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Obama: A Disaster for Civil Liberties
By Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times
01 October 11
He may prove the most disastrous president in our history in terms of civil liberties.
[http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-W.jpg]ith the 2012 presidential election before us, the country is again caught up in debating national security issues, our ongoing wars and the threat of terrorism. There is one related subject, however, that is rarely mentioned: civil liberties.
Protecting individual rights and liberties - apart from the right to be tax-free - seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.
Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after September 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.
However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill US citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.
But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.
It's almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage bonds with his captor despite the obvious threat to his existence. Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become secondary to his persona.
Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government's burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that "the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals' rights and freedoms." Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not "soft" on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home.
This calculation may be wrong. Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line, especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture and has been long defined as such by both international and US courts. It is not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process, his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the credibility of the US in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.
In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties. Now the president has begun campaigning for a second term. He will again be selling himself more than his policies, but he is likely to find many civil libertarians who simply are not buying.
Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.
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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Abdul Bangura [theai@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 5:03 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - "It Is The Economy, Stupid" (Brother Bill Clinton)
As Brother Bill Clinton correctly observed many years ago, for us Americans, when it comes to elections, "It Is The Economy, Stupid!"
Anti-terrorism success may not help Obama in 2012
[cid:410-220111061213519632@13071999]
October 01, 2011 ? WASHINGTON (AP) ? The killing of an American-born cleric in Yemen underscores a re-election reality for President Barack Obama: He may have a string of counterterrorism successes and high marks from the public on foreign policy, but neither is likely to help him hold the White House.
For the Obama administration, it's a frustrating bottom-line. When the first-term senator won the presidency, questions lingered about his readiness to handle national security matters. Yet Obama has received wide praise for operations that have killed terrorist leaders, most notably Osama bin Laden in May, and Anwar al-Awlaki on Friday.
Al-Awlaki, an American citizen targeted in a U.S. drone attack, was deemed by the administration as having a "significant operational role" in terrorist plots. They included two nearly catastrophic attacks on U.S.-bound planes, an airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes last year.
Obama also can claim credit for aiding Libyan rebels in ousting Moammar Gadhafi, for supporting other democratic uprisings in the Arab world, for drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for negotiating a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
But barring unforeseen events, the nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate and turmoil in the financial markets mean people are far more likely to vote next November with the economy foremost in their minds, not the president's record on foreign policy and terrorism.
That's bad news for the administration because the public gives Obama far higher approval ratings on terrorism than on his handling of the economy. In fact, Obama's approval rating on terrorism was higher than on any other issue, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in late August. It showed that 60 percent of those surveyed approved of his handling of terrorism. Just 36 percent approved of his handling of the economy, an all-time low for Obama.
Obama's overall approval rating also fell to an all-time low in the poll, 46 percent. The re-election picture gets even gloomier given that 92 percent of those questioned said the economy was an extremely or very important issue. By comparison, 73 percent put the same emphasis on terrorism, but even they're divided over whether Obama should be re-elected.
It's also unclear whether the killing of al-Awlaki will bring Obama any new political support. The fiery American-born cleric had a hand in several high-profile terror attempts on the U.S., but his name is hardly as familiar to most Americans as bin Laden.
Obama's orders for U.S. special forces to kill bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistani compound did give the president's approval rating a bump. But it proved fleeting, further evidence of the secondary role of terrorism for voters.
"It's not 2004," said Rick Nelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This isn't the primary issue facing the United States. The primary issue is the economy and jobs. That issue is going to overshadow anything we do overseas."
The joint CIA-U.S. military airstrike that targeted al-Awlaki and killed a second American citizen wasn't without controversy. The attack apparently was the first time a U.S. citizen was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so, raising questions about the reach of presidents' powers.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a GOP presidential contender, called it an "assassination" and said Americans should not casually accept such violence against U.S. citizens, even those with strong ties to terrorism
But most other top Republicans running for Obama's job saw little downside in praising the president for his role. Texas Gov. Rick Perry congratulated Obama, along with the military and intelligence agencies, for "aggressive anti-terror policies." Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney commended the president for his efforts to keep Americans safe and said al-Awlaki's death was a "major victory" in the terrorism fight.
With the first nominating contests about three months away, foreign policy and terrorism have been virtually absent from the Republican race. When the issues have arisen, most GOP contenders have tried to portray the president as a weak leader. It's a sentiment they hope taps into voters' frustration with the economy.
Bruce Jones, an expert on transnational threats, said Obama's success against terrorist leaders may help counter that GOP strategy. "At the very least, it takes away from the critics the idea that he can't lead, that he doesn't understand those kinds of issues," said Jones, also a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
Beyond the counterterrorism efforts, Obama aides say they believe the president will get credit come Election Day for his foreign policy achievements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as for his support of other democratic uprisings throughout the Arab world. They say the president has boosted U.S. standing in the world, making it easier to get international backing for his policies, rather than having to go it alone.
But there is some concern among Obama backers that a foreign policy issue most likely to find a place in the 2012 campaign is one that has achieved little success: securing peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
On that vexing issue, Obama finds himself caught between Republicans and some Jewish voters painting him as anti-Israel, and much of the world community, which disagrees with his opposition to Palestinian efforts to seek statehood recognition at the United Nations.
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Associated Press writer Phillip Elliott and news survey specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
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Associated Press writer Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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