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On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:44:09 -0700, "Gandalf Grey" <...@gmail.com
Published on Monday, June 22, 2009 by Inter Press Service
Obama's Right Turn
by William Fisher
NEW YORK - Human rights and open government advocates were heartened by
President Barack Obama's pledge during his first week in office to create
"an unprecedented level of openness in government" and "establish a system
of transparency, public participation, and collaboration".
But now, well into Obama's second 100 days in office, many are expressing
outrage and disappointment that many of the president's decisions have
followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
The Obama administration has invoked the "state secrets" privilege several
times to prevent lawsuits dealing with "extraordinary renditions" and
warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Justice Department
lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan
have no right to challenge their detention.
The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to
keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even
though the Defense Department has cleared these men for release and declared
that they present no threat to U.S. national security.
Reliable reports suggest that Obama is considering "indefinite detention"
for GITMO detainees who cannot be tried in U.S. courts because the evidence
against them was obtained through torture.
The government has gone to court to appeal a court ruling ordering the
release of a 2004 report from the Inspector General of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) describing the harsh treatment of prisoners in the
agency's secret prisons. And the new president has refused to make public
photographs reportedly depicting abusive interrogations at these and other
government detention centers.
Obama recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for
Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had
visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies because the
disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential
communications".
On the issue of electronic surveillance, the new president has not
repudiated the Bush-era executive orders supporting warrantless wiretapping
and the legal opinions used to support them. Obama has resisted a "truth
commission" to investigate former officials who allegedly broke the law and
committed crimes, saying he would rather look forward than back.
Government lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought on
behalf of a couple who were placed on a terrorist watch list.
And when watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department
seeking records related to former vice president Dick Cheney's interview
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the "outing" of CIA operative
Valerie Plame, the Justice Department declined to turn over the records.
IPS interviews with human rights and open-government advocates produced few
explanations of the president's actions, beyond calls for him to live up to
his promises.
But some have offered insights as to the "why" of what they see as Obama's
u-turn.
Among them is Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law
school. He told IPS, "After winning the Democratic Party against Senator
Clinton by appealing to its progressive wing, Obama immediately veered far
to the right and co-opted all of the Clinton people into his campaign and
then administration. So what we are seeing now is a third Clinton term with
a continuation of many of the same foreign and domestic policies pursued by
the Bush Jr. administration."
He added, "This has little to do with personnel and personalities. It has to
do structurally with the preservation and further extension of the American
empire abroad that necessarily requires the further consolidation of an
American police state at home," he said.
"Hence the Obama administration has continued to ratify the illegal and
unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration in court cases across
the board, while escalating the Bush admistration's imperialist intervention
into Afghanistan and now expanding it into Pakistan."
Another explanation came from Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for
Constitutional Rights, which has mobilised dozens of pro-bono lawyers to
represent Guantanamo prisoners.
"Why did Obama make promises about less secrecy, transparency and a narrowed
state secrets privilege and proceed to have his administration assert
positions and back legislation that was directly contrary to those
promises?" he asked rhetorically in response to an IPS question.
"In the U.S., we complain about Chile hiding the crimes of the Pinochet
regime, or Germany hiding the Nazi crimes or Russia the crimes of the KGB,
yet where is the screaming when President Obama hides the war crimes of the
Bush administration?"
His answer: "In part, the recent blatant assertions of secrecy are to hide
crimes of former and some current officials. That is why President Obama is
keeping the torture photos hidden. That is why he is continuing to assert
broad state secret claims to try and hide the rendition program."
"That is why the 2004 CIA report on the secret site interrogations will be
released with heavy redactions. Not only would the photos and documents
implicate the Bushies, but remember some of those abuses were apparently
committed by units under the command of the recently appointed commander in
Afghanistan, General (Stanley) McChrystal," Ratner noted.
"Some of the crimes were allegedly approved or committed by the current
deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, who is keeping his job," he
added. Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee offers another
perspective. He told IPS, "There are undoubtedly elements of truth in each
of the theories - or excuses - I've imagined or heard for the president's
broken January promise."
"But the hedging and retaining litigation and other exceptions, instead of
restoring the full presumption of transparency and openness in interpreting
FOIA, are as disappointing as the hedging and retaining exceptions on other
core planks of the rule of law, such as the prohibition on torture, military
commissions, preventive detention, and maintaining ubiquitous surveillance."
He added, "The free information flows and social networking technologies in
the Iranian protests are only the latest indication of transparency's new
historical power. Obama himself recognized in that context the new meaning
for Martin Luther King's injunction that 'the arc of the moral universe is
long, but bends toward justice'."
"Obama would be better advised to be on the right side of that history than
on the side of darkness and cover-up," he said.
A more hopeful note comes from Peter M Shane, a law professor at Ohio State
University. He notes that the Bush administration "had the most ambitious
view of executive power in history. Bush sympathizers see little difference
in the Obama administration. Bush's detractors, in some respects, agree."
But the truth, he says, is probably closer to the Obama administration
casting aside some of the Bush administration's more audacious claims while
"still struggling to find a consistent stance with regard to its philosophy
of executive power."
How the new administration will ultimately resolve its conflicts between
secrecy and open government remains to be seen. But, as President Obama said
over the weekend in relation to the current Iranian conflict, "the world is
watching".
Copyright 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service
--
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in
this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud
of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing
of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to
which we are committed today at home and around the world.
"
-John F. Kennedy, 1961
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