On September 11, when President Obama authorized a series of drone strikes over U.S. soil, only this much was clear: four passenger aircraft had been hijacked and were being piloted by the hijackers.

After the aircraft had each been shot down within the space of 30 minutes and 246 casualties been identified, President Obama said in an address to the nation: “No American president would want to have to make the decision I made today, but of this much we can be sure: the citizens of this country whose lives were sacrificed, did not die in vain. Thousand more lives were saved and for this we can be grateful.”

The nation could then let out a sigh of relief, realizing that an even greater catastrophe had been averted — or maybe not.

The problem is that whenever people take actions designed to change the future, they prove that the future is not inevitable.

What happens ultimately trumps what might have happened.

So on Obama’s 9/11, all we would end up being sure of was that the president had decided that it was imperative to kill 19 hijackers even if that meant 246 Americans would become collateral damage in the process.

We might never have discovered what the aims of the hijackers were and thus the threat they posed would be a matter of conjecture.

All that would be certain was that the president saw no limits whatsoever on the extent of executive power exercised in the name of national security.

In the aftermath, what would frighten Americans more? The threat from terrorism, or the powers of the president?

Micah Zenko writes: During his second inaugural address, President Obama offered two aspirational statements that struck many observers as incongruous with administration policies: “A decade of war is now ending” and “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” We should question these observations, not least because of the string of U.S. government plans and activities that increasingly blur the conventional definition of war.

My own list of war-like activities since Obama’s inaugural would include: four drone strikes that killed 16 people (all in Yemen); the acknowledgement by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta regarding drones, "We’ve done that in Pakistan. We’re doing it in Yemen and elsewhere. I think the reality is its going to be a continuing tool of national defense in the future"; the announcement that the U.S. military would provide intelligence, transportation, and refueling support for the French intervention in Mali; the signing of a U.S.-Niger status of forces agreement that will likely include a drone base for surveillance missions, although U.S. officials "have not ruled out conducting
missile strikes at some point"; the forthcoming expansion (perhaps quintupling) of U.S. Cyber Command, including "combat mission forces" for offensive cyberattacks; the executive branch’s secret legal review determining that Obama "has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad"; the Marine commandant’s announcement of a new "crisis response unit" that would be "rapidly employable" to "address crises"; and the revelation that the United States is negotiating to purchase the Sheraton Hotel in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, to house the growing number of embassy staff, troops, and contractors who implement U.S. security force assistance and counterterrorism operations in that country. (For other examples, see the interesting End of War Timeline that Jack Goldsmith and Lawfare created.)

Using lethal force against other countries — and developing and sustaining the capabilities to do so in perpetuity — are the distinguishing features of a country at war. As Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. James Winnefeld, Jr. remarked in November, "We remain a nation at war." In January, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Ted Koppel that even after 2014, "Our war in Afghanistan will be complete, but no one has ever suggested that that will end the war." Last week, Secretary Panetta reminded policymakers and the press, as he often does: "We are in a war. We’re in a war on terrorism and we’ve been in that war since 9/11." Finally, during his grueling confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel stated: "We’re at war in Afghanistan. We’re at war around the world….The fact is we’ve been at war for 12 years."

Most analysts and journalists have focused on President Obama’s expanded scope, intensity, and institutionalization of targeted killings against suspected terrorists and militants. However, perhaps the enduring legacy of the Obama administration will be its sustained, rigorous effort to shape and define-down the idea of war. [Continue reading…]

David Bromwich writes: It looks as if Barack Obama is about to withdraw the idea of nominating Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. To stick with Hagel against substantial (though at the beginning, surmountable) resistance would mean declaring one of his own apparent commitments to be unshakable. The pattern of Obama’s career and character, however, goes the other way. His preferred method has been (a) to give in silently and let the issue trail off; or (b) make an announcement of temporary surrender in the foreseeable future; or (c) string out negotiations until the farthest-out solution seems a possible but clearly dangerous option, and his own ratification of centrist conventional wisdom appears the result of profound reflection.

Of the three methods listed above, (a) was the protocol for announcing and a few months later scuttling the closure of Guantanamo, (b) was used to defer any action on global warming, and (c) for escalating the Afghanistan war after giving the generals the time and opportunity to leak their plans for a larger escalation. The apparent exception is the health care law whose passage lasted the long year between Obama’s inauguration and its signing in early 2010. But the exception proves the rule: after the signing, Obama said and did little to defend the Affordable Care Act, and according to his advisers he expected it to be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. (That expectation was itself, of course, a reason for his silence. Obama does not like to be seen to struggle against “reality.”)

Chuck Hagel would have been a superb secretary of defense. There is not another American of high reputation in public life who has proved himself so free of the disastrous illusions that led to the Global War on Terror. Is there any consolation in the loss? Obama’s first choices for state and defense were Susan Rice and Hagel. The sickly trial-balloon method — so susceptible to the gradual buildup of an intimidating opposition — has ended by sinking them both. They were, however, contradictory choices in what they stood for: much harder to reconcile than, say, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton. Rice is a careerist of the national security elite. Her only idiosyncrasy, if one can call it that, is excessive enthusiasm for “humanitarian intervention” and the remote-control wars that such enthusiasm breeds. Hagel, by contrast, is an independent thinker and a dissident, far more than the president himself — a man so alienated from the Republican war madness and other kinds of madness that he walked away from his party in 2008. A Kerry-Hagel team would have been interesting; but Obama’s original choice was the incoherent combination of Hagel and Rice. [Continue reading…]

Pew Global Attitudes Project: Much of the world cheered the November 6 re-election of U.S. president Barack Obama. But the president’s honeymoon may be short lived. Disappointment with Obama’s first term foreign policy may challenge both his popularity and his ability to present a positive image of the United States around the globe.

Prior to the election, overwhelming majorities in Western Europe, Japan and Brazil supported Obama’s reelection. But they were upset with signature elements of his foreign policy. In particular, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project earlier this year found widespread opposition to drone strikes, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy, and many believe the president hasn’t sought international approval before using military force, as they expected he would when he first took office. In addition, publics around the globe say Obama failed to meet their expectations that he would tackle climate change and take an even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Four years ago, Obama came to office with the world behind him, reversing a decade-long trend of negative opinions of the U.S. Between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of Germans, French, Spanish and Indonesians expressing positive views of the U.S. increased by at least 25 percentage points, and double-digit increases were also evident in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Britain, India and Nigeria. Even in some Muslim countries, where Obama has never enjoyed broad popularity, the image of the U.S. saw modest improvements in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon when Obama was first elected.

But clouds loom on the horizon, as overall approval of Obama’s international policies and confidence in the American president have declined around the globe since 2009. Among Obama’s biggest problems is his administration’s drone campaign against extremist leaders and organizations. Majorities in virtually every country surveyed in 2012 oppose this policy, which is a key component of American anti-terrorism efforts. Opposition is especially prevalent in Muslim countries – at least eight-in-ten in Egypt, Jordan and Turkey are against drone strikes – but about three-quarters in Spain, Japan, Mexico and Brazil are also against drones, as are 63% in France and 59% in Germany.

Obama is now confronted with a sense of disappointment over unmet expectations during his first term, especially when it comes to his handling of global climate change, and especially in Western Europe. In 2009, large majorities in France, Germany, Britain and Spain believed Obama would take significant measures to control climate change. By Spring 2012, however, fewer than three-in-ten in these countries said Obama had, in fact, done this. Significant gaps between expectations and evaluations of Obama’s performance on climate change were also evident in Poland, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, China, Japan, and Mexico.

In Western Europe, Obama also failed to meet expectations on his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although 61% in Germany, 57% in France, and nearly half in Britain still believed Obama had been fair in dealing with both sides in the Spring 2012, as many as 79% in each of these three countries said they expected Obama to be even-handed on this issue at the beginning of this first term.

In most of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, where expectations that Obama would be fair in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were already low in 2009, even fewer said the American president had handled the conflict fairly. For example, after Obama took office, about a quarter of Egyptians believed he would be fair, compared with 11% who said Obama had been fair in 2012. Double-digit gaps between expectations and evaluations were also evident in Turkey and Pakistan.

Shadi Hamid writes: One of the great mysteries of the past four years is how Barack Obama — who rose to the presidency, in part, on his promises to fundamentally re-think and re-orient U.S. policy in the Middle East — has instead spent his term running away from the region.

It is difficult to remember it now, but the prospect of an Obama presidency was initially greeted in the Arab world with a mixture of relief and guarded optimism. His name and Muslim origins certainly helped. But there was something else: For the first time, here was an American president who seemed to have an intuitive grasp of Arab grievances. This grasp extended, perhaps most importantly, to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israelis may have been victims, but so too were the Palestinians. In short, Obama seemed to “get” the Middle East. This didn’t sound like someone who wanted to spend three years “pivoting” to China.

To look back at Obama’s various statements before becoming president is somewhat jarring. At a 2003 farewell party for the scholar Rashid Khalidi, a fierce advocate for Palestinian rights, Obama told the audience that his conversations with Khalidi had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases … It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation.” Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah recounted Obama telling him in 2004: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.” (The campaign denied that Obama made such remarks.)

It is easy to make too much of these comments, as many already have. But there is little doubt that Obama stood apart from past presidents in the way he thought and spoke about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Moreover, he understood the conflict’s centrality in the broader Arab narrative. As he told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in 2008, “this constant wound…this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy.” Even after becoming president, Obama would go out of his way to acknowledge America’s checkered and sometimes tragic history in the region. In his 2009 Cairo address, he noted that tension between the West and the Muslim world “has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

The question isn’t whether such sentiments are good or bad. Whatever his prescriptions, Obama evidently believed in restoring American leadership in the Middle East and, by extension, that U.S. leadership mattered and could be used for good. In the subsequent years, however, Obama seems to have gradually lost faith in America’s ability to impact the course of events. [Continue reading…]

“American leadership” is a phrase and a concept that has passed its sell-by date. What it connotes is an ill-conceived duality: that the United States is either in control or disengaged; that the U.S. must always choose between dictating outcomes or declining to participate. This then leads to arguments about whether American power is declining and if it is, whether that power can be restored. Either we get what we want, or we won’t play. It’s a childish mentality.

The challenge that needs to be faced by the next president is that America’s effective engagement with the Middle East and the rest of the world can no longer be defined by such narrow expectations. The realists’ devotion to national interest needs to be replaced by a focus on collective interests. We no longer live in a world where narrow interests are sustainable.

The New York Times reports: There was probably no leader on the African continent who exemplified the conflict between the American government’s interests and its highest ideals better than Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.

Mr. Meles, who died on Monday after more than 20 years in power, played the American battle against terrorism brilliantly, painting Ethiopia, a country with a long and storied Christian history, as being on the front lines against Islamist extremism. He extracted prized intelligence, serious diplomatic support and millions of dollars in aid from the United States in exchange for his cooperation against militants in the volatile Horn of Africa, an area of prime concern for Washington.

But he was notoriously repressive, undermining President Obama’s maxim that “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

Mr. Meles was undoubtedly a strongman. Despite being one of the United States’ closest allies on the continent, Mr. Meles repeatedly jailed dissidents and journalists, intimidated opponents and their supporters to win mind-bogglingly one-sided elections, and oversaw brutal campaigns in restive areas of the country where the Ethiopian military has raped and killed many civilians.

No matter that Ethiopia receives more than $800 million in American aid annually. Mr. Meles even went as far as jamming the signal of Voice of America because he did not like its broadcasts. Human rights groups have been urging the United States to cut aid to Ethiopia for years.

Ali Abunimah writes: As soon as news came of a bomb attack that killed Israeli tourists in Bulgaria on 18 July, US President Barack Obama condemned it in the most strident terms – even though, then, as now, the perpetrator and his motive remain unknown.

Obama’s statement left no room for ambiguity:

I strongly condemn today’s barbaric terrorist attack on Israelis in Bulgaria. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and injured, and with the people of Israel, Bulgaria, and any other nation whose citizens were harmed in this awful event. These attacks against innocent civilians, including children, are completely outrageous. The United States will stand with our allies, and provide whatever assistance is necessary to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack. As Israel has tragically once more been a target of terrorism, the United States reaffirms our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security, and our deep friendship and solidarity with the Israeli people.

Such sentiments at the killing of innocent people are understandable. But why has Obama so far refused to condemn in equally strong terms Wade Michael Page’s murderous rampage that killed six people at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin yesterday? [Continue reading…]

Grant Smith writes: The US Department of Justice has released new files about convicted spy Jonathan Pollard’s bid for presidential clemency. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after passing more than a million highly classified documents to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. Documents in the Freedom of Information Act response (PDF) reference 32 pages of government agency deliberative communications and 37 pages of new communications between Pardon Attorney Ronald Rogers and Pollard’s legal team — all produced since July of 2011. While the contents have been withheld, their existence signals that the Pollard commutation request may be nearing a conclusion within the Obama administration. June 18 could mark the culmination of a massive lobbying campaign for release. Obama’s dismal record on Israeli accountability suggests Pollard will soon walk free.

Released documents reveal that the Rabbinical Assembly — claiming to represent “1.5 million Jews worldwide” — passed a formal resolution asking Obama to commute Pollard’s sentence. Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America and Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress also urged Pollard’s release. Letters demanding release also continue to flood in from former and current members of the US Congress. Steve Symms, Matt Salmon, Alan Simpson, Robert Wexler, Barney Frank, and Gary Ackerman joined the ranks of fellow representatives already demanding release. Moshe Kahalon, Israel’s Minister of Communications, gushed to Obama “I have no doubt that your decision to release Jonathan Pollard now as a humanitarian expression of justice and compassion will bring great relief to many, and will remove this impediment to the friendship between our nations.” Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins is also now rooting for Pollard’s release. Upping the ante, Israeli President Shimon Peres has explicitly linked his receipt of a US Presidential Medal of Freedom during a special June 18 White House dinner to Pollard’s freedom gambit — channeling even more intense pressure on Obama to take action in a specific context, place and time.

The linkage to Obama’s reelection bid is obvious. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger brashly stated that releasing Pollard would be good for Obama’s reelection campaign. But what makes Pollard worth expending such formidable lobbying and political capital? Why have Israel and its Western lobbying organizations made Pollard a key issue, almost on the same footing as massive US taxpayer-funded aid packages and confronting Iran? The Israel lobby effort is trying to achieve much more than simply putting Congress and a sitting president through their paces. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: U.S. President Barack Obama told a delegation of the U.S. Orthodox Jewish community at the White House on Tuesday that his administration is decidedly more attentive to Israel than it is to the Palestinians.

Obama was speaking at a meeting between White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community, including Dr. Simcha Katz, Rabbi Steven Burg and Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union.

Meeting participants who wished to remain nameless told Haaretz that the delegation asked Obama what lessons he has learned from events related to the Israel-Palestine peace process, and that the U.S. president said that it is very difficult, and that there are many possibilities for misunderstanding. There is only tension because both sides feel pressured to compromise, he said.

Obama also said that he understands the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants no restraints, like the leader of any country. He assured his guests that he and Netanyahu get along well on a personal level – but that Netanyahu does not want to appear weak.

Pankaj Mishra writes: Perhaps it is time to ask again: who is Barack Obama? And how has Pakistan featured in his worldview? The first question now seems to have been settled too quickly, largely because of the literary power of Obama’s speeches and writings. His memoir, Dreams From My Father, was quickened by the drama of the self-invented man from nowhere – the passionate striving, eloquent self-doubt and ambivalence that western literature, from Stendhal to Naipaul, has trained us to identify with a refined intellect and soul. Not surprisingly, Obama’s careful self-presentation seduced some prominent literary fictionists, inviting comparisons to James Baldwin.

Later biographies of Obama, published after he became president, have complicated the picture of him as the possessor of diversely sourced identities (Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, Harvard). David Maraniss’s new biography shows that at college the bright student from Hawaii’s closest friends were Pakistanis, and he carried around a dog-eared copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

But Obama also began early, as one girlfriend of his reported to her diary, to “strike out”, “shedding encumbrances, old images”. “Do you think I will be president of the United States?” he asked a slightly bemused Pakistani friend, who then witnessed “Obama slowly but carefully distancing himself from the Pakistanis as a necessary step in establishing his political identity”.

“For years,” Maraniss writes, “Obama seemed to share their attitudes as sophisticated outsiders who looked at politics from an international perspective. But to get to where he wanted … he had to change.” Obama’s Pakistani friend recalls: “The first shift I saw him undertaking was to view himself as an American in a much more fundamental way.”

In an incorrigibly rightwing political culture, this obliged Obama to always appear tougher than his white opponents. During his 2008 presidential debates with John McCain, Obama often startled many of us with his threats to expand the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. More disquietingly, he claimed the imprimatur of Henry Kissinger, who partnered Richard Nixon in the ravaging of Cambodia, paving the way for Pol Pot, while still devastating Vietnam.

It can’t be said Obama didn’t prepare us for his murderous spree in Pakistan. It is also true that drone warfare manifests the same pathologies – racial contempt, paranoia, blind faith in technology and the superstition of body counts – that undermined the US in Vietnam.

The White House has been used before to plot daily mayhem in some obscure, under-reported corner of the world. During the long bombing campaign named Rolling Thunder, President Lyndon Johnson personally chose targets in Indochina, believing that “carefully calculated doses of force could bring about desirable and predictable responses from Hanoi“.

But of course “force”, as James Baldwin pointed out during Kissinger and Nixon’s last desperate assault on Indochina, “does not reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary and this revelation invests the victim with patience”. [Continue reading…]

First the headline. If I propose to explain why President Obama finds it easy to kill people, don’t I first need to substantiate the assertion that he does indeed find it easy to kill people?

The New York Times provides the evidence and a direct quote: William M Daley, Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, says that Obama described his decision to kill the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki as “an easy one.”

Given the number of times Obama has authorized people to be killed — some whose names were known yet many unidentified, including women and children — it’s reasonable to infer that Awlaki’s was not the only “easy” killing.

The Times‘ detailed report on the development of Obama’s counterterrorism policy highlights his direct control of the administration’s hit list where he leads weekly meetings to consider who he and his team want to kill next. The president and his advisers understand that they cannot forever keep adding new names to the list. “What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough.”

Lest there be any doubt that killing is central to Obama’s policy, the report mentions the misgivings of a few.

Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.

Dennis C. Blair, former director of national intelligence, points to the underlying cynicism in Obama’s approach and says the strike campaign is dangerously seductive.

“It is the politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness,” he said. “It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”

In other words, this is a policy that serves Obama’s self interest.

At some point — and we’ll very likely never know when or exactly what he was thinking — Barack Obama must have asked himself whether he was willing to kill people. It’s a question that anyone running to become president of the United States — especially in this era — must pause to consider. But whenever Obama asked himself this question, there is little evidence that he found it difficult to answer. In his mind, it would seem, killing was part of the job.

We are now told Obama “approves lethal action without hand-wringing,” and that when “he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda”.

[T]he control he exercises also appears to reflect Mr. Obama’s striking self-confidence: he believes, according to several people who have worked closely with him, that his own judgment should be brought to bear on strikes.

Asked what surprised him most about Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon, the national security adviser, answered immediately: “He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.”

Every president comes into office with his own conception of presidential power. In his dealings with Congress and with powerful interest groups, repeatedly Obama’s own sense of impotence has been transparent. Rarely, it seems, is there any kind of political pressure to which he is unwilling to yield.

In one telling passage of the Times report we learn that this president has a kind of naive make-it-so view of his own power.

Having decided to shut down Guantánamo, Obama failed to develop a political strategy to win Congressional support. After giving a speech defending his policy:

…the president turned to his national security adviser at the time, Gen. James L. Jones, and admitted that he had never devised a plan to persuade Congress to shut down the prison.

“We’re never going to make that mistake again,” Mr. Obama told the retired Marine general.

General Jones said the president and his aides had assumed that closing the prison was “a no-brainer — the United States will look good around the world.” The trouble was, he added, “nobody asked, ‘O.K., let’s assume it’s a good idea, how are you going to do this?’”

It was not only Mr. Obama’s distaste for legislative backslapping and arm-twisting, but also part of a deeper pattern, said an administration official who has watched him closely: the president seemed to have “a sense that if he sketches a vision, it will happen — without his really having thought through the mechanism by which it will happen.”

If the intrinsic power of office has for Obama so often failed to translate into real political power, there has been one exception: that when orders a killing, death follows.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write: Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety.

It’s no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we’ll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we’ll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

After 9/11, our government turned to torture, seeking information about the terrorists who committed the atrocity and others who might follow after them. Senior officials ordered the torture of men at military bases and detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, in secret CIA prisons set up across the globe, and in other countries – including Libya and Egypt — where abusive regimes were asked to do Washington’s dirty work.

The best known of all the prisons remains Guantanamo on the southeast coast of Cuba. For years, the United States naval base there seemed like an isolated vestige of the Cold War – defying the occasional threat from Fidel Castro to shut it down. But since 9/11, Guantanamo – Gitmo – has been a detention center, an extraterritorial island jail considered outside the jurisdiction of US civilian courts and rules of evidence. Like the notorious Room 101 of George Orwell’s “1984,” the chamber that contains the thing each victim fears the most to make them confess, Guantanamo’s name has become synonymous with torture. Nearly 800 people have been held there. George W. Bush eventually released 500 of them, sometimes after years of confinement and cruelty. Barack Obama has freed 67, but 169 remain, even though the president pledged to close the Guantanamo prison within a year of his inauguration. Now, forty-six are so dangerous, our government says, they will be held indefinitely, without trial.

Yes indeed, on Memorial Day Americans should face the truth about the legacy of the last decade — that in the name of security this country abandoned so many of the principles of the rule of law.

But why talk about torture and ignore presidentially authorized murder?

There is in this commentary no mention of drones and remote warfare, yet when President Obama committed his administration to shun the use of torture he failed to explain the alternative he would put in its place: that in order to avoid the legal quagmire of detaining and interrogating so-called enemy combatants he would implement a de facto take-no-prisoners policy.

This policy might not have been enshrined in documents, speeches, or slogans, but it is clear that from Obama’s perspective, the best way to treat someone suspected of terrorism is simply to kill them. Indeed, Obama is so pleased that he could claim the most popular trophy of all — Osama bin Laden’s corpse — that his finest kill is now central to his re-election campaign.

The Financial Times‘ Anna Fifield has lunch with Cornell West:

West says he lost faith in Obama when the president brought people with close ties to Wall Street and the financial crisis into his administration. West names the president’s former economic adviser Larry Summers, his current Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, and his budget chief, now chief of staff, Jack Lew.

The Obama administration has concentrated the power of both government and the financial sector, West says, in ways that have been good for banks and bad for common people. “I’m a Main Street brother and I’m very critical of all forms of concentrated power, be it in government or be it in the private sector,” he says, seeing little difference between the political parties.

Though conceding that liberals by far prefer Obama to the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, West describes the president’s neo­liberalism – citing the deregulation of markets, social services cuts and the slashing of wages of government workers – as “morally bankrupt”.

“You’ve got some decent people there who know that the greed is running amok,” West says, referring to Gregory Smith, a former Goldman Sachs executive who wrote a highly critical opinion piece about the bank in the New York Times in March. “My brother Gregory Smith is a decent brother who says, ‘Look, this culture of greed and avarice is getting out of control. I can’t take it, my moral conscience is violated.’ We’re going to see many more people like Gregory Smith, even inside of the big banks, saying we’ve gone much too far in terms of spiritual emptiness and moral constipation.”

He believes that last year’s Occupy movement came up with a language for discussing these issues – one that will endure regardless of whether or not people are camping in public squares. “We have to come up with a democratic way of talking about it because it’s not a matter of hating oligarchs or taking revenge on the moneyed class, it’s a matter of hating injustice. That’s the [Martin Luther] King legacy.”

Yves Smith writes: Barack Obama swept into office on a tide of giddy enthusiasm. His “Hope and Change” was a pledge to reverse Bush era policies, including socialism for the rich, adventurism in the Middle East, and attacks on civil liberties. He announced his intention to serve as a transformational leader, invoking Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Ronald Reagan as role models. Despite the frigid temperatures, people poured into Washington, DC to hear his inauguration speech, wanting to be part of a remarkable passage.

It wasn’t simply that Obama was the first black president, but also that the economic devastation of the financial crisis opened up a historic opportunity to remake the social contract, to punish the reckless and greedy, no matter how lofty, and to build new foundations and safeguards for ordinary citizens. Obama, with his youthful vigor, his technocratic command of policy details, his “no drama” steadiness, his mastery of oratory, seemed uniquely suited to this time of need. His personal history of repeatedly breaking new ground fed optimism that he could do so for the nation as a whole.

Those times of heady promise are now a cruel memory. Again and again, Obama has shown his true colors. It isn’t simply that Obama lied. Politicians lie. But there are norms for political lying. The depth and dependability of Obama’s misrepresentations constitute a difference in kind.

His pattern of grand promises producing at-best-in-name only and at worst outright bait and switch was well established by his 2008 campaign. Some close observers pointed out his past legerdemain, for instance, his misleading account of his years in New York, his record of fronting for finance and real estate interests in Chicago, his promise to bring a state-wide health care program to Illinois, which in the end was walked back to a mere study. And there were more decisive tells in 2008: the high level of Wall Street funding for his campaign, the inclusion of neoliberal “Chicago boys” in his economics team, his reversal on FISA after promising to filibuster it, which gave retroactive immunity to telecoms for aiding and abetting illegal wiretapping, and his whipping for TARP.

Obama didn’t make compromises necessary to lead effectively. He entered office with majorities in both houses and a country eager for a new direction. He has repudiated or retraded every pledge he made. He promised transformational leadership, and instead emulated Wall Street, devising complex programs that to sell average Americans short and reap his funders handsome rewards in the process. Rather than elevate his fellow citizens, Obama’s transactional focus and neoliberal philosophy have kicked the struggling middle class down the road greased by the right. [Continue reading…]

Conor Friedersdorf points out that, contrary to the reporting of the New York Times, President Obama does not straddle “the precarious line between hawk and dove” — he’s a hawk.

• Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, adding tens of thousands of troops at a cost of many billions of dollars.
• He committed American forces to a war in Libya, though he had neither approval from Congress nor reason to think events there threatened national security.
• He ordered 250 drone strikes that killed at least 1,400 people in Pakistan.
• He ordered the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
• He ordered the killings of multiple American citizens living abroad.
• He expanded the definition of the War on Terrorism and asserted his worldwide power to indefinitely detain anyone he deems a terrorist.
• He expanded drone attacks into Somalia.
• He ordered a raid on pirates in Somalia.
• He deployed military squads to fight the drug war throughout Latin America.
• He expanded the drone war in Yemen, going so far as to give the CIA permission to kill people even when it doesn’t know their identities so long as they’re suspected of ties to terrorism.
• He’s implied that he’d go to war with Iran rather than permitting them to get nuclear weapons.

Since President Obama made it known his views on same-sex marriage have “evolved” and he now supports it, not surprisingly he’s won praise. But the idea that this was a courageous act is questionable for many reasons, not the least of which, that on this particular issue Obama would become a risk-taker when on so many other issues he displays caution.

“Doctor Science” argues persuasively that Obama’s “evolution” in this case may have more to do with winning financial support from Wall Street and baiting Republicans to turn their attention away from the economy.

Obama is not in front of the pack on this issue — his statement today could be seen as following the populace, not leading.

It will definitely fire up “the Democratic base”, especially younger people, who are already strongly in favor of SSM. The Obama campaign really needs the younger generation to do a lot of the campaign drudgework, and to vote and get their friends to vote.

But it also, IMHO, addresses a particular issue for the Obama campaign: needing to keep deep-pocket Wall Street donors who backed him in 2008. These guys are Mitt Romney’s natural constituency if the campaign focuses on economic issues, and they aren’t feeling very happy with Obama right now.

But a lot of them also strongly support marriage equality. Same-sex marriage was legalized in New York because Republican hedge fund types wanted it — and you have to figure that Democratic financiers are even more pro-SSM.

For instance, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, vocally supports SSM. So far, Goldman Sachs employees have been supporting Romney more than Obama — though they were a rich mine for Obama donations in 2008. At the very least, Obama’s announcement is going to make a lot of people at Goldman Sachs think twice about whether they want to continue backing Romney. The Obama campaign received $1 million in spontaneous contributions — and the bundlers and Super-PACs haven’t begun to work this angle yet.

There’s also the fact that the primaries have proved that Republicans can no more resist going after “social” issues than a bull can resist a red flag. It doesn’t matter that the economy is where they’re strongest relative to Obama, and that their virulent attacks on LGBT rights, women’s rights, and not-conservative-Christian religious rights put off moderate voters. They can’t help it, they’ll charge that flag every time.

Vanity Fair shares some of the revelations from Barack Obama’s youthful love life. Nothing here that would interest National Inquirer, but this caught my attention from the recollections of Alex McNear, a young woman from Occidental College, California, who had enchanted the 20-year-old Obama:

Obama was obsessed with the concept of choice, she said. Did he have real choices in his life? Did he have free will? How much were his choices circumscribed by his background, his childhood, his socio-economic situation, the color of his skin, the expectations that others had of him? How did choice influence his pres­ent and future? Later, referring back to that discussion, he told Alex in a letter that he had used the word “choice” “as a convenient shorthand for the way my past resolves itself. Not just my past, but the past of my ancestors, the planet, the universe.” His obsession with the concept of choice, he said in a later interview at the White House, “was a deliberate effort on my part to press the pause button, essentially, and try to orient myself and say, ‘Okay, which way, where am I going?’ ”

Prior to his election, a philosophically inclined president sounded, at least to some of us, like a good idea — especially when contrasted against a president who expressed such disdain for the intellect. But in place of The Decider, we ended up with a president who perpetually maneuvers in accordance with the dictates of circumstance.

Free will might be an illusion, but if so, it’s an illusion I would prefer a president to believe in.

Conor Friedersdorf writes: Four years ago, the last time the Democrats adopted a platform, their presidential candidate championed civil liberties, insisted that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay would make us safer from terrorists, and righteously denounced the expansive Bush-Cheney understanding of executive power. Said the official 2008 platform contemporaneously adopted by Democratic delegates (links added):

We will restore our constitutional traditions, and recover our nation’s founding commitment to liberty under law. We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live. We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime … We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. And we will ensure that law-abiding Americans of any origin, including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans, do not become the scapegoats of national security fears.

Another section is also pertinent:

We will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools to hunt down and take out terrorists without undermining our Constitution, our freedom, and our privacy … we will lead in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court.

We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.

If you click through to the links I’ve embedded above you’ll quickly get a sense of how thoroughly President Obama has betrayed the words and spirit of his candidacy and his party’s platform.