Asked about the extraordinary conditions imposed on Bradley Manning and the even more extraordinary remarks of the State Department spokesman dumping on DoD for that mistreatment, Barack Obama sounds completely clueless. Clueless at the Bush level:
I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assured me that they are. I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning’s safety as well.
Surely the President knows as well as anyone else that asking people accused of maltreating a prisoner whether the prisoner is being properly treated is like asking a drunk how much he’s had to drink. Since Barack Obama is not a fool, this can only mean that he’s reluctant to countermand Gates and Gates’s subordinates. (Note that he didn’t say that he’d had the allegations checked out and found that they were false.)
Footnote To answer the question sure to come up in comments: Yes, if the Republicans ran a candidate who took a forthright stand against torture, even if that person were otherwise “conservative” in the degraded contemporary sense of that term - committed to making the poor poorer, the country more ignorant, and the planet less habitable - this issue alone would be a cogent reason to vote for that Republican. No, I wouldn’t do so myself - personally, I’m rather fond of the planet - but if a friend told me he planned to vote for that imaginary Republican I couldn’t say he was doing the wrong thing.
But Charles Fried isn’t going to get the Republican nomination, and the context for the President’s display of weak knees on this issue is the drumfire of “soft on terror” charges from the GOP and its tame media. Our actual choice next November will be between an incumbent who would more or less like to do the right thing about torture but isn’t willing to cash in all his chips to do so, and who also has sane and decent views about poverty, ignorance, and environmental catastrophe, and a Republican candidate who is enthusiastic about torture and also about poverty, ignorance, and environmental capacity.
Does that somewhat demoralize me, as a Democrat and low-party-number Obamite? Yes.
Does it lead me to cut off my nose to spite my face? No.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have resumed their war against the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, explicitly in order to disable a major source of progressive funding even as the captive Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has unleashed unlimited corporate funding for reactionaries. The notion that we should enable such behavior because Barack Obama isn’t the moral leader I had imagined him to be doesn’t strike me as cogent.
“this can only mean that he’s reluctant to countermand Gates and Gates’s subordinates.”
It could mean another thing as well: that Obama wants Manning tortured.
We are living in a country whose political class has sacrificed righteousness for expedience, and whose citizens don’t care. Obama clearly doesn’t feel strong enough to do what is right, and I can understand why he might feel he has to act as he has, but I don’t think we’re going to like where this ends up.
A government as good as its people, as Jimmy Carter said. I had hoped for a government better than we deserve.
No bones to pick with you here Mark. This is all clean thinking and properly leveraged morality. In regards to weakness, I would however extend the charge. Here is clip from Leon Weiseltier’s Darkness Falls over at the New Republic:
And the president? He declares that Qaddafi must go and that we will stand with the Libyan people, and then he does nothing. No, that’s not right. He consults and consults, and his staff works round the clock, and economic sanctions are instituted against the rampaging dictator who has tens of billions of dollars in cash. Obama is prepared to act, just not consequentially. He does not want the responsibility for any Arab outcome. He says they must do it for themselves. But they are doing it for themselves. They merely need help. And the help they need is easy for us to provide. (Jam their f^&*%$ communications.) And their cause is freedom, which is allegedly our cause. What they seek from Obama is an extended hand. What they are getting is a clenched fist. If Muammar Qaddafi takes Benghazi, it will be Barack Obama’s responsibility. That is what it means to be the American president. The American president cannot but affect the outcome. That is his burden and his privilege. He has the power to stop such an atrocity, so if the atrocity is not stopped it will be because he chose not to use his power. Perhaps that is why Obama has been telling people, rather tastelessly, that it would be easier to be the president of China. Obama will not be rushed. He is a man of the long game. But the Libyan struggle for freedom, and the mission of rescue, is a short game. That is the temporality of such circumstances. If you do not act swiftly, you have misunderstood the situation. Delay means disaster. Does Obama have any idea of what Qaddafi’s victory will mean for the region and its awakening?
Obama’s personality is totally incapable of making snap decisions. Nor is he willing to go inside and rough it up with the opposition. He is a three point pea-shooter. He won’t go down low and fight with his elbows for hard rebounds. Yeah, the three point shooter can lull you for a whole game, then hit a few in a row to bring the crowd to its feet. Like in Tucson. But you live by the jump shot you die by the jump shot. Defense and rebounds is what wins tournaments and controls the national narrative.
Yes I’ll vote for him again too. One would have to be insane given the fallen nature of the Republican party. And Barack will probably win. But face it, this dog of ours doesn’t rebound. He does however play golf with Jamie Dimon.
Good grief…
Sorry to bring a crude South Park reference into this, but it seems to me that you’re saying voting for Obama in 2012 will be like voting for a douche over a turd sandwich (I suppose douches have their uses).
Maybe we will see a braver man if he gets that second term.
I will say this. If he thinks that the conditions of Manning’s incarceration are legal, then Crowley needs to either deny that he said what he’s reported to have said, or be fired. So Obama’s failing to show appropriate leadership either way.
Surely the President knows as well as anyone else that asking people accused of maltreating a prisoner whether the prisoner is being properly treated
Already saw that movie in 2009. Didn’t like it then either.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have resumed their war against the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, explicitly in order to disable a major source of progressive funding even as the captive Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has unleashed unlimited corporate funding for reactionaries.”
And what has Mr. Obama done lately in support of workers’ rights? Well, there’s this:
The notion that we should enable such behavior because Barack Obama isn’t the moral leader I had imagined him to be doesn’t strike me as cogent.
My view is that if I’m going to be screwed over by a politician, I’d prefer that it not be by a politician I voted for.
jm, I’d extend the charge to include any and all liberals joining in the current agenda of “education reform” by union-bashing. They at least bear part of the responsibility for any loss of faith in the fundamental importance of unions - even public sector - in the workplace.
Johnny, it’s not about you. Or me. It’s about the people who suffer from bad choices by politicians.
“isn’t willing to cash in all his chips to do so”!!?!
What do you suppose he’s been planning to spend his chips on?
Not that McCain would have been much of an improvement, which is among the reasons I voted third party in 2008, but you’re cutting a little too much slack. What exactly makes you think that he’s simply giving in to his subordinates (Many of whom he picked.) on things like this?
I think Obama has a well developed conception of the proper powers of the Executive: Everything. I think he genuinely believes that the executive, that’s him, is entitled to order American citizens killed, have people tortured, imprisoned indefinitely without judicial review… He thinks the executive, that’s him, is entitled to execute it’s policies even contrary to court rulings, such as the finding that his drilling moratorium was illegal.
In short, I think he believes he is properly a dictator, constrained only by his superior conscience. That the elite should never let the rules constrain them, because as the elite, they know how to break them for the better good. Now, naturally, coming out and saying this would cause him no end of inconvenience, so he won’t do it, but where’s the contrary evidence?
I think the only thing that’s saving us is that he’s a very lazy dictator, who’s aware that, while his power properly has no limits at all, there are actually limits to what he can get away with. He’s not, alas, in as nice a position as his pal Chavez. God help us should he ever think he has a shot at that.
Mark makes a strong case for voting for Obama, but he does not consider one argument in favor of not voting for him. It is that for liberals to vote for Obama as the lesser evil is to forfeit any influence we might have on his second term. It will be telling him and Democrats generally that they may do as much evil as they wish, as long as they are not quite as evil as the Republicans. I express no opinion about whether this argument outweighs Mark’s argument for voting for Obama, but I think that it is worth considering.
I note also that no one has addressed the possibility I raised in the first comment in this thread that Obama wants Manning tortured. Is it off the wall to consider the possibility that Obama is not a weak President but an evil one? Or, if the word “evil” is too strong for you, that he is simply not on our side?
‘low party number Obamite’ - that’s a GREAT line, and I admire. It has everything! I voted for McCain, myself - without much enthusiasm, I didn’t think either one of the candidates was likely to be a very effective administrator, Obama looked too far left to me and McCain was to my right. So mine was a ‘least worst’ vote. I see a lot of regret from my friends who thought Obama was going to be swell, perfect, transformative. The most telling insult, which I have heard from left and right, is ‘Obambi’. My general view has been that the best training to be President is to have been a governor, and we didn’t have one of those in the last race. Next time - well, who knows? Actually, maybe, the very best training to be President is probably to have been President, and maybe he will have learned enough stumbling forward in this term to do a better job in a second term. OJT has been expensive for the nation, for sure.
“…war against the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, explicitly in order to disable a major source of progressive funding even as the captive Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has unleashed unlimited corporate funding for reactionaries.” Something like 30-40% of union members vote Republican. Many of the Dem union voters would not voluntarily choose to put money which could go to groceries or gas into ‘progressive funding’ if it weren’t deducted from their paychecks. Do you really think it is fair to make them provide ‘major source of progressive funding’? If so, why? If not, why isn’t Walker’s device of making dues voluntary and requiring recertification an appropriate mechanism to force public worker unions to actually respond to what their members want?
I think openly admitting that this is about maintaining a conduit for channeling tax money into the Democratic party probably wasn’t the best way to maintain the high ground, but it does have the virtue of honesty.
I hate it when I agree with Brett. But, except when he accuses Obama of laziness, I’m afraid I must here. Presidents tend to view themselves as dictators, especially in foreign affairs, subject only to the funding power of Congress. I don’t think that Obama is all that different about his prerogatives than any president since Carter.
Of course, this is structural, as foreseen by Madison. But Madison thought that the aggrandizement of one branch would be checked by the others. So Congress and the courts share a lot of blame here. As do us, the voters.
The decision whether or not to vote for Obama will not arise for another year and a half. It may be that the best course for the left is to organize a primary challenge which will genuinely scare him (as the Tea Party has genuinely scared Republicans) but that’s not going to happen. So the footnote is premature.
i rarely laugh harder than when brett ties chavez to obama in his monologues. keep ’em coming 😀
“Nor is he willing to go inside and rough it up with the opposition. He is a three point pea-shooter. He won’t go down low and fight with his elbows for hard rebounds. Yeah, the three point shooter can lull you for a whole game, then hit a few in a row to bring the crowd to its feet. Like in Tucson. But you live by the jump shot you die by the jump shot. Defense and rebounds is what wins tournaments and controls the national narrative.”
I don’t think I have ever seen this catastrophe described so well. As for voting for Obama simply because he is “better” than the lunatic against whom he is likely to run? Not gonna do it. I have been voting since 1974. Always for the Democrat, except when I voted in the GOP primary in 1992 so I would have the opportunity to vote against Poppy Bush twice in one year. That is what a good Harringtonian (as in Michael) should do: Vote for/on the left wing of the possible. Now, it really makes no difference. Obama’s savvy business partner, Jamie Dimon, has made that clear. And what about the majority of those people Mark mentions above, those who suffer from bad choices by politicians? They vote for Republicans in large majorities over much of this country. They will never see the light until it is a faint circle at the top of the dark well in which they find themselves.
Wendell Berry is not someone this particular RBC pays much attention to, but he put it best in 2007 regarding the gubernatorial election in the Commonwealth (sic) of Kentucky, which I observed at first hand as a resident of Lexington: “I am well aware of the proposition that citizens ought to exercise their right to vote at every election. Even so, I did not vote in Kentucky’s gubernatorial primary on May 27. I did not vote because there was nobody on the ballot whom I wished to help elect. I could not bring myself to submit again to the indignity of trying to pick the least undesirable candidate; nor did I want to contribute to the “mandate” of a new governor, who would be carried into office by corporate contributions, and whose policies I would spend the next four years regretting or opposing.”
“Something like 30-40% of union members vote Republican. Many of the Dem union voters would not voluntarily choose to put money which could go to groceries or gas into ‘progressive funding’ if it weren’t deducted from their paychecks. Do you really think it is fair to make them provide ‘major source of progressive funding’? If so, why? If not, why isn’t Walker’s device of making dues voluntary and requiring recertification an appropriate mechanism to force public worker unions to actually respond to what their members want?”
I own some stocks, and I don’t remember any corporation in which I own stock asking me whether or not they should invest my dividends in any political campaign? When Corporations have to ask their owners permission prior to putting a penny into any political campaign, you’ll have a valid argument…
I’ll vote for Gary Johnson as a Republican over Obama in a heartbeat.
So far, Manning’s lawyers allege he has to sleep naked without his eye glasses. Does torture simply have a different definition when the subject is white?
As of now, I do not plan to vote for President Obama in 2012. Voting for a Republican would be too far beyond the bounds of decency, of course. But the national Democratic party needs to worry about the risk that I will stay home on election day, along with many other disappointed former Obama voters, else they will continue to have no incentive to change.
My own belief is that everything we’ve seen from Obama on civil liberties and their abuses (past and present) is consistent with one clear trait: he listens to the experts and takes them seriously. Unhappily, in this case the experts (from the intelligence community, I’d assume) are likely to say, for example, “If we dig up past dirt, the morale of the agency will suffer”, or just “leave this to us”. Going forward, I expect no better (in this area) from either candidate in 2012, but am sure that the R will not listen to experts in many areas where he should-I’ll settle for second-best, and be unhappy.
I’ll settle for second-best, and be unhappy.
The late, lamented Edge of the American West sold bumper stickers in 2008: “Be Disappointed In Someone New.”
“Yeah, the three point shooter can lull you for a whole game, then hit a few in a row to bring the crowd to its feet. Like in Tucson…”
Wow. Obamite koreyel compares the mass killing in Tucson to a game of pick up ball.
Disgraceful.
And KLG commends him for it.
The new tone? What a travesty.
But the national Democratic party needs to worry about the risk that I will stay home on election day, along with many other disappointed former Obama voters, else they will continue to have no incentive to change.
Unfortunately, this isn’t how it works. Once you take your vote out of play, a candidate will move where the votes are - the “center.” And the center moves when you let people win who are even more despicable than Obama.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. There’s no longer any real hope of seeing a president as good as Al Gore would have been. If we don’t learn from the past, a time will come when a president as good as Obama will also seem impossible.
please Help Me puts it too glibly for my taste but I share his view that Mark’s premise here (not to mention Brett Belmore’s fevered projections) is highly arguable. Manning’s treatment doesn’t seem at all pleasant. He’s in near-solitary confinement. He has to sleep naked although he does have bedclothes. In the morning when he’s rousted he is still naked and only then given his clothing. On the other hand he is given reading materials, he gets to watch several hours of television every day, and no one has claimed that he’s being physically mistreated. Moreover it isn’t completely farfetched that he is a suicide risk given reports that his sergeant in Kuwait was concerned about his mental state.
In the meantime, as several others above have noted, a psychopath who has brutalized his own country for 40 years (and killed Americans) is doing more of the same in the face of brave efforts by his people to throw him off. And we aren’t doing anything.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have resumed their war against the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, explicitly in order to disable a major source of progressive funding even as the captive Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has unleashed unlimited corporate funding for reactionaries.”
Yes, Mark, this is all true. And much of it allowed this to happen occurred earlier, on the watch of the Democrats, or with their complaisance.
And so one has to ask, “What is to be done?”
And more and more, I find myself concluding that the only answer is the Leninist answer. Stop trying to protect the people from the worst excesses of these idiots they keep voting for. Allow them to have the bonfire of the vanities they so desperately crave, and when they wake up the next day and find the New Jerusalem has not magically appeared, with luck they will crucify the Savonarola’s that led them on.
Yes, it sucks that there will be a whole lot of pain and misery along the way. But, honestly, what is the alternative? There have been 30 years now of attempting to reason with this hardcore lunacy, and all I see as the result of it is that the lunacy has been allowed to grow, because it has never had to face the consequences of its actions.
Mark, stop buying into the two-party duopoly and vote Green. Or Socialist.
The reason liberals get no respect is they always put winning the next election above standing firm for their principals. Obama and the Democratic party, by and large, have fled the battlefield of ideas. They are Republican-lite and they are allowed to get away with it because their base does not hold them accountable. Liberals can never match the corporate Dems or the Republicans when it comes to money. The only thing we have where we have a chance of fighting on a level playing field is our votes.
Cut off my nose to spite my face by withholding my vote from Obama and other Dems too weak or too bought off to fight for liberal values? My answer is that I recognize that in the short run it will have the effect of helping a Republican win. However in the long run making Dems pay a price for their weakness will I believe cause more of them to discover a backbone.
There is one benefit to having a Republican in the White House. At least then we won’t be getting screwed by someone who is supposed to be one of us.
apetra, you need to pay attention. No one compared the atrocity in Tucson to basketball. The point is that all this President seems to be able to do is give good speech. And he was at his best at that in Tucson. I fell for it through all of 2008, but never again. Bill Clinton was outstanding in Oklahoma City. But despite his DLC-triangulating-third way predilections, President Clinton could get down in the paint and throw elbows when it was essential, and block some of the other team’s more ridiculous shots. Obama is content to launch rainbows from way outside the 3-point line. That won’t win in the long run. It’s called metaphor, by the way.
Don Q - you can sell your Koch Brothers Industries stocks and buy General Motors, and you haven’t lost your livelihood. So I don’t buy the idea that owning stock in a company which does political stuff you oppose is the same as being a member of a union which does political stuff you oppose.
dave schutz says:
“Don Q – you can sell your Koch Brothers Industries stocks and buy General Motors, and you haven’t lost your livelihood. So I don’t buy the idea that owning stock in a company which does political stuff you oppose is the same as being a member of a union which does political stuff you oppose.”
That’s odd - right-wingers usually say that if you don’t like your working conditions, then get another job; if you don’t find another that’s acceptable, then bow to the Will of Market.
Looks like that argument can be abandoned as needed.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have resumed their war against the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively”
***
“Walker’s argument - that greedy teachers are putting their own interests over the interests of the public - resonates in part because in recent years, many Democrats have made that argument as well.
“Exhibit A is former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under Democratic mayor Adrian Fenty, she repeatedly clashed with the Washington Teachers’ Union, which she said put the interests of adults over those of children. “Cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-building are way overrated,” Rhee said at the Aspen Institute’s education summit in 2008. Since resigning as chancellor last year, Rhee has launched a new organization, StudentsFirst, with the express goal of raising $1 billion to counter teachers unions.
“Then-candidate Barack Obama endorsed Rhee in a 2008 debate as a “wonderful new superintendent” and later applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. (The teachers were later rehired.)”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022506611.html?wprss=rss_print/outlook
First, I thought Koch Brothers Industries was private, but that might have changed since I checked ten years ago (although I would think I would have noticed the IPO). Secondly Crowley is out.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/state-department-spokesman-out-after-comments-on-prisoner/?hp
Per my original comment of March 11 above I’m pleased to see that the President isn’t as weak as I’d feared. I might wonder why it took so long for this guy to get the axe but it’s clear by now that the President takes his time making decisions. Which is probably a good thing.
I agree that Obama is not weak. Crowley’s firing is pretty strong evidence that Obama stands up for what he believes in, which is the torture of Bradley Manning (or the abuse, if you prefer; my object is not to make the legal case that his treatment constitutes torture).
I’m often not sure what the metaphor, “strong” (or the related “tough”) is supposed to mean, with reference to a politician holding a powerful office. But, I recognize that Obama is a very highly skilled politician, and a strategically intelligent one. I wouldn’t get much personal satisfaction from imagining that he shares my views or values on important policy issues, even if I could marshal evidence that he does, which, mostly, I cannot.
I cannot reject that hypothesis that he is working effectively and purposefully for “the other side”: for the banksters, for the plutocrats, and against ordinary wage-earners. With the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, or even with the on-going battle with the Republicans (over LAST year’s budget), I cannot reject the hypothesis that this is a role he has chosen for himself, because he actively desires the results he is likely to get, in enacting and legitimating the Republican agenda.
If I thought he was incompetent, he would be useless to me. I am inclined to think he is competent, so he looks, increasingly, like my enemy.
If there’s a working, constitutional majority for the pro-plutocracy policy of national self-destruction, I’m not going to stop it. But, why would I want a President from my political Party, disabling any chance of marshalling an effective opposition?
I’m looking for evidence that the Republican Party will comically self-destruct in the Presidential sweepstakes, evidence I will interpret as, “the fix is in” for Obama’s re-election. He won’t need my vote, and I won’t give it to him.
“I am inclined to think he is competent, so he looks, increasingly, like my enemy.”
I agree and go further. Obama is the enemy of the United States as a nation of laws. Bush was a mere criminal, and, if Obama had prosecuted him for his crimes, then, in the long run, Bush would not have damaged the United States as a nation. But, by not prosecuting Bush (and by using the state secrets doctrine to fight civil suits for torture, and by trying to prevent other nations from investigating and prosecuting U.S. torture), Obama has institutionalized Bush’s crimes, making them de facto legal. No future President will fail to take advantage of the executive’s power to imprison people without due process and torture them, and that power will sooner or later likely be used with respect to ordinary crimes and political dissent. How could it not be, given that the President is now above the law? Because of this, Obama has harmed the nation far more than Bush did, even though Obama has tortured fewer people and otherwise committed fewer crimes than Bush did. Because of Obama, the days of this nation as a republic may be approaching their end.
Of course, Congress is equally to blame, because it has the power to impeach and to create a special prosecutor, but the notion of Congress doing what needs to be done is risible.
I am sorry, but this post is daft. Mark, how can you possibly know what “this can only mean” or that Obama would “more or less like to do the right thing?” I know you have previously declared him the smartest president since Thomas Jefferson and the greatest moral leader of our time, but do you have some special access to the President’s mind unavailable to us mere mortals?
If the “real” Obama - that is to say, not the fake phony fraud actor who flashes a big toothy smile and spins nosesetretchers to the public about “Hope” and “Change” and “Decency” - if the “real” Obama got his way, he’d be turning screws under Bradley Manning’s fingernails.
The pattern is now well established and undeniable - this president - the guy I voted for - was an illusion. He’s a neocon in sheep’s clothing. Like his predecessor, he’s equally as cruel, equally as gutless, and equally as inclined to make feeble nonsensical apologias for his gutless cruelty.
At least now we’re formulating logical and obvious reasons why Obama doesn’t want to prosecute Bush et Cheney. ‘Cos even if one is a golfer and the other plays basketball, their Machiavellian political ideology, values and criminality are no different.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.
Let’s hope there’s a box with the name Paul after the primaries are over. That’ll be your Republican… though honestly I’m only sure that Ron is firmer in his ideals than Obama, and Rand’s the one with a ghost of a chance.
Why not vote for a third party? I know the US doesn’t have preferential voting, so you’re effectively “throwing your vote away,” but surely that’s better than choosing between a Republican and a torturer.