That’s right. However, the real question is when did so many Democrats just stop caring? Maybe it’s incorrect to say they have stopped caring, because after all, we see so much effort devoted to bizarre legal theories as to why a “Democratic” Patriot Act is OK. I guess it's a question of priorities. A lot of these theories are based on the bizarre premise that Obama is forced into this neoconservative position. That’s fiction.
To claim Obama is forced into this position embarrasses anyone who has paid any attention at all at what has transpired since President Obama took office. In reality, Presidents actually do influence and submit legislation to Congress all the time. So just remember that basic civic fact just in case you can’t remember if we're going down the "it's only Congress" road of excuses.
One of my favorite progressive populists that still resides in my state since the late great Molly Ivins passed away is named Jim Hightower. He gives you the lowdown on all of this from the NDAA to the Patriot Act among many other invasive policies of the Bush administration continued by the Obama administration. We were right to criticize George W. Bush back when he started all of this, and the rest of us who still care more about our rights than politicians are right to criticize President Obama for continuing those policies.
How Team Obama, the GOP, and Tea Partiers Are All Intruding on Your Rights
Groups fighting for the preservation of those liberties feel betrayed by a Democratic presidency that has proven to be openly hostile to the Fourth Amendment, taking regressive actions and pushing extremist laws that extend the security state beyond what even Dick Cheney could've imagined! The founders would be in a rage--and we should be, too.
- Section 215, a sweeping and widely despised power, lets the FBI grab "any tangible thing" it considers "relevant" to a terrorism investigation--your library records, phone calls, emails, credit card data, websites visited, etc. Agents can seize your information even if they don't suspect you of being guilty of anything, and they can (and routinely do) search your records without ever telling you they've snuck into your privacy.
- Section 206, known as the "roving John Doe wiretap," simply erases the Fourth Amendment's requirement that the government state specifically who or what place is to be searched and what it's looking for before it can get a warrant. The Patriot Act says that agents in vaguely defined terrorism investigations can get a warrant to wiretap an unnamed John Doe just because they want one.
- Section 505 hands secret and frighteningly invasive power to FBI agents through "national security letters." These totalitarian documents compel phone, internet, financial, and other corporations to hand over all data on the private communications and transactions of their customers. This is the surveillance-vacuum-cleaner-from-hell, sucking in ridiculous volumes of info on Americans who are not even suspected of doing anything unlawful. The FBI issues tens of thousands of the letters each year in far-flung fishing expeditions that yield practically nothing of value to the agency, much less to America's security. NSLs are the stuff of the old KGB, coming complete with gag orders that prohibit corporate recipients from ever revealing that they got such a letter, while also precluding any court from questioning whether the gag is necessary to protect national security.
Last May, with several of the Patriot Act's liberty-busting provisions set to expire, the White House and Congress had an opportune moment to restore our Bill of Rights' supremacy over the sprawling surveillance superstructure imposed on us by that awful piece of legislation. The tea party Republicans controlling the House, however, mocked their professed devotion to liberty by locking arms against reform. The Obamacans, having no stomach for a fight, meekly retreated. On May 26, with little media attention and no debate, the Repubs and Dems joined in a rare bipartisan vote--to punt the Bill of Rights. They extended the Patriot Act--including sections 215, 206, and 505--for four more years.
The White House, working in tandem with Congress, keeps extending these provisions over and over again. I would only disagree with Hightower that it's a matter of not having the stomach to fight. It's very clear now that the Obama administration prides itself on the
Global War on Terror that Bush started that they are continuing, abuses and all.
And please don't try to tell me that this isn't the same Global War on Terror George W. Bush started, or that these are only President Obama's Global War on Terror-related activities!"
That's about the same reasoning. So, in order to establish this undeniable fact, let's have a little exercise; let’s say you really are a Democrat in the 21st century; is it OK not to care about the 4th amendment and the right to privacy if a Democrat is in office? If you make excuses for all of the above, that's pretty much what you think. That's a simple fact that need not come from just my own opinion, but from the law cited above by the ACLU that one can read for one's self.
In reality, looking at history and what we were supposed to have learned from it by now, it's actually NOT OK. And no, NO flawed legal theory cooked up by any Chamber of Commerce/Heritage Foundation friendly third way Democratic think tank or attorney makes it OK. I mean, really, how many times does history have to prove one wrong in order for some to realize that taking away the rights of citizens never works out well for them?
The answer is that it has been proven wrong so many times that it’s not even worthy of any respectful debate. Pretending that because President Obama is in office that destroying the 4th amendment is somehow substantially different is only worthy of scorn. Whomever makes excuses for this deserves to be put into Karl Marx's historical farce category as history repeats itself which it is doing right now. The same type of ignorant people enabling the tragedy today when we are supposed to know better are now representing the farce-like lumpenproletariat of the past. Why?
First, Democrats keep extending the Patriot Act, and because a Democratic administration supports it, you say nothing. Then, while you are online full of pride boasting about how you elected a Democratic administration, everything you write is still being recorded by the Department of Homeland Security. You don’t get a secret 4th amendment secret decoder ring that tells you that you really have privacy rights and due process unlike those “scary Muslims” who can be assassinated overseas even if they are American citizens.
No, HMS and their permanent Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program; a computerized system that routinely monitors the postings of all users of Twitter, Facebook, blogs by private citizens are there to make sure the national Security state Bush created is here forever.
I know a lot of Democrats don’t care or realize the damage of drone strikes anymore either, but some of us still do. Especially since some types of spy drones are already being deployed in TX, and because I don’t believe in a BS war on terror, I really do NOT think they make us safer. In Pakistan and Afghanistan drones have killed many innocent people. That bothers me. The meaningless political pro wrestling match won't change that for me. Sorry.
And because I’m not a right winger on any policy regardless of who is in power, I also don’t support assassination policies. They tend to be undemocratic. Oh, if only more actual Democrats remembered this historical fact.
On that note, as you will see in the clip below, even some Bush officials were surprised about the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki.
"We needed a court order to eaves drop on him but not to assassinate him. How about that?" ~Michael Hayden (general), former NSA director, former CIA director under George W. Bush
Indeed. This clip backs up the facts in this diary and I also share the same frustrations as Cenk Uygur and Glenn Greenwald on the lack of principle evident in the Democratic party as of now. Glenn Greenwald is right on in explaining the shift in polling to support these neoconservative policies.
Repulsive progressive hypocrisy
Indeed: is there even a single liberal pundit, blogger or commentator who would have defended George Bush and Dick Cheney if they (rather than Obama) had been secretly targeting American citizens for execution without due process, or slaughtering children, rescuers and funeral attendees with drones, or continuing indefinite detention even a full decade after 9/11? Please. How any of these people can even look in the mirror, behold the oozing, limitless intellectual dishonesty, and not want to smash what they see is truly mystifying to me.
snip
One final point: I’ve often made the case that one of the most consequential aspects of the Obama legacy is that he has transformed what was once known as “right-wing shredding of the Constitution” into bipartisan consensus, and this is exactly what I mean. When one of the two major parties supports a certain policy and the other party pretends to oppose it — as happened with these radical War on Terror policies during the Bush years — then public opinion is divisive on the question, sharply split. But once the policy becomes the hallmark of both political parties, then public opinion becomes robust in support of it. That’s because people assume that if both political parties support a certain policy that it must be wise, and because policies that enjoy the status of bipartisan consensus are removed from the realm of mainstream challenge. That’s what Barack Obama has done to these Bush/Cheney policies: he has, as Jack Goldsmith predicted he would back in 2009, shielded and entrenched them as standard U.S. policy for at least a generation, and (by leading his supporters to embrace these policies as their own) has done so with far more success than any GOP President ever could have dreamed of achieving.
It’s a damn shame that we should all be embarrassed about. If Democratic voter make excuses for all of this, how can you feel so superior to Republican voters? What is it based on? Not much.
450 Bases and it's Not Over Yet: The Pentagon’s Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops in Afghanistan
In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence. The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for the American drone war in the Greater Middle East.
Next year, that empty lot will be a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war, brightly lit and filled with powerful computers kept in climate-controlled comfort in a country where most of the population has no access to electricity. It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center -- and, of course, it will be built with American tax dollars.
Nor is it an anomaly. Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450.
The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication. “We’re transitioning... into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.”
There are simple questions to be asked such as to why we need all of this. Assuming the drawdown plans are significant(not a given) why is a never ending drone war something to be ignored by the Democratic party base? Why does a massive infusion of tax dollars for these open ended commitments necessary? Why can't we provide funding for electricity provided to most the population in Afghanistan when we instead choose to instead establish 450 new bases, keeping Bagram air base open, and wage drone wars on them and their children? What kind of standards are these?
I thought our standards were better. I really did, but I don't hear any demands that any of this is addressed by our President or Congress in this election. Are most Democratic voters still controlled by fear like Republican voters?
So called pragmatists that make excuses for these adventures and the authority abused within used to destroy our rights should have to answer that honestly, but they won't. In fairness, it's not honest to pretend one cares about the Bill of Rights while making excuses for everything a Democratic administration does to continue the assault on them even if they like to think of themselves as some kind of a legendary brilliant legal visionary; never for the common good, only for their favorite politician.
If the President gets to boast about killing Bin Laden, why does he in turn also cede victory to Osama Bin Laden by continuing his administration's support for the NDAA, the Military Commissions Act, warrant-less wiretapping, and the Patriot Act? One of the goals of Al Qaeda is for us to continually live in fear of them and to change our way of life. Well Mission Accomplished, I guess.
I mean, really, does President Obama think we should still be so scared of terrorism that we forever give up our liberty for a false sense of security from endless wars, drones, and indefinite detention just like most Republicans running? If so, how did we win and Osama Bin Laden lose? It's a serious question that is not out of bounds and it deserves an answer.
Where are the clarion calls to Congress for officially ending all of these wars with actual legislation? It would seem like it's just common sense that in order to really declare any kind of victory in this long nightmare we would have a President introducing or at least suggesting legislation to unauthorize all of these military adventures. Shouldn't such an unauthorization be worth a celebration that we can be given back our full 4th amendment and 5th rights by writ, among others, to which these Bush wars were used to steal? If not, what exactly are we celebrating when we hear this boast on the campaign trail about how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are supposedly ending?
I don't see the answers to any of these questions coming up on the horizon either. What's even worse is that so many are instead more concerned with which GOP clown has more seltzer on his face. The benefit of the Democratic base on these issues are not really taken into consideration.
What I do see happening is the flirtation with a new war; a war with Iran over the supremely ignorant view that Iran is a nuclear threat. You see, enabling wars and excusing legislative coups on the bill of rights using the language inside the authorization just perpetuates a culture of war. And because most Americans don't have to sacrifice themselves it is easier to ignore. Or at least it will be until the bipartisan alter of federal budget idiocy uses the deficits run up by these wars and other permanent Pentagon expenditures to impose austerity and cut our social safety net.
So before just giving your money and your vote away, why not demand that we actually adhere to some real standards? You never know, it might be pretty great to remember what the Democratic party stood for before endless war and 2008.