So how's that "change" thing working out? Are we getting better, or more of the same, and why? In his first press conference, Obama labeled Iran a destabilizing influence in the Middle East because it allegedly sought nuclear weapons, while ignoring the longstanding Israeli nuclear threat to all its neighbors. And the same day, Obama Justice Department lawyers appeared in court to invoke the same defense against investigation of their secret cross-border kidnapping and torture schemes as Bush --- that these widely known activities were "state secrets". Have we heard any of this before?
In the past few years, newspapers and broadcast media around the worldhave printed and aired details of a lawless US government policy ofkidnapping civilians and flying them abroad for indefinite detentionand torture at the hands of client governments or its own militaryand civilian officials. Called âextraordinary renditionâ by theBush Administration, which inherited it from its Democraticpredecessor, this illegal practice has been the subject of a numberof books reconstructing the flight plans and naming many of theso-called âblack sitesâ where the illegal jailings andtortures took place. Despite the wealth of publicly available detailon these criminal practices, the Bush administration claimed that tobe answerable in court for this illegal conduct would compromiseâstate secrets,â and found federal judges to agree with thisridiculous claim.
Onhis first full day in office, President Obama renewed his pledge toclose the âblack sitesâ without of course naming them and givinghimself a full year to do so, and declared that the US governmentwould observe legal norms from this point onward. So when some ofthe victims of Bush-era cross-border kidnapping and torture appearedin court Monday, the reasonable expectation was that the new JusticeDepartment would reverse itself and allow their lawsuits for damagesto proceed. Instead lawyers for the Obama Justice Department rose toobject to the case being heard in federal court on the same groundsthat the Bush-Cheney regime had employed --- that revealing thecriminal conduct of US military and civilian officials in court, evenwhen this conduct is widely documented and well known, wouldjeopardize âstate secrets.â
Butafter all the books and articles and news items, there are noremaining âstate secretsâ of any significance in the process ofcross-border kidnapping and torture. Looking backward, all that'sleft are details like how many times it happened, who was kidnappedand tortured, how many buried still alive or dead, and where thosebodies, animated and not, are now, and what dates which orders weregiven. But the president assures us he is not looking backward, sothe unidentified maimed, dead and missing, their torturers andenablers and the names of all but the highest officials involved ---Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld and their immediate deputies inand out of uniform --- will appear on no court records, because Obama'sJustice Department, just like the Bush Justice Department, insiststhat all the details of their well known crimes, down to theidentities of the victims, are âstate secrets.â
Aslegal and official falsehoods go, this one is naked and transparent. It provides past, present and future criminals on the civil servicepayroll the same cloak of immunity they enjoyed in the Bush-Cheneyyears. And it sets the tone, in many ways, for the newadministration.
"President Obama used his very first press conference to label Iran and its alleged quest for nuclear weapons as the pre-eminent threat to peace and stability in the Middle East. "
Laterthat day, in a similar spirit of telling old lies and avoiding oldtruths, President Obama used his very first press conference to labelIran and its alleged quest for nuclear weapons as the pre-eminentthreat to peace and stability in the Middle East. Helen Thomas, themost senior reporter in the White House press corps, and the only oneto stand up to Obama's predecessor, asked point-blank whether anyother countries in the Middle East possessed nuclear weapons. It isof course common knowledge that Israel has hundreds of nukes aimed atevery capital in the region from Tripoli to Teheran. No less amember of Obama's cabinet than Robert Gates at his confirmationaffirmed that Israel has nukes, but it suited the new president torefuse to answer the question, to ignore Thomas's follow-ups, and tofilibuster for four or five minutes in some other direction.
Tensof millions who voted for this president imagined they'd get realchange. But the reality is dawning on many that what we're gettingis a lot more of the same. We have a president who repeatsdiscredited lies about ârogue regimesâ with nuclear weapons,while he ignores Israel, a genuine 21st century apartheidstate, which has menaced its neighbors with nuclear weapons for morethan thirty years.
Obamavolunteered at some point during the press conference, that themoment the true import of his new job sank into him was when he hadto sign letters notifying the families of American dead, âourheroes," as he called them. The president made no mention of hisdecision, on this third day of office, to launch drones and cruisemissiles into Pakistan. Those missiles killed 17 people, includingseveral children. The drones were probably launched fromAfghanistan, and remotely piloted by stateside military personnel. Those dead, including the children, got no letters of regret from thepresident, and seemed not to register in the president's publiccalculus. After all, they were not American heroes.
Theelection is over. Those unconditional Obama defenders who answer thepresident's critics with âwell what did you want, McCain?â aredoing what their president says he won't do. They are living in thepast, looking backward instead of forward. It's time to hold thecurrent president and his actions up to the cold light of day, toevaluate his performance in light of his promises and our legitimateexpectations for peace and justice. It's time those of us who standfor peace and justice stop protecting the president. We may soonneed to be protected from him.
BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon can be contacted at Bruce.Dixon(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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