Much was said of Obama's promises of adherence to constitutional law and his vehement opposition to Bush's legacy of torture. I think many of the readers of Daily Kos have become numb to the disappointment of watching one Obama promise after another fall to the ground and melt like snowflakes. And so we cling to the motto that elected Obama: hope.
We hope he will keep his promises. We hope that he will stop compromising our values and ideals. We hope that he will honor our hope. And in the corner of our minds lurks the question we dare not confront: what are the alternatives?
Karen Greenburg, of the Guardian, wrote yesterday of yet another broken promise. In it, she details the new executive order, about to be signed by Obama, which will allow indefinite detention of prisoners without trial. She makes note of what really haunts those who worked so diligently and passionately for Obama's election:
The problem is not just the disturbing fact that the Obama policy perpetuates a piece of the Bush detention regime. Indefinite detention was the very heart of the Bush policy
Have we managed to elect a smarter Bush? A man with the same ideals as his predecessor, but someone who manages a more eloquent and palatable shoving down the throat of the public his neo-conservative views. There are caveats in the article that many of us would like to cling as compromises, but in the end it is still an end to due process, to basic human rights and basic human dignity.
And for those who are unmoved and still cling to Obama's promises of hope, let's introduce Bradley Manning.
Bradley Manning, according to an excellent article by Gleen Greenwald, has been detained for the last 7 months
under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.
He is being held in solitary confinement without trial. I won't try to add anything to Greenwald's horrifying depiction of Manning's illegal imprisonment:
In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.
Although there has been much in the press lately about Manning, what is rarely written is of any tight association between Obama and Bradley, as if there was a line that could not be crossed, as if there was a taboo to associate a Bush-era crime to Obama.
It will be interesting to see if this trend continues or if the press and the public will start catching onto the realities of this current administration.