Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

[Ben]

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

By Conor Friedersdorf

Nov 22 2011.... Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened



When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime."

Isn't that something?

Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission, and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success. Why even grapple with Jane Mayer's meticulously researched article on the risks of an drone war run by the CIA, Glenn Greenwald's polemics on the innocent civilians being killed, or Jeff Goldberg and Marc Ambinder's reporting on the Pakistani generals who are moving lightly guarded nuclear weapons around the country in civilian trucks as a direct consequence of the cathartic bin Laden raid.

Chait mentions the Iraq withdrawal, but doesn't point out that Obama sought to violate his campaign promise, and would've kept American troops in the country beyond 2011 had the Iraqis allowed it; that as it is, he'll leave behind a huge State Department presence with a private security army; and that he's expanding America's presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to make up for the troops no longer in Iraq. Is any of that possibly relevant to a liberal's assessment?

Perhaps most egregiously, Chait doesn't even allude to Obama's practice of putting American citizens on a secret kill list without any due process, or even consistent, transparent standards.

Nor does he grapple with warrantless spying on American citizens, Obama's escalation of the war on whistleblowers, his serial invocation of the state secrets privilege, the Orwellian turn airport security has taken, the record-breaking number of deportations over which Obama presided, or his broken promise to lay off medical marijuana in states where dispensing it is legal.

Why is all this ignored?

Telling the story of Obama's first term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names of the people it was killing?

These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism.

Chait's essay suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power, except when the president seems progressive.

I want to be reassured that liberalism is better than that.

When I last wrote on this subject, I criticized David Remnick for what he left out of a short piece on Obama and the War in Libya; I ought to have added that during his tenure as editor of The New Yorker, and thanks in large part to his priorities, the magazine has paid and published Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, David Grann, and other indispensable authors whose work on civil liberties is vital. The same can be said for the editors at The New York Times, who support work like that done by Charlie Savage. Outside of Reason and the Cato Institute, it's almost all left-leaning outlets that have stood up for civil liberties during the War on Terrorism.

I'd like to give Chait his due in the same piece where I skewer his latest. I've long appreciated his talent and intellectual honesty. And I'm sure he both appreciates the work of the writers I've praised and has smart things to say about many if not all of the subjects he ignored in his piece.

But it won't do for smart writers and prestigious publications to keep writing big think pieces about Obama's tenure that read as if some of its most significant, uncomfortable moments never happened; as if it's reasonable for an informed liberal to vote for him in Election 2012 as happily as in 2008. Civil liberties and executive power and war-making aren't fringe concerns, or peripheral disappointments to lament in the course of leaving them to Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer.

They're central to the Obama narrative, and the American narrative, as the president himself would've affirmed back when he was articulating lofty standards that he has repeatedly failed to meet.

As have we all.

[Ben]

Torture’s Future

By ERIC LEWIS

As a candidate in 2008, President Obama stated categorically, “We’ll reject torture — without exception or equivocation.” During his first month in office, he made good on his pledge, signing an executive order prohibiting torture or inhumane treatment. There is no reason to doubt that the order has been followed. This was a huge step forward for the United States.
But if he loses the presidency next year, Obama’s failure to deal with the legacy of torture that he inherited may turn out to be a huge problem. He has left the door open for state-sanctioned torture to be part of the next administration’s tool kit for dealing with the “global war on terror.” The leading Republican candidates understand that in many circles advocating torture is good politics. In their debates and in their foreign policy pronouncements, they are effectively capitalizing on a series of decisions that the Obama administration made as it failed to enshrine its own ban on torture as an absolute legal norm. Torture remains on the table as a future policy choice.
So what happened? The president has rejected three clear opportunities to erect a high legal wall against the return of torture: he has made it clear that criminal prosecutions for torture will not go forward; he has opposed the creation of a truth commission to examine events comprehensively; and he has affirmatively intervened to stop civil litigation by detainees against their torturers.
When President Obama took office, I was in the midst of litigating a civil case against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the military chain of command for torture. A panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had found that as “aliens without presence or property in the United States,” Guantánamo detainees had no right not to be tortured under the Constitution and, in any event, even if there were such rights, there was no reason that Rumsfeld and other military leaders should have been aware that the right to be free from torture was “clearly established.” Accordingly they were immune from suit. In 2009, the Supreme Court directed that the Court of Appeals reconsider its decision in light of its recent finding in Boumediene v. Bush of a constitutional right to habeas corpus for detainees at Guantánamo. 


Torture remains on the table as a future policy choice.

Surely, I thought, the new administration would weigh in and support the argument that there was an inarguable and fundamental right not to be tortured by the government of the United States. What’s more, supporting civil actions for damages would have allowed the facts of torture to emerge through judicial proceedings, avoiding the political conflict of direct executive involvement.
Instead, the Obama administration slammed the door on constitutional challenges to torture. It reiterated the Bush administration’s position, arguing that “aliens held at Guantánamo do not have due process rights,” limiting the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene to habeas corpus only. In other words, it was the position of the Obama administration that even though the Supreme Court had found a constitutional right for detainees to challenge their confinement, detainees had no constitutional right not to be tortured while in confinement. The Obama administration also insisted that it was not sufficiently clear that the Constitution prohibited torture of aliens, and so “a reasonable officer would not have concluded that plaintiffs here possessed Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights while they were detained at Guantánamo.”
Yet reasonable officers have known since the founding of the republic that military law prohibits torturing prisoners and, since the 1930s, that it was cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of due process to torture prisoners in the custody of the United States. What these officers apparently could not have been expected to figure out was whether by bringing prisoners to Guantánamo, they could evade the Constitutional ban on torture or prisoners. Finally, the Obama administration warned that civil remedies for torture would “enmesh the courts in military, national security, and foreign affairs matters that are the exclusive province of the political branches.” In plain English, it is up to us — the executive — and not you — the courts — to decide whether detainees can be tortured or not.
While the norm against torture could have been enforced through criminal prosecution, even in the absence of the remedy of civil damages, the Obama administration then eliminated the option of prosecution. As a candidate, Obama called for a “thorough investigation” of detainee mistreatment; President-elect Obama, however, declared his “belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” No prosecutions have been brought and it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be none, despite the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory, requiring criminal investigation where there are credible allegations of torture.
A South-African style truth commission, which would have had the virtue of getting all the facts out into the open and at least creating a record that would have precluded future officials from claiming that there was ambiguity or uncertainty about whether they had the power to torture under the Constitution, didn’t happen either, despite earlier indications of support. Harboring a vain hope for what has turned out to be imaginary reconciliation, the Obama administration has failed in its legal and moral obligation to create an effective and durable bar to torture.
Had President Obama shown the courage of candidate Obama, he would have strongly supported civil litigation under the Constitution against officials who authorized torture. The argument that it involves the courts in foreign policy or causes officials to be wary in their actions is nonsense. The ban on torture should be absolute; it is not a foreign policy or defense issue and it is salutary for officials to know that they will be held accountable for torture. President Obama should also have ordered candidate Obama’s “thorough investigation” to go forward, ideally through the criminal process. Perhaps the specter of potential indictments of senior officials made a president who wanted to be perceived as post-partisan queasy, but he should be made more queasy by a former president claiming it was “damn right” to order waterboarding.
When torture becomes another political choice, the debate becomes an empirical one about whether it works. Putting aside the moral issue, this becomes the ultimate bureaucratic game, where former Vice President Dick Cheney can claim he is “convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives.” Cheney knows enough to be just as convinced that the data will never emerge to prove him right or wrong. Virtually all the empirical evidence shows that torture is usually ineffective, almost invariably less effective than other methods of interrogation, and frequently generates massive amounts of false leads, leading to further wasteful cycles of interrogation.
What the Bush administration experience showed was not that torture never works, but that the impulse to torture is ever present. Torture is always seen as a sad necessity, imposed with increasing frequency and brutality as panic and frustration increase. The would-be torturer invokes the scenario of the ticking time bomb, but given the power to torture, officials begin to see ticking time bombs everywhere, perhaps especially if they believe they have been right once before. Virtually all of the 800 detainees who went through Guantánamo were subject to sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold, stress positions and unmuzzled dogs. Could the Bush administration have believed that all of those detainees, the vast majority of whom were released without charge, knew about September 11th? Certain suspects were waterboarded more than 100 times. Could the administration really have thought that on the 50th or 100th or 150th episode of waterboarding the real information would come out?
President Obama’s public commitment to ending torture is laudable and important. It is ludicrous to contend, as some do, that his administration is no different from that of his predecessor. But the problem as we look toward the 2012 election is that there is still no “clearly established legal right” for detainees not to be tortured. So when a new administration comes into office, whether that’s in 2013 or 2017, and finds itself in a panic after the next underwear or shoe bomber, it will still be able to find some eager apparatchik to write a memo that allows torture and promises immunity.
The Republican candidates, by and large, have made themselves clear: they will not be inhibited in ordering torture. Rick Perry, for example, declared that techniques that might “save young lives” would be approved by a Perry White House. “This is war.” Perry said. “That’s what happens in war.” Mitt Romney, eager to burnish his tough guy credentials, offered a characteristic semantic dodge: “Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used. Not torture, but enhanced interrogation techniques. Yes.”
The Obama administration can’t just say, “Trust us.” Its challenge was not only to stop the American government from torturing detainees, but to institutionalize the legal infrastructure that would prevent the resumption of torture. President Obama had the opportunity to leave an unambiguous legal legacy that prohibited torture and inhibited the torturers of tomorrow from finding legal cover. Instead, we may reap the whirlwind of his timidity, and soon.


Eric Lewis is a partner at Lewis Baach PLLC in Washington.

[tsadriana]

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

By Conor Friedersdorf

Nov 22 2011.... Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened



When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime."

Isn't that something?

Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission, and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success. Why even grapple with Jane Mayer's meticulously researched article on the risks of an drone war run by the CIA, Glenn Greenwald's polemics on the innocent civilians being killed, or Jeff Goldberg and Marc Ambinder's reporting on the Pakistani generals who are moving lightly guarded nuclear weapons around the country in civilian trucks as a direct consequence of the cathartic bin Laden raid.

Chait mentions the Iraq withdrawal, but doesn't point out that Obama sought to violate his campaign promise, and would've kept American troops in the country beyond 2011 had the Iraqis allowed it; that as it is, he'll leave behind a huge State Department presence with a private security army; and that he's expanding America's presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to make up for the troops no longer in Iraq. Is any of that possibly relevant to a liberal's assessment?

Perhaps most egregiously, Chait doesn't even allude to Obama's practice of putting American citizens on a secret kill list without any due process, or even consistent, transparent standards.

Nor does he grapple with warrantless spying on American citizens, Obama's escalation of the war on whistleblowers, his serial invocation of the state secrets privilege, the Orwellian turn airport security has taken, the record-breaking number of deportations over which Obama presided, or his broken promise to lay off medical marijuana in states where dispensing it is legal.

Why is all this ignored?

Telling the story of Obama's first term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the names of the people it was killing?

These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism.

Chait's essay suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power, except when the president seems progressive.

I want to be reassured that liberalism is better than that.

When I last wrote on this subject, I criticized David Remnick for what he left out of a short piece on Obama and the War in Libya; I ought to have added that during his tenure as editor of The New Yorker, and thanks in large part to his priorities, the magazine has paid and published Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, David Grann, and other indispensable authors whose work on civil liberties is vital. The same can be said for the editors at The New York Times, who support work like that done by Charlie Savage. Outside of Reason and the Cato Institute, it's almost all left-leaning outlets that have stood up for civil liberties during the War on Terrorism.

I'd like to give Chait his due in the same piece where I skewer his latest. I've long appreciated his talent and intellectual honesty. And I'm sure he both appreciates the work of the writers I've praised and has smart things to say about many if not all of the subjects he ignored in his piece.

But it won't do for smart writers and prestigious publications to keep writing big think pieces about Obama's tenure that read as if some of its most significant, uncomfortable moments never happened; as if it's reasonable for an informed liberal to vote for him in Election 2012 as happily as in 2008. Civil liberties and executive power and war-making aren't fringe concerns, or peripheral disappointments to lament in the course of leaving them to Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer.

They're central to the Obama narrative, and the American narrative, as the president himself would've affirmed back when he was articulating lofty standards that he has repeatedly failed to meet.

As have we all.

Because they are big TWATS,thats why.

[hippifried]

Well that was a waste of time. Whiners are just so unimpressive.

[Stavros]

The same wave of hope that swept Obama into power was evident in 1997 when Labour destroyed the Conservatives -but any hope that this would mean major changes was not borne out by the facts -without sounding too pompous I knew enough about Blair, Brown and Mandelson to know it would end badly anyway. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary and someone who distinguished himself in opposition with sharp, incisive criticism of the Conservatives, declared that Labour's foreign policy would henceforth have an ethical dimension....human rights at the core; democracy promoted just as we have it here in the UK...three months or so later the British government sold Hawk Jets to Indonesia, then it intervened in Kosovo..etc.

There will of course be a balance sheet in the forthcoming campaign, so I guess you can choose your sweets and your lemons; the record never is as good as the rhetoric, that's politics. And usually, it can take up to 10 years or more for a proper assessment of a Presidency to make sense.

[arnie666]

The one lefty I know in the UK HATES Obama,he was taken in by all the hope and change bollocks and the media as well as Obamas efforts to make him into the messiah. And he now thinks Obama is a corporate monkey (in a non racist way of course) ,and he doesn't he know all about the dodgy dealings between Obama,general electric and the network MSLSD (MSCBC). That network effectively is Obamas propoganda service ,this is why the lunatic Olbermann as fired and cenk from the Young turks was booted out because they were too critical.

I mean how can they go nuts over Bush putting people in Gitmo and chucking water on them, but on the other hand try and excuse Obama killing terrorists who happen to be US citizens without trial? Apparently waterboarding is bad but assassinating is fine? Or how about Obama setting fire to the middle east, and his support for the arab spring has radicalised the middle east even more, to the extent the next adminstration democrat or republican will have to attempt to limit the damage and get labled warmongers. Bush lied to congress, Obama just ignores it,and does what he wants. Unemployment is through the roof,and Obama is frightened to do UK style austerity measures because he knows he is worried about relection.

Iam not surprised all the soap dodgers and hippies are mad, and are protesting,they are just in the wrong places,they should be stood outside the whitehouse general electric and MSLSD. Because they were scammed. The Brits on the forum probably remember Bliar in 1997,and the intelligent among us at the time Obama came on the scene knew he was Bliar with a skin tan,who was a bit more hip and jive. The left and even the centre in the UK were taken in though,I cannot understand how thick they were.

Blaming the last adminstration only goes so far, I mean if you want to go down that route you could say the seeds for both the international problems and americas economic woes were sown in the Clinton admin.Clinton,a man I much admire, is perhaps the best political mind in years,he papered over the cracks,his mistakes very well,clinton made decisions that left him popular but many were the wrong ones. ,leaving Bush to deal with it,which he did badly,and then Obama took over and made it worse. End of the day Obama is president,the buck stops with him,and he has no leadership skills at all,and he constantly fucks up.

I think the standard of politicians has gone down the toilet in both the US and UK personally, America needs a decent president, but apart from save newt gringrich who while he might be a nasty individual and is corrupt as they come, is far more competent than anyone else on the republican side now.The rest are jokes. Gingrich I know has a book of dirty tricks and would sell his own mother,that is kind of man you need to get bills through a hostile legislature,he is also tough and has a political mind. That is the kind of guy you need to clean up the mess in the middle east.

[Mike11]

Does it really matter who the president is in the US? Do they have any real power?

At least Obama seemed to have resisted the congress more than some other previous presidents, as ineffective as it may have been.

The US seems to be run like a business and I am afraid that approach is becoming well rooted in the UK too evidenced by the fact that political parties are becoming irrelevant and campaigning is what matters.

What is the meaning of Democracy? Does it really exist anywhere or is it just a man made illusion to mobilise the masses, a bit like religion.

[Stavros]

Or how about Obama setting fire to the middle east, and his support for the arab spring has radicalised the middle east even more, to the extent the next adminstration democrat or republican will have to attempt to limit the damage and get labled warmongers. Bush lied to congress

Arnie, one of the striking aspects of the Arab Spring has been the absence of the USA -someone called it 'leading from behind'. The USA over many decades has been terrified of change in the Middle East -I don't recall any US President making public speeches that called for an end to autocracy in Saudi Arabia in the same way that speeches were made against the abuse of human rights and the absence of democracy in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and said it quite clearly: Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! No US President has gone to the West Bank and said 'Mr Sharon, tear down this wall!' (or Netanyahu, choose your Israeli). The US knows that the Arab state has failed, and also knows that transformation will be bloody, chaotic, unpredictable -but cannot control it, and I don't think Obama had any role in it. For once, the Middle East is beyond American influence, Netanyahu's contempt for the elected President of the USA is an additional factor in the strategies of tension over Iran that sound ominous to me. Difficult times, but on this one, the USA is out of the loop, and a bystander.

[hippifried]

Oh gee... The Brits are all disappointed because their expectations weren't met.

Well, I guess y'all can join up with the "professional left" & the continuously whining Republicans who created all these expectations, based on who knows what, & never bothered to listen to a single thing that was actually said by President Obama during his campaign.

Just out of curiosity: Does anybody really believe that candidate Barack Obama got elected Ptesident of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, by a landslide vote that included the lion's share of the political center & independents, by claiming to be a wild eyed leftie & promising to turn America into a socialist paradise?

I'm the old hippy. Isn't it supposed to be me who can't remember what happened more than 5 minutes ago, instead of you whelps? Both of these articles are hyperbolic bullshit. All punditry is lies.

[onmyknees]

Well that was a waste of time. Whiners are just so unimpressive.

Perfectly said by Hippie in a moment of rare relevance and sobriety. Whiners are unimpressive, including the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave who's when he's not pandering, is whining about someone else "driving the car into the ditch"....or whining about Congress.

The irony that liberals are now faced with is that Obama is the exact opposite of what they expected....a killing and interventionist machine overseas, and a man who's actually done well continuing Bush's policies.....and weak, ineffectual leader on the domestic front who's hands are deeper in Wall Street's pockets than any of them care to admit. I'd say that puts libs in a quandary, but hopefully Ben's search for accountability by liberals is not something he's counting on.....they carried his water to the last elestion, and they'll do it again. As writer Victor Davis Hansen put it ( much better than I.........)


The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.
Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.