one lawsuit -- a bizarre case in federal court in the District in which a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration accuses the State Department and the CIA of installing listening devices in a coffee table in his home.

Obama right that Roosevelt was called a socialist and a communist


The Truth-O-Meter Says:
Obama

"FDR was called a socialist and a communist."

Barack Obama on Monday, September 21st, 2009 in in an interview on "Late Night with David Letterman"

Obama right that Roosevelt was called a socialist and a communist



Sound familiar?

The president was accused of being "a socialist, not a Democrat." His plan was described as "undisguised state socialism." One critic, who controlled some powerful media outlets, suggested that communists had infiltrated the president's administration.

Those are some of the attacks that Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced in the 1930s -- attacks cited recently by President Barack Obama to emphasize that he's not unique.

Obama has mentioned the Roosevelt comparison several times recently, including during an interview on Late Night with David Letterman on Sept. 21, 2009:

"What's happened is that whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, then there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up," Obama said. "FDR was called a socialist and a communist."

Indeed, Roosevelt was called a socialist or a communist many times. Most of that criticism came in the 1930s, when he was enacting programs intended to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

• "Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat," declared Republican Rep. Robert Rich of Pennsylvania during a debate on the House floor on July 23, 1935. That remark came after Republicans hinted they were considering a move to impeach Roosevelt, according to The New York Times.

• "The New Deal is now undisguised state socialism, declared Senator Simeon D. Fess (R-Ohio) today as he pictured President Roosevelt as the New Deal's leading socialist," reported The Chicago Daily Tribune on Aug. 7, 1934. "The president's recent statements," Fess said, "remove any doubt of his policy of state socialism, which necessitates increased activities of the government in either ownership or operation of industry, or both."

• "The Russian newspapers during the last election [1932] published the photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt over the caption, 'The first communistic President of the United States,'" said Sen. Thomas Schall, a Republican from Minnesota. "Evidently the Russian newspapers had knowledge concerning the ultimate intent of the President, which had been carefully withheld from the voters in this country. In fact, the voters of the United States were meticulously misled as to such intentions." We found Schall's comments in the book, All But the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Critics, 1933-1939.

And then there's FDR being called a socialist by William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst, a newspaper mogul, initially supported Roosevelt. But he gradually became disillusioned with the new president's policies. He especially hated Roosevelt's plan to increase taxes on the wealthy, and his papers routinely referred to the New Deal as the Raw Deal.

By 1936, when Roosevelt was running for re-election, Hearst decided to support Republican Alf Landon and oppose Roosevelt with all the power of the press he could muster.

Historian Ben Procter summarized this moment in history in his book William Randolph Hearst: The Later Years, 1911-1951:

"On September 6, Hearst newspapers began a prolonged assault on the administration. The New York American published a front-page editorial titled, 'The Radical Brand on the New Deal.' It charged that radical and communist leaders had already given their approval to support Roosevelt against Landon. During the next two weeks Hearst editors trumpeted these recurring themes: that communists had infiltrated the New Deal; that communism was un-American and undemocratic; that 'America can only judge Mr. Roosevelt and his administration by the strange silence that has prevailed in official quarters.'"

That was as much as Roosevelt was willing to take. The White House issued a statement that mentioned "a certain notorious newspaper owner," and rebutted the accusations. The statement concluded, "The American people will not permit their attention to be diverted from real issues to fake issues which no patriotic, honorable, decent citizen would purposefully inject into American affairs."

Hearst shot back in a front-page editorial, which he signed personally. "Let me say that I have not stated at any time whether the President willingly or unwillingly received the support of the Karl Marx Socialists, the Frankfurter radicals, communists and anarchists, the Tugwell bolsheviks, and the Richberg revolutionists which constitute the bulk of his following," Hearst wrote. "I have simply said and shown that he does receive the support of these enemies of the American system of government, and that he has done his best to deserve the support of all such disturbing and destructive elements."

Hearst's efforts were for naught. Roosevelt won the 1936 election in a landslide victory, while the Hearst newspaper chain slid into bankruptcy.

There's not much controversy on this one, but it did provide an interesting opportunity to review American history. We rate Obama's statement True.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Obama's Lethal Harvest: Cluster Bombs


Battle Zone's Lethal Harvest

Many countries have banned cluster bombs. Unfortunately, the U.S. isn't one of them.

by Titus Peachey

I love the Obama family's White House garden. It's a great way to promote the value of fresh, homegrown food, and I hope many will follow the example that the president and first lady have set. But today I am urging President Obama to pick up a pen instead of a garden hoe, because hidden in the garden's onions and tomatoes is a connection to international humanitarian law that deserves his immediate attention.

Today, villagers in Laos are celebrating the 15th anniversary of an effort to remove American bombs from their soil. In 1964, the United States began a bombing campaign in Laos that ultimately dropped 260 million cluster bombs over a period of nine years. Nearly half the arable land in Laos is still littered with unexploded cluster munitions. With 80 percent of the population surviving through subsistence agriculture, gardening has become a necessary exercise in overcoming fear.

Cluster munitions are small bombs, or "bomblets," that are dropped from a large shell or bomb casing. Since many of these bomblets did not blow up as designed, they turned large areas of Laos into a vast, unmapped mine field. Even today, some 35 years after the bombing ended, an average of 300 Lao villagers are injured or killed by these weapons each year.

The bomb-removal project was launched by the Akron, Pa.-based Mennonite Central Committee, the Mines Advisory Group, and the Lao government in 1994. Today there will be speeches and photo exhibits that detail the history of the effort to make the gardens, fields, and village paths of Laos safe for daily living.

There is truly much to celebrate, as 1,000 workers are now destroying ordnance and leading education programs throughout the Southeast Asian country. Even so, at the current rate of clearance, villagers will be finding bomblets amid their tomatoes and onions for decades to come.

Over the past 45 years, the use of these indiscriminate weapons has extended to more than 25 countries. While millions of dollars are spent each year to find and safely destroy them, their repeated use has created an economic and humanitarian disaster.

In response, many government leaders have decided to pick up pens. In December 2008, 94 countries gathered in Norway to sign a treaty - the Convention on Cluster Munitions - banning the production, transfer, stockpiling, and use of cluster munitions. The treaty's signatories include many U.S. allies that have cluster munitions. Regrettably, though, the United States has joined Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, and India in refusing to sign it.

The effort to ban cluster munitions parallels a similar effort to ban land mines, which led to a treaty in 1997. While 156 nations have now signed on to the Mine Ban Treaty, the United States continues to resist, joining other major military powers in refusing to agree to ban land mines.

We can only imagine the outrage any of us would feel if we found an unexploded bomb or land mine in our tomatoes. And the outrage would only be compounded if we learned that the ordnance had come from another nation. Yet this is precisely what happens in places as diverse as Lebanon, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Cambodia.

Our national failure to sign both of these treaties not only contributes to humanitarian harm; it also breeds resentment and anger among people we desperately need to be our friends. Whatever military advantage might be gained on the battlefield is quickly lost in the hearts and minds of the world's gardeners. When tillers of the soil in Afghanistan, Iraq, or southern Lebanon watch their children die from U.S. bombs, we become less secure.

So, Mr. President, if you should happen to be working in the White House garden this week, enjoy the rich soil and a good harvest of fresh vegetables. Then please put down your garden hoe, pick up a pen, and sign the land-mine and cluster-munitions treaties. Help ensure that all the world's gardeners can plant and harvest in peace.

Titus Peachey is director of peace education for the Mennonite Central Committee in Akron, Pa., and a former coordinator of the committee's Cluster Bomb Removal Project in Laos. He can be contacted at tmp@mcc.org. For more information, see mcc.org/clusterbombs.

Obama The Impotent


Published on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 by The Guardian/UK


The disappointment with Barack Obama is tangible – on climate change and financial reform Europe leads while the US lags

by Steven Hill

Much hope has been invested in Barack Obama's ability to strike a new course for the US following eight years of Bush administration unpopularity. Yet many in the US and abroad are impatient with the pace of progress under the Obama administration. The president made the rounds on five news talkshows on Sunday as he pressed his policies and vision, preparing for what is likely to be a difficult week.

Besides the ongoing battle over healthcare, this week sees two showdowns between Europe and the US that will reveal further slippage in American global leadership. The first showdown comes today at a UN special session on climate change in New York City; the second will come at the end of the week at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, where America and Europe will butt heads over financial system reforms designed to ensure that the AIGs of the world can never again cause an economic collapse.

Europe has been increasingly critical of America's failures to live up to its global responsibilities. The US is not only the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases but is by far the largest per capita emitter of carbon and other pollutants. China comes close to the US in terms of total carbon emissions, but it has four times more people, who each belch far less individually. Europe, while having much the same high living standard, has an "ecological footprint" that is only half of America's, since Europe has taken leadership in implementing renewable technologies and conservation practices.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to reverse the Bush administration's terrible ecological record. Yet so far the world has seen more symbolic gestures from the Obama administration than accomplishments. Its biggest achievement so far has been an example of disappointment. President Obama signed an executive order to increase US motor vehicle mileage standards – but only to a level that will push fuel efficiency by 2020 to a level that European and Japanese cars reached several years ago, and even China has already achieved.

Europe has announced donations of $2bn to $15bn a year for the next decade to help developing nations cope with climate warming, yet the Obama administration has not offered anything close to that amount. Europe also wants binding, near-term targets for developed nations, proposing a 20% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020, or 30% if everyone agrees. The Bush administration of course rejected such targets – but now it looks like the Obama administration is not willing to go any further. It has said such targets should be voluntary but verifiable.

With the US Senate is bogged down in the fight over reforming healthcare, American leaders have said that the senators might not move on climate legislation until 2010, well after the global climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. That drew a sharp response from John Bruton, head of the European Union delegation: "The United States is just one of the 190 countries coming to this conference," Bruton said, "but the United States emits 25% of all the greenhouse gases that the conference is trying to reduce. I submit that asking an international conference to sit around looking out the window for months, while one chamber of the legislature of one country deals with its other business, is simply not a realistic political position."

Even Europe's conservative politicians, such as Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's minister of climate and energy, are expressing impatience: "It's rather crucial that the US can show a credible pathway," Hedegaard said, pointing out that the US emits twice as much carbon dioxide per capita as Denmark, without gaining anything in improving its quality of life.

That's the start of President Obama's week. At the end of it, President Obama will appear at a meeting in Pittsburgh of the G20, a bloc of both developed and developing nations, representing 85% of the world's economic output and most of its population. On the table will be what reforms to help avoiding a repetition of the financial panic and global economic collapse that is perceived as having originated on Wall Street. Despite immense, taxpayer-financed rescue packages needed to overcome the crisis, the financial sector in the US is rapidly returning to business as usual. Indeed, three US banks – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan – which received some $45bn of bailout aid, each paid billions of dollars more in bonuses in 2009 than they earned in 2008.

Here again, Europe is leading, while the Obama administration is dragging its feet. Europe has proposed far-reaching reforms designed to impose new rules on executive pay and bonuses, requiring that banks link pay to long-term rather than short-term performance, and that they "claw back" any bonuses received in the face of losses. Europe wants a financial police force that has powers to slash payments where investments prove to have failed, and to force boardrooms to control levels of speculation. Europe also wants to block the exercising of stock options for set periods and expose top bank directors to penalties, following huge payouts to failed bank chiefs.

The Obama administration's approach has been much more tepid, to say the least. The US financial industry, as expected, is fighting these reforms, but what do we make of a recent quote by President Obama questioning the need for supporting Europe's proposals. "Why is it," he asked during a recent interview, "that we're going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or [American] football players?"

Besides the fact that President Obama was wrong – the National Football League does have salary restrictions for its players – Silicon Valley businesses and NFL quarterbacks don't cause an economic collapse when they screw up. It's very sobering that, if David Letterman read that quote on his TV show and asked his audience: "Who made this clueless statement, former President Bush or President Obama?" we know what the response would be. Or would have been.

In response to American foot-dragging, European leader Jean-Claude Juncker said Europe should act on the bonus issue "whether the Americans are with us or not." He said that a Europe-only charge "will take on such force over time that the Americans will not be able to sit on the sidelines."

Many leaders and supporters are beginning to wonder what is causing this growing gap between the Barack Obama that many people saw on the campaign trail, and the Obama they see in the White House? Beyond Obama's oratorical skills, which excited not only American voters but people all over the world, he is mostly untested as a politician. His previous experience was only a few years in the US Senate and a few years more as a state senator. A sinking feeling is arising among many that President Obama may not be up to the task, that he may not possess the artful skills needed to accomplish even his own goals.

But it must be recognised that it's not just Obama's shortcomings that are causing the problem. The very structure of the American political system is at the heart of these failures. For example, thwarting Obama on a regular basis is an unrepresentative senate where "minority rule" prevails and undermines what a majority of the country may want. With two senators elected per state, regardless of population, California with more than 35 million people has the same number of senators as Wyoming with just half a million residents. This constitutional arrangement greatly favours low population states, many of which tend to be conservative, producing what one political analyst has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in pickup trucks with gun racks."

In addition, the senate's use of that arcane rule known as the "filibuster" means you need 60 out of 100 votes to stop unlimited debate on a bill and move to a vote. A mere 41 senators, representing as little as 20% of the nation's population, can stymie the other 80%. Given a vastly unrepresentative senate wielding its anti-majoritarian filibuster, it is hardly surprising that minority rule in the senate consistently undermines majority rule, whether on healthcare, financial industry reform, environmental legislation and many other policies.

Pile on to that an uncompetitive, winner-take-all electoral system, marinated in money and special interest influence, and the sclerotic US political scene is deeply troubling. None of these anti-democratic structural features are going away any time soon. Unless Barack Obama is able to demonstrate a better level of political skill than he has shown so far, everyone needs to fasten their seatbelts. The world is about to enter a challenging phase where the US – the undisputed leader of the free world for the past 60 years – is going to rapidly cede its place at the head of the line.

It appears that the wheels may be coming off the world's post-war leader, and not even Barack Obama can stop it happening.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Steven Hill is Director of the political reform programme at the New America Foundation

Monday, September 21, 2009

Obama Continues Bush-Cheney Repressive Apparatus


Obama Leaves Bush-Cheney Repressive Apparatus Standing

by Matthew Rothschild

Civil libertarians cheered the election of Barack Obama, and with good reason.

Bush and Cheney had trampled all over our rights and liberties.

And as someone who taught constitutional law, Obama denounced the Presidential power grabs and pledged to address them.

But he hasn't followed through on that pledge.

This week, the Senate is holding a hearing on the reauthorization of some expiring-and troubling--sections of the Patriot Act. The Obama Administration wants to reauthorize them nonetheless.

One of these is Section 215, which allows the FBI to slap National Security Letters on bookstores and libraries and thereby find out who has been checking out or buying which book. This is a violation of our right to privacy and to Free Speech, and Obama should know better.

Obama's Administration is also making the outrageous claim that it can detain anyone it wants at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and then deny that person all access to due process and habeas corpus.

Nor has Obama made any move to rectify the blatant denial of due process that is embedded in the Military Commissions Act, which allows the President to designate anyone an enemy combatant and jail you. If you're not a U.S. citizen, he can jail you as an "alien enemy combatant," and you may never see a judge or a lawyer for the rest of your life.

Nor has Obama withdrawn National Security Presidential Directive 51, which gives to the President extraordinary powers over the other branches of government at every level in times of an emergency that he himself declares.

These examples strongly suggest that Obama doesn't have the will to tear down the edifice of oppression that Bush and Cheney constructed.

As a result, we remain today a much less free country than we were eight years ago. And it looks like we'll remain that way tomorrow.

Even if Obama doesn't use these powers against us, a rightwing successor like Sarah Palin sure might.

This is one issue where libertarians and progressive need to get together on, in a hurry.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Barack Obama and the Politics of Hopelessness



by Stephen Zielinski / September 19th, 2009 / Dissident Voice

Denial is common occurrence among human beings. So also is paranoia. Whether directly or indirectly considered, both make an appearance in America’s news reports every single day. For instance, ‘authentic’ Americans, believe reality is for sissies. Uncle Sam is no sissy, of course. He makes reality. So, why not “Drill baby drill….”

Still, it is also common to consider denial and paranoia irrational responses to the world. They earn this accurate characterization because the world mostly proves to be significantly stronger than the fantasies that would completely or partially replace it and because denial and paranoia reflect psychological positions and cultural objects that are a part of the world but which do not make the world as such. The human imagination is surely creative and often powerful; but it is far from being omnipotent. It can easily imagine beings of all sorts; it just cannot create being as it pleases. Consequently, there will always be a need of and a place for those committed to living in the world as they find it, who willingly reject the naïve metaphysics of the deeply frightened and the power-hungry. Similarly, the reality-challenged will often have the opportunity to learn that they were and are mistaken, that the Earth is neither flat, the center of the universe nor damnable matter, that it can never be made wholly subject to humanity’s will and intentions. Whether the reality-challenged want to and can learn from their experience is another matter.

In other words, reasonable people reality test their imaginary constructions, and strive to tolerate the results produced by their testing. They take up this often frustrating chore because they wish to be free of illusions and in order to make a success of their projects, which any consistent refusal to recognize the world as a whole or in part would threaten with failure. Although the disconfirmation of dearly held truths can be considered an advance if not a practical advantage, it is, as most human beings know, one often painfully gained. Worse still is the possibility that the pain produced by the process of self-enlightenment might sometimes overwhelm the advantages gained in the end. Human beings tend to be pain-adverse. And they need not value truth for the sake of truth. They certainly may prefer comfort or security to truth. Thus the presence of so many who prefer their illusions to a disconfirming reality. They favor holding fast to their wishes even when they can never be satisfied; they prefer them to the experience of disappointment that often accompanies their partial satisfaction. They want to feel complete, whole, full. Yet, they rarely or even never find themselves satiated. For those who cannot tolerate dissatisfaction of any kind or degree, living in an imaginary world can compensate for the ambiguities and dissatisfactions to be found in the actual world. The imagination can “prove” the lie contain within the wish by providing a devious kind of satisfaction. Naturally, such a life is often untenable and, paradoxically, painful. Madness is a probable consequence for those individuals who give themselves over to this form of life. An individual must draw from his or her strengths in order to tolerate the limits within the human condition that produce unavoidable dissatisfaction. All in all, therefore, it is unsurprising that the willingness to reality test one’s wishes, fantasies, thoughts, etc. is thought to be sufficiently valuable that having it can be considered an essential feature of the “good life.” By good life I do not mean a life lived beyond the imagination but, rather, one that draws from both the imagination and the world that surrounds that imagination. Furthermore, the complement to this point is also true: A lack of this willingness to test can be considered a privation for the one afflicted by it, and thus a feature of a “life lived poorly.”

This kind of talk should sound familiar to most Americans who are known for the pride they derive from their pragmatic approach to life. Fact-mindedness and goal-directedness, dependence upon common sense and “a willingness to do what it takes to get things done” — these are essential components of the American creed and of pragmatism broadly considered. Verification of this point can be found not only in the writings of America’s pragmatic philosophers (C.S. Pierce, W. James and J. Dewey) but also in the honor American culture bestows on its often famous inventor-industrialists (T. Edison, G. Westinghouse, A.G. Bell, etc.). Yet, the pragmatic ethos might receive its greatest and broadest endorsement from that iconic figure in American history, the freeholder famer, who struggles with nature, society and self in order to live autonomously and productively. If America can be considered a civilization, it should be dubbed the “pragmatic civilization.” Thus considered, the term “pragmatism” is merely a high-priced word that refers to what most Americans deem to be “good old common sense.”

Given the place and strength of this ethos in American culture, along with the material successes the country has enjoyed throughout its history, it is surely ironic that Americans are now getting a concentrated dose of phantasy-challenging experience by an obstinate world. The irony here issues from the world’s refusal to confirm the beliefs Americans commonly have about their country, especially their belief that the United States is unique or an exception to the norm, that it is indispensable, a dependable seer of the future, a just wielder of the sword, the winner of every war it fights and the true leader of humankind, or even that it is the best at those things at which it would want to be the best. Clearly, the pragmatic civilization has its myths. Some of the important ones date back to the first European settlers. As founded by those Puritans who would not have anything directly to do with the religious oppression they encountered in England, the first migrants to America held fast to the messianic conviction that the new world would be “the city upon the hill.” They meant their trek to achieve a utopia and thereby to establish a public presence for righteousness. Having burdened themselves with an expectation of this kind, Protestant-Americans could judge their nation a success only if they could believe their way of life embodied God’s will on Earth. As practicing Calvinists of one kind or another, Americans were disposed to equate worldly success with Godliness. Their achievements were signs as also were their failures. Their leaders had to be “natural aristocrats” whose wealth, honor and power served as rewards for and symbols of their virtue or, for the theistically inclined, their election. Armed with these beliefs, the settlers and their descendents tended to consider success self-legitimating. To be successful in America nearly entailed the rightful possession of those goods that expressed the presence of this success. America, to be sure, has made a great success of itself, a fact-supported normative judgment that helps to confirm the nation’s grandiose identity. More ominously, social Darwinism, the Prosperity Gospel and American exceptionalism lurk within this kind of thinking, American imperialism and the Washington Consensus too. The City of God would often prove brutal in practice.

Currently, however, Americans may learn, if they wish, that their country:
is a global empire which is now moving towards collapse;
has a security-surveillance apparatus that is costly and oppressive, nearly useless but also a provocation to the rest of the world;
drives its economic system with debt accumulation, mass consumption and weapons production, but also with a near-full employment economy (“the great American jobs machine”), each of which look unlikely to continue as they have in America’s near-term future;
is no longer the leader in the development and implementation of productive technology and consumer goods;
will eventually or even soon lose its leadership position as the global lender of last resort and the provider of the world’s hard currency;
is shacked to home-grown political institutions that seem as receptive to rational reform as Brezhnev’s Soviet Union proved to be in the 1980s.

Briefly put, Americans now have the opportunity to learn that their country is dispensable but dangerous, myopic, sterile and a foot-dragger!

They also may soon learn that it is no longer prosperous.

Obviously these points, if true, do not validate America’s messianic conceit. Nor do they affirm the secular version of this self-conception, namely, that the United States is the capitalist democracy, the model which its competitors should emulate if they want to make a success of themselves. As a matter of fact, they render both vain and thus preposterous. The American dream is dying.

Although these criticisms are not commonplaces among Americans, they also are not propositions contained within an esoteric form of knowledge. Nor are they available only to an elect, an avant-garde or a privileged class. An exacting ritual does not guard their purity. The acolyte need not learn a special language before enlightenment sets in. Finally, they cannot be debunked by a dubious critique of their class origin or by pointing to the actual or imagined resentment of the critic who airs them in public. If a typical American wishes to learn of these things, he or she needs only to be literate and to pay attention to the world in general. The opportunities to acquire this knowledge are there to be had.

To be sure, attention-paying and reality-testing suppose a prior willingness and capacity to learn from one’s experience and from others. It also requires a commitment to participate in reasonable discussion and to use evidence to settle matters that can be settled. Learning requires receptivity to the world, an open-minded attitude towards experience, reflection and change. It also means putting every relevant certainty into abeyance. Consequently, attention-paying and reality-testing entail a willingness to take a risk. With respect to the issues discussed here, this risk-taking gesture quickly leads to the asking of what most Americans would consider unsettling questions. These include: “Can America learn what it needs to learn?” and “If it learns these unavoidable truths, how will this knowledge sit with the average American once the members of this proud nation realize that America is neither innocent, grand nor more powerful than its competitors?” “How,” in other words, “will Uncle Sam cope with being fallible, damnable and impermanent, with, that is, being merely human?” “Can he and his brood live without these myths?” “Can he successfully manage his second childhood?”

These are the local problems and questions the United States now confronts. If it and the world only had to confront them…. But it, like the world at large, also faces global problems and crises. The latter, unfortunately, are truly frightening. Managing and resolving them will prove difficult. They include:
a growing global population, the existence of which will intensify;
ecological crises like global warming;
resource depletion crises (generated by a lack of adequate top soil, water, minerals, etc.) and thus the wars that will be fought over these increasingly scarce resources;
massive food and water shortages.

Scarcity of the greatest sort looks to return to trouble every fraction of the world. War and famine, mass migration and death — these possibilities haunt the near-term future. I believe this because they compose a plausible future the causes and features of which do appear in the world today. We are watching, then, a global emergency while it gestates, the origin of which is due in great part to human practices and their limits. While it remains an open question whether or not this emergency will eventually define humanity’s collective fate, its pre-history makes up a significant feature of the contemporary situation humanity must address if it wishes to thrive or even survive as a species. It and its components make evident the need for a political project meant to prevent the disaster.

It is not as though no one ever dares to mention these local and global issues. They have their place in public life, and are discussed by those individuals, movements and organizations most concerned with their consequences. Yet, discussion by the comparatively few individuals concerned with such issues does not seem to be enough to solve problems of this kind and magnitude. Small talk is insufficient because of the immense complexity and scope their solutions would have. Global problems demand what amount to global solutions. Therefore, the greater crisis they pose derives from something which lies beyond the existential threats they express, considerable as these may be. This something which lies beyond: These global crises have failed to provide the kind of motives Americans and humanity as a whole need if they want to address and resolve the threats as such. Stasis should prove to be self-defeating over the long-term.

Although concerned movements and an international public do exist, they mostly lack influence. They suffer this lack because the powerful remain unreceptive to and thus unmoved by the calamity in the making. Denial and paranoia make an appearance here.

Their appearance is unsurprising. Who among the powerful wants to grapple with disastrous possibilities like these? Who would confront the nihilism inherent within them? Or, the sense of powerlessness they evoke? Which member of the elite would choose to radically alter the world they govern in order to save it from the practices, institutions and knowledge from which they draw their power? Very few, it seems. The powerful tend to be masters of survival within the world they know. And it is because there are so few of these men and women that committing the world to creating sensible, peaceful and sustainable forms of life is not a high priority for those who make what amounts to a global agenda.

A prudent person would thus not expect the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh to produce a feasible program meant to avoid these disasters in the making by pursuing highly advantageous goods like sensible, peaceful and sustainable forms of life. Rather, the Summit, if it accomplishes anything, can be expected to work to stabilize the world system already in place, that is, to maintain by adjusting the system now heading towards a disaster. Their refusal to take responsibility for the world they lead, should it come to that, would be significant inasmuch as some of these threats carry speciescide as an effective possibility. The quality of the threat only intensifies the motive it places on the threatened once the threat becomes known as such. Power, of course, implies responsibility, for no one is obligated beyond what he or she can do, according to an ancient legal maxim, and the powerful can do — or prevent — much. Their powers stand as one limit condition that constricts humanity as a whole. Their actions are thus decisive in the short-term.

Over the long-term, on the other hand, the social origin of the solution is unimportant. This is because reform — decisive, systemic and therefore radical reform — ought to define humanity’s project if the situation conforms to the gist of the description I offered above. To be radical, reform of this sort must be both feasible (the reformers first identify a problem and then a path meant to resolve the problem identified), adequate (the reforms can solve the problem they were meant to fix) and consistent with a generous concept of human well-being. Additionally, radical reform must intentionally address a global threat that is local in origin and consequence. It must be an inclusive project; it must have beneficial system effects. Yet, it must not end with a totalizing catastrophe founded on an abstract and impossible utopian idea.

It is interesting and somewhat surprising that some observers of the American political scene concluded the United States took a step towards contributing in to a reform project of this sort when it elected Barak Obama as its president last fall.

They may have concluded they could expect reform of this kind from the new president because he had earned his mandate by promising change and offering hope for the future. His political enemies also augmented the euphoria by warning the country about Obama’s radical inclinations during the election season. It seems candidate Obama’s promises did not sound empty to everyone who heard them. It helped a lot that he appeared able to meet these high expectations. He had credibility in their eyes. Obama is, after all, intelligent and articulate. More importantly, he seemed forthright and decent, at ease with the people he met and the policies he discussed. He was neither a wonk nor a baby-kisser. Although different in many ways from the stereotypical American, Obama had the common touch, for he made his own success as a child of relative poverty, of a mixed marriage and of divorce. Success surely was not given to him, nor the presidency. Candidate Obama became president by running a strong and ultimately successful campaign, one forced by the history of his country to overcome the racist and nativist biases deeply rooted in its culture. Obama is just another Frank Capra story. And, most importantly, he certainly did not strike anyone as being Bush or even Bush-like, which is to say that, he appeared a humane and competent replacement for The Decider puppet and his master.

His mere presence in the campaign thus encapsulated a diffuse hope that had been dormant among common folk. It suggested that progress was possible, that the would-be president could lead the country to better days if he were elected to the office. Obama, his supporters believed, truly could get “it” done, whether “it” referred to health care reform, ending Bush’s senseless wars, putting a stop to torture, resolving the financial crisis, etc. He was a “regular fellow” who also radiated gravitas — a mixed-race Jimmy Stewart. Candidate Obama thus exuded the kind of charisma for which lesser politicians would trade their souls. Voting for him was an easy choice that many Americans gladly made. They wanted change — progress, actually.

Obama has held the presidency for less than a year. It is unfortunate that, so far, he and his administration have changed very little about the state and society they govern. Progress has been deferred yet again. In fact, the Obama regime has mostly held the course on policies that were proven failures (Bush’s wars) and moral outrages (Bush’s torture, detainment and secrecy policies) before he took office. He has stood by Wall Street and finance capital in general even while the bipartisan bailout program he supported encumbered Americans for generations. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the new administration quickly turned “transparency,” an electoral buzzword meant to highlight the differences between Obama and Bush, into a cliché, mostly because of the obscurity it created when handling national security and financial matters. Word and deed, image and reality parted company not long after the election.

Obama’s tenure has already imposed adverse consequences on the new president: The Obama administration has pursued policies and acted in such a way that it has undermined the basis on which candidate Obama built his case to hold the office of the president. His positive charisma erodes a bit every day. We can learn this just from the fact that Obama’s approval rating is falling at a historically fast rate. The new president is thus acquiring the taint of illegitimacy.

In this regard Obama can be compared to some degree to George W. Bush, who, as we may recall, reached his popular peak as president immediately after 9.11 but who collapsed thereafter, should have been impeached and ought to be awaiting trial for the crimes he committed while responding to that catastrophe. It is no exaggeration to judge the second Bush presidency the epitome of an illegitimate American president. The Bush administration had earned this judgment for so many reasons and on so many levels that his recent escape to Texas along with the freedom he enjoys there damns the mainstream media and the Congresses who colluded in his deeds. Bush’s very freedom screams the question: “How has he gotten away with so much?” While Obama is no Bush and his defenders may wish to explain his approval ratings by using the crises of the day as a shield for the new president, I believe the Obama administration has, just like its predecessor, advanced the corruption of America’s political culture. This corruption is implied by the political and social paralysis it sponsors. This ‘achievement’ is no small potatoes given the all-encompassing criminality of the Bush regime that preceded it. Yet, the new president could not avoid this result when his administration opted to affirm so much of the status quo ante and accomplished this by following the triangulation playbook written by Bill Clinton and Dick Morris in the 1990s. Obama staked his personal credibility on this strategy. This is astonishing because Candidate Obama ran against the Bush record and against the man whose shadow now follows him as if it were his own. President Obama merely governs as if he were another one of Dubya’s crisis managers. And, like his role model, Bill Clinton, Obama looks to be squandering the opportunities for reform history gave him. He wasted them because he was careless in the goals that his administration pursued. The goals, of course, were those took from his predecessors, goals he would have jettisoned if he were prudent and a reformer.

What are some of the more immediate and dangerous consequences that can be attributed to Obama’s political failures? Hopelessness is one, cynicism another, passivity a third. Each depends upon Obama’s failure to conform to the realistic expectations the electorate had for his administration. Each sends distress signals: Reform has been defeated; the ‘good guy’ is a fake; we’ve been fooled again. And each reflects the floundering of a president who has wasted an opportune historical moment that may be collapsing as the days pass.

One can easily identify the Obama administration’s most notable and, perhaps, most politically destructive failure so far. It can be found in the president’s inability to lead the country in a determined effort to secure an obvious and feasible public good like single-payer health care. The episode is instructive. It forces the observer to look closely at the president and who he represents. It provides the lens through which to examine a flawed reformer.

The administration’s performance during the health care debate has been that poor that it has even failed to push the inferior ideas now current in Congress past his political enemies on the right and far right. Obama has instead mostly ceded ground to his blatantly irrational critics on his right flank, much to the material and political detriment of those who voted for him in good faith last November. In this Obama committed one of the cardinal sins of politics: He allowed his political enemies (and what sensible person doubts that they are a disloyal opposition) and the opportunists in Congress (who mostly follow their paymaster’s directions) to set the terms of the debate on a key issue. It is they who are defining the Obama presidency. By giving his opponents this kind of power, a gift that depended upon the triangulation gambit, Obama committed a second cardinal sin: He betrayed his supporters by publicly affirming the position of his enemies. Here, then, one can locate the sources of Obama’s credibility problem, of his growing legitimation deficit. It can be summarized as: “President Obama has failed to assure America that he will deliver “change they can believe in.”

Obama’s election happened not too far in the past that it is in any way difficult to recall that it took the votes of the disenchanted to inflict a humiliating defeat on the McCain-Palin ticket and on the Republican Party as a whole. The Republican defeat was rightly construed as an event ‘meant’ to steer the country in another direction. Indeed, Obama’s victory even suggested a repudiation of the Reagan Revolution along with the policies and myths that are essential features of that Revolution. Yet president Obama chose to preserve much of the thinking and practices of the despised Bush administration, the government he ran against, the program which attempted to complete the Reagan Revolution and secure the imperial presidency. It is because Obama made this choice that he placed himself somewhere to the right of the center position in the United States! (Naturally, his move to the right has failed to silence his red-baiting critics!) Why would he do this? Why would he betray his supporters?

One answer: His conservatism in office is attributable to the services he has already provided to the FIRE sector of the economy, which had spent so much to help him gain the presidency, and to the security-surveillance apparatus that sits within and besides the federal government, which no ambitious American politician would dare cross. These commitments are both significant and commonly found among American politicians. They point to the fact that Barack Obama is a system politician. By system politician I wish to refer to the president’s commitment to America as he knows it but not to his real or supposed loyalty to the American constitution, the rule of law, democratic governance, economic justice, national and global system rationalization, etc. All things considered, Obama is committed to saving an evolved, mature, ossified but brittle system now in decline. It can be said, I believe, that Obama is at home in Bush’s America, which is also the America given to us by Clinton, Reagan and Nixon. This is the America he wants to govern — to save. And, to give credit where credit is due, Obama might be the kind of political operator one would want to have as a president if the times were stable and plush. But, they are neither. It is because times are unstable and insecure that what counts the most is Obama’s inability — or unwillingness — to rationally address the problems and crises enumerated above. The global crises especially are too pressing and dangerous to ignore. I say this because global warming is a public bad if anything is! It demands attention — immediate attention. It also demands a solution. It produces these demands because the mechanisms and processes generating the global warming event mostly reflect the workings of Mother Nature and cosmic time. They are not directly fixable. There will not be a magic bullet. They may even conclude with species suicide. Yet, it is shocking that credible efforts meant to address this crisis have yet to appear. It is as though the world wishes to passively await fate to make its presence known and then deliver its final judgment.

For Americans, this lack reflects poorly upon the president, the political entity that represents the sovereignty of the American people, the unity of this nation-state and a longer historical timeline which reaches beyond the founding to the English Revolution, the Magna Carta and the Roman Republic. When considered with respect to this grand horizon, what degree of confidence can one place in a president who cannot achieve a victory for a popular, sensible and much-needed program like single-payer health care? Not much, I would say, especially when one considers the healthcare reform debacle with respect to the significantly greater obstacles Obama would face if he were to take up the path of radical reform and global leadership.

In other words, I would say that Barack Obama’s failure to master the healthcare issue emits a potent warning signal which should be heard by everyone who believes this president must deliver a lot more than mere health care reform. It strongly suggests that they should trust only in those powers they can generate on their own. For the reform-minded in the United States and elsewhere, Barack Obama should become the politician they will lead, not the president who leads them and, because he is the president of the United States, the world.

The upshot: America now stands before an impasse of its own making. Americans can neither restore the country to something akin to what it once was (the wealthy, secure superpower), turn it into the country it wishes to be (the authentic and blessed “city upon the hill”) nor quickly make it into the country it would choose to be if it practiced a rational politics (a just democratic polity). The local struggle to achieve the third option (a just democratic polity) is the task given to those Americans critical of their country and its pathologies. It is a task of political enlightenment and system rationalization. A rational politics can only be a responsible politics, a politics open to the present and the future, which refuses to shirk lifting the burdens it needs to carry or learning the truths it must have within its grasp. As such and given the situation today, a just democratic polity in the United States would also be a society that would take up the burden of overcoming the problems and crises that now threaten the world. Such is the reality of the present that the United States cannot avoid this task. No one can. Denial and scapegoating are not options. Obama’s America, insofar as we already know it, appears unwilling to take this path. It has refused to shoulder this burden, which is to say, it has chosen illusion and paralysis. The Obama way brings only hopelessness.

Stephen Zielinski lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. He received his first and formative political experience when, as a fourth grader, he opposed Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid. The Johnson administration and the Vietnam War only pushed him further to the left. He can be reached at: stephen_zielinski@hotmail.com. Read other articles by Stephen, or visit Stephen's website.

This article was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 9:00am and is filed under Obama.