Watch the doublespeak dribbling out of Obama’s mouth: he’s making up excuses for the extra-legal prolonged confinement of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, all in the name of the Constitution. He’s sounding more like George W. Bush every day.
This is all in the name of our profligate and pointless anti-terrorism policy. Fear is sown to justify weakening the law…just like the Republicans want it.
I don’t understand why the Republicans aren’t actually supporting him. You think they’d be glad that this is the best the Democrats can do for a liberal candidate.
He’ll never get the Texas drawl down right, though.
Is that a Kenyan accent?
Glen Davidson
Glen Davidson:
(nigel listens)
Sounds more like a Moscow drawl, to me.
In one of the other parts of the speech, did Obama offer to equip the “prolonged detention” guards with jack boots?
Soooo. They are detaining people illegally so they’re just going to make up new rules so that it becomes somewhat less illegal? As much as imprisoning people indefinitely outside any kind of law or justice system or anything even remotely morally defensible can be made legal. Sweet. As long as new laws are made up fast enough so that the deeds uphold “the rule of law”. (Is this someone’s new favorite phrase?)
So where do you propose they stick all those people? He’s already been blocked from bringing them to the US by Republicans who “didn’t want terrorists in their backyards”.
Well… unless people with progressive idea’s start FIGHTING. Start fighting to win hearts and minds and play dirty if they have to. Then this is what the future looks like.
Increasingly ruthless and criminal republicans, and a feeble facilitating ‘left’ (that’s really center-right) supporting them and carrying on all the right-wing idea’s.
Fact is, the right has won the propaganda war. The people who vote for them often don’t actually really even want what the right actually DOES, but the right managed to profile themselves as ‘their kind of people’. They used lies to do it, but the lies stuck.
Fact is if progressives want to start winning they have to start winning those hearts and minds. And that won’t just happen with logical rational debates. Because the votes you want include the votes of people who are highly irrational and emotional.
But even those people want to be taken care of when their sick. You just gotta find a way to convince them that doesn’t set of their alarm bells and that appeals to their feelings.
@ #6 Aaron
Indeed, we should all remember that the Republicans were obstructionists here, too, when Obama tried to mostly do he right thing. But then I say, if these detainees cannot be tried, then why not release them? Or, have we even attempted to get Iraq/Afghanistan/wherever they came from to try them?
So, how much longer will Obama’s apologists insist that true patriots and liberals must hold our noses and vote for him?
The choice this next election will be between a radical far-right authoritarian extremist who gives great speeches, one of three wackaloon nutjobs, and a Green Party candidate who actually thinks the Constitution is something worth upholding and defending.
And we’re supposed to vote for the proto-Nazi simply because the other popular candidate is a de-facto Nazi?
Cheers,
b&
I allways knew that releasing the detainees was going to be tricky at best. The issue that you have is that there are known terrorists there that in order to prosecute you will have to release confidential information. Information that could seriously undermine ongoing operations. Information that if released could put lives in danger or get informants killed. Informants that are still highly valued.
The basis of the illegal detensions is the claim that they are being held outside of the United States and thus outside the reach of the Constitution. The solution seems obvious to me: let’s amend the Constitution.
All persons subject to the laws of the United States will have all the rights and priviledges granted under the laws of the United States, including those provisions provided by this Constitution.
If these people are (as has been claimed) being held in accordance with the law, then they are protected by the law. If they are not protected by the law, then their detention is patently illegal.
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either.
To be fair, how many presidents have changed their views upon entering the White House? Thomas Jefferson was initially quite opposed to doing things not expressly written into the constitution. He was quite opposed to the First Bank and Hamilton’s methods. He wanted the First Bank shut down. However, he came to appreciate and use the bank, and even went and used powers not prescribed to the president int he constitution to do things like buy the Louisiana Territory from the French.
So yes, I do not exactly agree with Obama backtracking on some promises, but I can understand that actually becoming President and having the big picture thrown in front of your face can cause him to change his views, just as Jefferson had his views changed.
It’s sad because I voted for him almost entirely because I thought he’d close Gitmo down. Not making that mistake again. The war on terrorism is a scam.
I think it’s the backtracking on his sworn oath to uphold the Constitution that’s troubling people.
Not that this isn’t still a serious problem, but the video was posted back in January, so this seems like kind of old news. Has Obama done something recently that’s revived this?
This. This is the only reason I am totally pissed at our president. The rest of the disappointments, I never really expected to be any different and I think he is honestly trying to complete many of his campaign promises.
But Guantanamo is an abomination and I thought he thought so too. It is a betrayal of everyone who suffered and/or died in the Revolution and the Civil War to defend the idea of a nation of LAW. I am furious with him for not shutting the place down. If those guys are guilty, I am sure we have the proof, right? So fucking try them in a court of law. And shut that place down. It is a continuing obscenity that is the antithesis of what the US is supposed to be about.
I figured out when I was still a young person that the ones screaming the most about loving our country are the ones who hate our country, hate what it stands for, hate that (to the extent that human nature allows) this is a country of law. Yes, I can name as many times that it has failed to be a nation of law as anyone else, but at least the IDEA is out there and the achievement of that idea is a goal worthy of the sacrifices of every man and woman who ever fought for it. And the continuing existence of Guantanamo is a disgrace that makes me cringe inside every time I think of it.
Does everybody realise that this speech is from May 2009?
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21obama.text.html?pagewanted=all
I think it would be helpful to make that clear!
Time for a democratic primary challenger?
I’m trying to figure out why a speech from 2009 is causing such a stir right now. Am I missing something?
The only way it would matter that it is from 2009 is if Obama has since retracted his claims.
I think Obama is mostly in the right spot with what his ideal America would look like. Perfect, maybe not, but close enough.
Unfortunately, he’s one of the weakest Presidents we’ve EVER had. He has some good ideas, speaks well, but goddamnit can he fight for one goddamned second? Hell, even if all he did was finish explaining his side before caving that would be an improvement.
This isn’t the first time PZ showed an old video.
I like #11’s amendment.
@PZ:The only way it would matter that it is from 2009 is if Obama has since retracted his claims.
Sure, it’s still shocking and appalling and wrong.
But surely it would be polite to tell us when a video you post is 2 years old?
Anne C. Hanna, Felix, possibly others:
PZ should be forced to apologize for violating 15-minute attention spans, shouldn’t he?
Felix:
No, nothing wrong with indicating the date of the original statement. Is it really important, though, since nothing has changed? You figured it out, anyway, and anyone with minimal cognitive facilities could. No one was trying to deceive you.
The video may date from 2009 and thus be two years old. What that tells me is the prisoners in Guantanamo have been held for an additional two years.
@F
Yeah … you’re right … I should have remembered the text of a speech I’ve never heard and the commentary of (brilliant) Rachel Maddow on it … that I’ve never seen.
Apologies!
PZ is obviosuly completely correct in his use of the present tense in presenting this clip:
“He’s sounding more like George W. Bush every day.”
Tis Himself, pour encourager les autres says:
This. Barring you posting a video, link, or citation showing a reversal in policy or even intent, there is absolutely no argument that time has changed the situation in any way. If your beef is solely that PZ didn’t warn you it wasn’t from today, you’re either saying it was intentionally dishonest, or you’re just quibbling for quibbling’s sake.
@10 Rick:
You do not have to release confidential information to prosecute any of them. Courts have ways of handling that so that no confidential information is released (such as “in camera” hearings).
As far as I can tell, the real reason that we don’t see more detainees facing trial is that there simply isn’t any evidence against them – or at least any evidence that would be admissible in court (for instance, evidence obtained under torture would be unacceptable). However, the right-wing noise machine has convinced the country that everyone there is a terrorist, even though few have been proven to be terrorists. So, if the government tries and fails to prosecute a detainee, it looks like they’re letting a terrorist go free.
The only way to win is for the left to repaint the narrative as the government detaining innocent people with no evidence against them. Maddow is trying to do that, but almost no one else in the national media is.
Felix:
I expected something completely irrational, or a hint of understanding. Instead, you give us a strawman, and I have no trouble with crows in my garden, so thanks but no thanks.
Uh, what?
‘Tis has it nailed.
Obama campaigned on closing down the Gitmo Gulag. Here he is, ramping up another campaign, and the Gulag is still going gangbusters.
This man whom I hoped would be a modern-day Kennedy has turned out to be the rightmost plutocrat to ever preside over our country — and he’s following the man who previously held that title.
Yes, the Republican candidates are even worse. But when Obama has moved to the right of W, how can any sane American of good conscience continue to support him?
Cheers,
b&
Ben Goren, #31:
I take exception to any favorable mention of Kennedy, and I’m surprised when others don’t. Or does nobody remember/learn about the Bay of Pigs or the Cuban Missile Crisis anymore?
As if this weren’t enough, the latest wikileaks cables reveal that the Obama administration has been working hard behind the scenes to shield Bush administration crimes. See this post be Jonathan Turley:
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/12/02/wikileaks-obama-administration-secretly-worked-to-prevent-prosecution-of-war-crimes-by-the-bush-administration/
As one of my favorite bloggers said today, “CAN YOU SMELL THAT CHANGE, MOTHERFUCKERS? BREATHE IT IN.”
So did you forget that Obama is a Democrat, or is he not a true Scotsman?
F, I’m really not sure why you feel it’s appropriate to be nasty towards me just because I was wondering why this was mentioned today in particular, seemingly as if it were new news. Yes, it’s bad. Yes, we shouldn’t forget that there are still people in detention who are being denied the right to a fair trial, and I do appreciate PZ not letting the issue be forgotten. But I did find the presentation a little confusing, and I was wondering if I’d missed some more recent revelation which this was linked to.
That’s why I don’t vote for either the Democratic, or Republican party. I’m not choosing between the lessor of two evils when the evil is so fucking evil.
Pres Obama’s flip-flop on Guantanamo Bay was and still is the most disappointing thing about his presidency. It is the one promise that I never thought he would break. But I will vote for him again. I look at the field of candidates put up by the opposition and I simply cannot vote for them. All cold-hearted or hypocrites or religion-doused maniacs. They are certainly not better presidential material than Pres Obama.
Now the thing with Guantanamo Bay is that the Prez can turn off the bullshit in an instant – he does not need congressional approval. And yet even when the GOP can’t block an executive decision, he fails to deliver on one of his promises. All I can say is at least he’s not McPalin, but he’s not a great president. The truth is, he seems like some sort of puppet of the GOP who spouts what people want to hear but in the end does the bidding of his political masters (Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers?).
@STS #32
I learned about that embarrassing and ridiculous Bay of Pigs fiasco. Just another on the long list of stupid missions green-lighted by misinformed or, more likely, clueless presidents. That still doesn’t mean it was a mean-spirited jaunt into smearing the US’s name. It’s mainly up to interpretation whether you think the mission was something that would have helped (or in this case, if it was something you thought up at the bar last night). It doesn’t really mean that there was anything necessarily wrong or pathetic about Kennedy. If you are alluding to the fact that his entire, albeit short, presidency was mired with such instances, then that’s entirely different.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is just more cold war bullshit that added to the fear. Sure, missiles are bad and devastating and Castro may have been crazy enough to use ’em, but obliterating the US was certainly not going to happen–let alone a Cuban invasion. I wasn’t alive during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but all this fear-mongering about terrorists sounds a lot like what I learned about life during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Now, excuse me while I finish building my secret fallout shelter so it can double as an untraceable hideout when the Re’s take over again in case they try to pick me up for not practicing the “official state religion” and, in lieu of evidence, decide they are going to hold me indefinitely because I might: eat babies, rape virgins, and bomb churches full of people.
At least Obama signed: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations/
It then goes on to define “torture” as what we already know it to be.
As well:
@11:
There’s no need for that amendment. Applicability of due process is assigned to a Person, not a Citizen.
BTW, that was 2009. CIA still is alleged to be operating interrogation centers in other countries. What they’re doing is operating in other countries’ detention centers; almost Clintonesque parsing of bureaucratic fine-lining.
As an aside, did you know that the Gestapo were the inventors of the term “enhanced interrogation”?
http://www.ka9q.net/Gestapo-Enhanced-Interrogation.jpg
(sharpened/enhanced are within translation leeway)
Great, now you’re talking like Bush too.
And then there’s this bullshit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9821049
Blocked my ass. He didn’t need congressional authority to bring those inmates to federal prisons and federal courts. He could just do what Bush did whenever he wanted to pay for something – pull the funds from the “war on terror” budget.
Now I know why the Democratic party didn’t pounce on all these issues when Bush was in office – they thought they were great ideas that they wanted to eumulate.
Im not voting for this clown again, nor am I supporting him again with my time and money. I was in New Hampshire during the 2008 primary as a volunteer for his campaign. I bought into his rhetoric – he seemed to be the perfect alternative after two terms of Bush junior. I really believed in him.
Guess I was a fool – He has been a colossal disappointment. The Bush tax cuts for the rich are now the Obama tax cuts. He has caved and “compromised” with these radical teabaggers at every turn. He has a horrendous track record on the environment which will culminate with the very likely approval of that awful Keystone XL pipeline. And now we have him sustaining the same illegal and unconstitutional policies that Bush junior did.
Total madness. What can we do? I don’t even know how we can actually implement effective change in this country.
Anybody remember the original terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993?
The guy who masterminded that was prosecuted in a federal civilian court and is now serving life in a federal prison.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent. Obama almost acts as if the objections of Republican pundits and politicians are legitimate objections instead of just rhetoric.
I’d like to know what Obama or any of us can do about this, until a Congress can be voted in to repeal the defense appropriation provisions regarding Guantanamo. The money doesn’t really matter if he is prohibited by law from spending it.
So do we vote Ron Paul now? He is way wrong on most everything, but the only things that he could actually change… well he is right on those.
I think he would pull the troops home and stop this disaster of foreign policy.
There aren’t enough votes in congress for the rest of his agenda to be implemented I think.
Apart from the underlying evil here, two statements are flat-out wrong.
A fundamental part of the Geneva Convention is that prisoners of war can attack you again. The previous administration tried to classify everyone in Guantanamo as an ‘unlawful combatant’, which was its own type of evil. I endorse Gregory’s amendment at #11 to avoid this loophole.
I thought ‘acts of war’ were a privilege nations reserved for each other, not for individuals, and you can’t just lock up people to prevent one. While we’re on the subject, do you mind declaring war on Libya before you start bombing in 2011? War is vile and uncivilized, declared or not, but don’t make it worse by pretending it’s not a war.
Not signing the bill would have been a good start. Bush’s threat to veto a bill was apparently powerful enough to get Congress, including Obama, to vote for the FISA amendments that gave immunity for warrantless wiretapping. Now that Obama is president, he gets to use the veto threat to try to force Congress to pass the laws he wants. But for some reason he chooses not to. It’s almost as if he doesn’t really want to close Guantanamo or repudiate the unconstitutional powers Bush claimed for the presidency.
Re: truthspeaker
When you can make defunding the military popular enough to be a viable political strategy, that would be a great idea. Because that’s what you’re suggesting. And your skepticism towards Obama’s evident complaints about that bill are just as applicable to a veto bark with no bite. Clearly, only rejecting military spending would do.
I must admit that I am seriously conflicted by Gitmo. On the one hand, I abhor the obvious violations of the rights detainees must be accorded by any society that values freedom. But let me pose a hypothetical:
John Doe, a suspected terrorist, is in custody. There is strong, but not conclusive evidence that he is intimately involved in a plot to buy a nuclear device on the black market and detonate it in downtown Manhattan. He has the contacts, the expertise, and the will to do this. We just don’t know if he’s capable of pulling it off.
Two courses of action are open to us:
1. Release him, and take our chances. Of course, we’d be committed to a major intelligence effort to keep track of him and his associates, but we would have no certainty of thwarting his (presumed) terrorist plans.
2. Detain him indefinitely, subject him to torture, or even murder him. Admittedly, this risks doing grave injustice to a single human being, but the argument is that the lives of a million people or so are at stake. How many citizens are we willing to put in harm’s way in order to safeguard the legal rights of a man we strongly suspect to be our mortal enemy?
I admit that there are probably very few detainees that fit the description of my John Doe. I freely concede that the majority of detainees ought to be charged or released, or … what?
Is there another course of action? Can we devise a reasonable legal process that allows us to defend ourselves against people who are strongly suspected of being our mortal enemies? How strong must that that suspicion be? How much potential harm might the suspect be capable of?
I don’t want my country to sacrifice either our principles or our population. Somebody please help me to understand this issue.
I’m guessing after one gets in office, and after getting brought up to speed on reality, they soon realize that there are campaign promises they simply cannot keep. This goes for all presidents.
It’s apparent that shutting down Gitmo is not as easy as he imagined or he would have by now.
The thing that’s always bothered me about this is that it ruins our standards internationally, ex. how can we bitch about civil rights abuses to China?
Though I don’t like the GitMo thing, looking at how much Obama has just blatanly put great stuff through (nukes cuts with Russia, START treaty, removed drug czar, new emission regs, the student loan reform, stopped nuclear arms production after Clinton talked and talked about it, repealed the Bush anti-wilderness edict, demanded 2-state solution for Israel, rolled back crack-cocaine sentencing, raised the mpg requirements early, etc.) even though he was opposed, it’s clear that there is some other hurdle involving GitMo. There has to be something beyond the fact that no states wanted the prisoner transfers. So, as transparent as this admin as been compared to past ones, what is that hurdle?
@Tim DeLaney:
The direct answer to your thought experiment is deportation. If you’re afraid of someone attacking your country, don’t keep them there. Yes, he may go and plan other attacks, but the success rate of terrorist attacks from outside the country is insignificant.
In a more general sense, your thought experiment is a variation on the ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ argument, replacing ‘torture’ with ‘imprisonment’.
I have never heard of the ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ scenario playing out as described by its fans. If you have enough information to find the one solitary person who must be tortured/imprisoned to foil the plot, you already have enough information to find the bomb without torturing/imprisoning them. If the CIA/SIS/Mossad wish to claim otherwise, they need to tell us who they torture and what information they got on our behalf. The examples they’ve cited so far (usually Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) are not compelling – they tortured one person they thought was a terrorist, and got information leading to other people they thought were terrorists. If they’d found a pile of actual explosives I’d be more convinced. However, even if they found a bomb under my own house or city through torture, I personally would not endorse it.
To turn your example into what we see in the real world: if you have 100 suspects and all you know for certain is that just 1 of them is planning to set off the bomb, do you lock them all up? What about 10 suspects? What about 2?
Anthill:
Your reply is cogent, but my implied question remains this:
If we determine that a very significant threat exists, but that no legal countermeasure exists, are we ever justified in applying an illegal countermeasure? I’m not sure your reply answers my question.
I don’t know how to answer your questions in your final paragraph. On one hand, if I were 100% certain that a Manhattan nuke could be averted by illegally locking up 99 innocents and one guilty party, I would surely do it. But, of course, we can never be 100% certain of anything.
@Tim DeLaney:
Generally, no. I do not think it is ever worth violating our principles, even to save the lives of millions. If we compromise on our already tattered principles, we condemn many future generations – billions of people – to a bleaker, more dangerous, less trustworthy world.
I can imagine defending some ‘illegal countermeasures’ – but only if the perpetrators take public responsibility for their actions. Let’s say you torture John Doe, or lock him up indefinitely to protect Manhattan. If so, you should voluntarily surrender to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and argue that your actions amounted to self-defense on a national scale. If they find you guilty, acknowledge that what you did was wrong and should not be repeated. I’ll post you a fruitcake every Winterval during your sentence.
Wait, didn’t this guy win a Nobel Peace Prize? What was that for again? One would think that you’d have to respect people’s human rights… Politics in the US seems to be headed one way and it’s frightening.
I’d just like to point out that pace Rachel Maddow, the UK does indeed have a Bill of Rights, the original Bill of Rights, from 1689, which inspired parts of the American version. What the UK doesn’t have is a constitution.
Of course, the particular rights we’re talking about are those regarding detention, which are about habeas corpus, codified in Magna Carta (1225) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679).
Here’s some recent news on the subject
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/americas/08guantanamo.html
@Tim DeLaney:
It sure would be nice to be able to convict citizens for possession of illegal arms…
But to be honest, I don’t think anyone imprisoned in Gitmo presents a threat of the level you’re describing. The fact that the detainees don’t have to be convicted means the administration can decide to simply accuse people they don’t like of being a terrorist and lock them up. Not saying this happens already, but it’s too much power for a government to have.
Another thing to remember is, that a good proportion of prisoners who have been convicted are innocent. Now imagine how many people who are innocent would be locked up if a trial was unnecessary.
Another thing that bothers me about reasoning like this, is the blatant US-centrism. ‘If people might be a threat to american citizens, we must do everything we can to stop them. Even if that means ruining innocent, non-american lives. Because obviously their lives don’t matter as much as american lives.’
The end justifies the means is the excuse people use when they know they’re being evil. How are you different?
if I were 100% certain that a Manhattan nuke could be averted by illegally locking up 99 innocents and one guilty party, I would surely do it.
You are a monster.
You would put people through the humiliation and terror of prison—-you would cause untold financial hardship for 99 people–take their fucking liberty–because of your paranoia?
And just how the fuck do you know, cupcake, that you won’t be the one in jail–and maybe not getting out for as long as people want to keep you there.
You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking something so disgusting and stupid.
Amnesty international teamed up with cassetteboy to give us this:
Barack Obama vs. Cassetteboy
Ah yes, the “preventing a nuclear explosion by breaking the law” argument. Anyone who makes that argument is actually saying “I don’t give a damn about obeying the law.”
Obama used to teach constitutional law. I am certain that he has read Federalist 84, in which Alexander Hamilton says
Obama is proposing legalizing what both Hamilton and Blackstone call “tyranny.”
Lol wow. That’s an impressive amount of privilege. Unexamined, 100% clueless privilege.
Another thing that Blackstone said is
In this case, Congress would have been defunding the military by sending Obama a bill they knew he would veto.
Remember, this was the exact excused Obama made for voting for the FISA amendments. If Congress had sent Bush a national security bill that didn’t contain immunity for warrantless wiretaps, Bush would have vetoed a national security bill and blamed Congress for it.
The problem with your analogy is we know damn well most of the prisoners in Gitmo are not involved in any plots like that. Most of them were fighters in Afghanistan who worked with the Taliban.
That’s what he would like you to think, yes.
Oh, please. Obama, in public, supports a 2-state solution, but then he turns around and vetoes a UN resolution calling for one.
And Obama still has a drug czar who’s just as bad as the old one.
Don’t judge him by his propaganda – judge him by what he actually does.
Total rubbish. The UK does have a constitution. What I suspect you meant was that it does not have a fully written constitution. Parts are written, parts are not, but is not correct to say the UK does not have one.
Re: truthspeaker
I didn’t remember this offhand, so I looked it up. Obama’s explanation doesn’t seem to match up with your ‘excuse’. Maybe I don’t understand your point.
In any case, the ‘they know that we know’ etc. is nice, but may have little to do with the public’s opinion on the matter and who gets stuck with the blame.
Sorry, I was imprecise. That was the excuse Obama’s supporters made. Obama actually supports warrantless wiretapping, as he has demonstrated in office.
Truthspeaker @ 71
It wasn’t an analogy; it was a hypothetical. It was designed to explore the moral dilemma that Gitmo presents. We all know–even those of us who find war abhorrent–that wars are not fought according to the same rules as we employ in criminal justice.
So maybe the first question should be: Are we justified in applying the rules of war just because we call it a “War on Terror”? I don’t think so. Al Qaeda is not a country; it is essentially a gang of criminals who use military weapons. We are, I argue, entitled to arrest individuals upon reasonable suspicion as long as we follow the rules of criminal justice. That means prolonged detention is illegal. I think the standard is 24 hours, then charge or release. we should follow it.
I am surprised that Illuminata and aquaria are so vehement in their condemnation of detaining 99 innocent and one guilty party to prevent the 100% certain nuking of Manhattan. Certainly, our government would be under very heavy pressure to respond in kind. If we managed to exercise restraint, we might even avoid a full nuclear exchange.
Sorry, guys, I would still lock up the 99 innocents rather than sacrifice a couple million New Yorkers and all of Manhattan. The ends do sometimes justify the means. (BTW, “detention” doesn’t always mean prison-for-life.)
Consider this: We routinely violate the Fourth Amendment rights of thousands of air travelers every day for the purpose of preventing a few nutcases from blowing airliners out of the sky. The principle has already been established.
And really, Obama could just break the law and move the detainees anyway. It’s not like Congress impeaches the president for breaking the law anymore. Bush broke it nine ways from Sunday and the Democrats didn’t mention impeachment, even after they had won a majority in both houses of Congress. Obama broke the law when he failed to seek approval for hostilities in Libya and hasn’t had to face any consequences.
Since Obama obviously subscribes to the Nixon/Cheney doctrine that the president is above the law, he doesn’t get to use the law as an excuse for not closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
But Gitmo doesn’t present that moral dilemma, for the reasons I gave.
That example supports our point, not yours. You won’t find many fans of the TSA on this blog.
Snarkmatter, #39:
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at, but I didn’t have the time to enumerate the many ways in which JFK was a giant fuckup. Anyway, the point about the Bay of Pigs is that it was another in a long line (which continues to this day) of attempts by America to destabilize a region using armed rebels backed by the CIA. I am baffled as to why we as a country continue to believe that we can improve the world’s opinion of us by causing chaos in other sovereign nations.
I’ll be saying the same thing about the CIA’s involvement in Libya in a couple years, I’m sure, just as I say the same thing about the CIA/USSOCOM mission into Afghanistan. We seriously need to stop fucking doing that.
Actually I disagree with this. War doesn’t necessarily have to be between nation-states. In my opinion one of the major failings of the “War on Terror” was the failure of Congress to declare war against the organization known as Al Qaeda. Instead, they let Bush wage an open-ended war on anyone he felt like designating a “terrorist”, whether they threatened the US or not.
The problem, to me, is that we aren’t applying the rules of war and treating the Gitmo detainess as POWs. The US has signed agreements saying we’ll give the ICRC access to POWs – we denied them access to some Gitmo prisoners. The US has signed agreements not to torture POWs – and we know what happened with that.
Applying the rules of war would have been fine with me. Applying criminal justice laws would have been fine too. But Bush chose to apply neither. Instead he just made up his own rules, using authority the constitution does not give to the president, and both parties in Congress thought that was just hunky-dory.
Much like Haiti just a few years ago. The coup happened under Bush but Obama has been pressuring Haiti to maintain the status quo and keep Aristide’s party from participating in elections.
We don’t. We just don’t give a shit about the world’s opinion of us. We have the biggest military and one of the biggest economies, so we don’t care what anyone else thinks about what we do.
Truthseeker:
You may not be a fan of TSA, but isn’t it clear to you that passengers ought not to be allowed to bring certain items onto an airliner? I’m not sure I understand your objection. Do you have a way to insure airliner safety without violating the Fourth Amendment? We cannot very well rely on prosecuting the terrorist who is killed along with the other passengers.
Truthspeaker @ 81:
I agree with almost the entirety of this post, except for one detail. I don’t think Congress should be empowered to formally declare war against an organization that is not a sovereign state. The potential for abuse is just too great.
You might feel differently about this if Congress declared war against all atheist organizations. Please don’t argue that it couldn’t happen.
Searching luggage is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, because an airliner is a private facility.
I do object to the TSA using back-scatter scanners, and I object to the secret no-fly lists. And I especially object to the focus on security theater rather than actual security.
If, somehow, you have never heard of these objections before, then I can only surmise that you have lived in a self-imposed news blackout until last week sometime.
My favorite Blackstone quote: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”
Truthspeaker:
There are several things wrong with this. First, the searches are carried out on the person of the traveler, not just the luggage. Second, the searches are carried out in a public facility, an airport terminal. These are not owned by the airlines; they are analagous to public highways. The searches are not carried out in the airliner itself. Third, they are carried out by agents of the government, not by agents of a private company.
Any reasonable reading of the Fourth Amendment would conclude that the searches of airline passengers are violations. Yet we accept those violations because they are (presumably) minor inconveniences we endure for tha sake of public safety.
Your objections to some of the methods the TSA uses have some merit IMO, especially the last. But I think these are details that wander from the original topic.
The discussion is not advanced by personal insults, however mild.
I’m going to take up Ben Goren’s challenge @9, since no one else seems to want to (I admit, it’s frustrating).
Yes, I’m going to “hold my nose and vote for Obama”. Like it or not, we live in a two-party country. If a third party rises up, historically, it is either co-opted by an existing party, or it supplants one of the two that exists. This latter option never seems to happen without massive state-level uprisings, first.
The Greens, whom I support locally, do not have a national infrastructure capable of supplanting the Democratic Party, much as I might prefer that (and be willing to support those efforts in my own state).
I do not have the luxury of comparing a future under Obama to a future under whoever the Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, et al put forth. My choices, in the voting booth, are between Obama and whoever the Republican candidate is.
And just like with the last election, the Republican option is shaping up to be so terrifying that I cannot afford to accept it as some sort of collateral damage for actually bringing down the “centrism” hold on the Democratic Party.
I just have to look at what we have now, and compare it to what would have been under a McCain presidency, to convince myself that as horrible as some bits are, they could have (and would have) been worse.
In particular, Mr. Goren, we wouldn’t have Sotomayor on the bench. We’d have someone who would consistently vote with the Scalia wing. We’d also still have DADT on the books, and I can guarantee you that McCain would STILL be mounting a full-scale defense of DOMA. These are not small things; they are significant and, in the case of the SCOTUS, long-range.
I too am probably going to hold my nose and vote for Obama, especially is the alternative is Perry or, even worse, Bachmann.
I had real hopes that Obama would bring real change, hopes that he has failed to live up to. One thing I do not understand about him is that he should have realized years ago that the congressional Republicans were not going to compromise, so why didn’t he tell them to go fuck themselves?
You couldnt be more correct.