Is this the change we can believe in?

[IndianaGreen]

ISR Issue 66, July–August 2009

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OBAMA IN OFFICE

Is this the change we can believe in?

The Obama administration has taken some steps to renovate U.S. policy, from ordering the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp to scrapping the global “gag-rule” on abortion counseling. In contrast to the Bush administration’s denial of global climate change, the Obama administration is acknowledging that it is an issue that the U.S. government should tackle.

But when you peel away the salesmanship of these policies for their actual content, you find a lot less than advertised. Take the related issues of closing Guantánamo and repudiating Bush-era policies of torture, both of which became engulfed in a media frenzy in May, when Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney staged dueling speeches intended to justify their respective views on these issues.

One could ask why someone as thoroughly discredited and unpopular as Cheney receives a hearing at all. Yet, after all the hot air dissipated, we were left with a result in which Obama has accepted many of the Bush policies—military tribunals to try detainees and indefinite detention on presidential fiat among them—as his own. Coupled with his double-speak on torture—that he repudiated the Bush policies as illegal, but would not actually prosecute anyone who executed them—and you have the makings of a presidential betrayal.

Thus, it’s not out of the question to ask if a more full-fledged capitulation to Bush-Cheney is in the offing—as in deciding to keep Guantánamo open. The Democrats in both houses of Congress have already made that possibility more likely, by voting in overwhelming numbers to deny funding for closing the camp.

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), attended a meeting with Obama and major human rights groups held prior to Obama’s Guantánamo speech. He wasn’t satisfied, telling reporters: “The president was very open to hearing CCR’s concerns on a range of Guantánamo policy issues, but I came out of the meeting deeply disappointed in the direction the administration is taking and I don’t see meaningful differences between these detention policies and those erected by President Bush.”

http://www.isreview.org/issues/66/editorial.shtml

Socialism: Change You Can Count On!

[Life Long Dem]

1. Sit out DU yeah.