“He says: ‘What that guy is doing isn't serious enough to warrant immediate action. We must wait for over a year before I can do anything because as police chief I'll have more power and REALLY be in charge. THEN I can really do something to stop these things from happening.’
“Meanwhile the murderer is still murdering people and torturing them. But the cop promises you that he will change things if you elect him police chief.
“What would you think of such a cop?”
If you are one of the tens of millions of people who hoped that Obama would right what has been so terribly wrong, what do you think of him now? His appalling actions since becoming president are actually in line with his immoral stance before he was elected. His opposition to the Iraq war was never on the grounds that it was an illegal and immoral war. His opposition to it was on the putative grounds that it was the “wrong” war. His opposition to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that “legalized” torture and the suspension of habeas corpus rights were on the grounds that it was “dumb,” not that it was morally and legally wrong. His stance of “change” and “hope” were never designed to do anything but deceive people.
This week Obama made the extraordinary claim that the Bush regime rectified their abuses about two years after 9/11. This is: a) a dramatically false statement, as the longer Bush and Cheney were in office, the more brazen and monstrous their transgressions became, and b) being put forward now by Obama as groundwork for his claim that there is no reason to prosecute the Bush gang of criminals and tyrants.
Yesterday the New York Times reported:
“The Obama administration said Friday that it would abandon the Bush administration’s term ‘enemy combatant’ as it argues in court for the continued detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies.
“But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.” (Bold added).
In other words, the Obama Administration is going to retain the content of what Bush and Cheney were doing but they’re not going to call it by the same name. What a relief! All I really wanted from Obama was for him to change the names, not change the actions! Nomenclature, after all, is reality.
Can we any longer rely upon people who from one side of their mouth say that they are standing up for sacrosanct principles of the law and on the other side of their mouth defend, excuse (and perpetuate themselves) the actions of those who have explicitly, repeatedly, and egregiously violated those so-called sacred principles?
Isn’t it time that we grow up as a people and recognize that we cannot pass our responsibilities for standing up for justice and fairness onto others but must shoulder these responsibilities ourselves? March 19th is the sixth anniversary of the immoral, illegal and unjust invasion of Iraq. Where will you be on that day? What will you be doing?
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