I'm coming to terms with my disappointment in Barack Obama. I was an enthusiastic supporter of his during the campaign, and I don't regret the choice of O over the unthinkable John McCain, but I must admit that Obama has settled into the all-too-predictable pattern of selling out to Beltway modes of behavior much sooner than I thought he would. I worked in his campaign, I flew to Florida to work as a precinct lawyer, all on my own dime, I contributed more money to his campaign than I had ever previously donated to any candidate. I know some of this smacked of desperation to avoid another Bush in the White House, another warmongering, "gut-following," intellectually limited inhabitant of the Oval Office, but a lot of it was based on that most fragile of emotions, blind hope.
In truth, Obama's done some very positive things. His stance on global warming, for example, which despite its occasional eclipse as a front-running issue, remains the existential problem of our time. Obama has completely reversed Bush's policies on allowing the individual states to set carbon-reducing standards higher than the federal government. That is crucial, because federal action requires Senator Harry Reid to overcome his fetish about the "60-vote" rule, behind which Reid hides his own deep conservatism. Reid will always tell us he can't do anything because the Republicans will tell him he can't if he tries.
Obama's actions to stem foreclosures are another major breakthrough, because he has led the U.S. Congress actually to enact legislation, mirabile dictu, which assists the ordinary American citizen. Since almost all Congressional enactments of recent years are designed to punish average Americans for their bad judgment in not being very rich, I had forgotten that Congress had that power. Consider, for a moment, the Bankruptcy "Reform" Act of a few years ago, passed to make it more difficult for consumers to write off usurious credit card debt. Joe Biden, your Vice President, was the lead man for the Democrats on that nasty piece of anti-commoner work. He's now the head of Obama's "Middle Class Task Force." Hey, good luck, Middle Classers! And remember when Congress made it illegal for Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts with Big Pharma as part of its senior "Medicare prescription" bill? That's why, in Michael Moore's "SiCKO," the woman who paid $120 for an inhaler in the U.S. could buy the same device in Cuba for five cents, because your Congress wants you to have no escape from monopolistic captivity.
I notice there's been no reversal of that ridiculous provision even though the Democrats now hold a commanding majority. Also, the Military Commissions Act is still on the books even though the Supreme Court has ruled that the habeas-stripping provision is unconstitutional, and even though the retroactive exoneration provisions violate the Convention Against Torture (making it also unconstitutional).
Speaking of which, Obama's temporizing on whether the Bush officials involved in torture should even be investigated is beyond lame. The Convention Against Torture, to which the United States became a signatory under Ronald Reagan, requires the United States to investigate and prosecute all torture offenses committed by its citizens where credible evidence exists of the crime. In our situation, Bush & Cheney have admitted that they ordered torture (waterboarding, among other offenses). The Convention expressly eliminates any excuse for torture: no "national security," no "advice of counsel," no "following orders," no other rationales work (on this ground alone, the Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional, since treaties are the supreme law of the land and prevail over domestic statutes). It does not matter, according to the clear standards of the Convention, whether drowning the evil-doers, or flying them around to places like Jordan and Egypt to be tortured, was designed to "keep us safe."
So Obama's bullshit about his "focus on the future" and "getting it right moving ahead," does not fly. There are some awfully smart lawyers out there, such as Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Turley, Bruce Fein, Michael Rattner, Jack Balkin and others, who know there is only one way to deal with the Convention Against Torture honestly: comply with it, or expressly declare that for some reason the United States, which has always demanded that other nations comply with the Convention (and has assisted in the prosecution of war criminals based upon it), is not subject to a law which appears in the United States Code Annotated and expressly covers the offenses which Bush and Cheney have admitted openly. Obama can give all the pretty speeches he wants about "bipartisanship" and "healing" and the rest of it; if he wants to be taken seriously as an intellectually honest lawyer, he's going to have to convince them.
President Obama is never going to be pressed on this specific, unavoidable point by the craven favor-seekers at one of his press conferences. (I notice, sadly, that he has picked up Bush's practice of going down a list of reliable Media Stars when "calling on" reporters.) It is to Obama's shame that he is not dealing openly with the issue. If he wants to be "honest and transparent," then he needs to announce as follows: "The United States is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture. Credible evidence exists that members of the Bush Administration, including the President and Vice President, ordered acts of torture proscribed by the Convention. We are under a mandatory duty to investigate and to prosecute, if warranted by the investigation. Despite these clear, unequivocal and explicit duties, I am ordering my Department of Justice to violate the Treaty because... [fill in a reason]."
If he doesn't do that, he's dishonest. If he does do that, he's complicit and part of an obstruction of justice. The only way to avoid dishonesty and complicity is to seek an express abrogation of the Treaty and to declare that the United States, alone among all civilized nations, does not prosecute its citizens for torture prohibited by the Act.
No comments:
Post a Comment