Yes, I get the snark of this recommended post, and I do agree that sometimes, often times much is being asked of him. This is especially true when we consider the frakkin' mess he inherited.
But please, please don't blow snarky smoke up my ass here. As much as I can appreciate having Obama in office (the guy I voted for and defended against at all times during the election), what he is currently doing with national security is nothing shy of maddening to me. I'll let Glenn Greenwald discuss it below:
Greenwald quotes former OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith:
Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney's criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. . . .
[A]t the end of the day, Obama practices will be much closer to late Bush practices than almost anyone expected in January 2009.
(last bold emphasis mine)
Just let that sink in for a moment. I realize this is coming from a Bush lawyer (wasn't this lawyer the one who halted the illegal wiretapping practices, however?), and that it perhaps should be taken with a grain of salt. But Greenwald discusses further in detail as to how close Obama's policies have been to Bush's thus far:
In his New Republic article today, Goldsmith reviews what he calls the "eleven essential elements" of "the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy" and documents how -- with only a couple of minor exceptions -- Obama has embraced all of them. In those cases where Obama has purported to "change" these elements, those changes are almost all symbolic and ceremonial, and the few changes that have any substance to them (banning the already-empty CIA black sites and prohibiting no-longer-authorized torture techniques) are far less substantial than Obama officials purport. None of Goldsmith's analysis is grounded in the proposition that Obama hasn't yet acted to change Bush policies, thus rendering a nonsequitur the response that "Obama needs more time; it's only been 4 months." Goldsmith is describing affirmative steps Obama has already announced to adopt the core Bush "terrorism" policies.
Just consider some of Goldsmith's examples: Obama makes a melodramatic showing of ordering Guantanamo closed but then re-creates its systematic denial of detainee rights in Bagram, and "[l]ast month Secretary of Defense Gates hinted that up to 100 suspected terrorists would be detained without trial." Obama announces that all interrogations must comply with the Army Field Manual but then has his CIA Director announce that he will seek greater interrogation authority whenever it is needed and convenes a task force to determine which enhanced interrogation methods beyond the Field Manual should be authorized. He railed against Bush's Guantanamo military commissions but then preserved them with changes that are plainly cosmetic.
Obama has been at least as aggressive as Bush was in asserting radical secrecy doctrines in order to prevent courts from ruling on illegal torture and spying programs and to block victims from having a day in court. He has continued and even "ramped up" so-called "targeted killings" in Pakistan and Afghanistan which, as Goldsmith puts it, "have predictably caused more collateral damage to innocent civilians." He has maintained not only Bush's rendition policy but also the standard used to determine to which countries a suspect can be rendered, and has kept Bush's domestic surveillance policies in place and unchanged. Most of all, he has emphatically endorsed the Bush/Cheney paradigm that we are engaged in a "war" against Terrorists -- with all of the accompanying presidential "war powers" -- rather than the law enforcement challenge that John Kerry, among others, advocated.
I might have quoted too much, but I think it's worth reading and noting in detail. The point is simple - what the hell is Obama doing? What's with this steadfast embrace of Bush's policies, those very policies that largely contributed to this national security and foreign policy mess in the first place? Am I supposed to cheerlead him along and mock those who expect him to, uhh, actually act like a Democratic president and swiftly undo those policies that he's actually embracing by Bush instead? His campaign rhetoric and arguments during his debates were a large reason I voted for him regarding national security (spare his last vote for the horrible wiretapping bill).
Is it still okay to actually criticize my President when I strongly disagree with him embracing Bush's horrible policies?