On the 2014 mid-terms and Obama's inner Marxist

I wrote something for Salon about the 2014 mid-term electionzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Make it the only thing you read on the topic.

LA residents denounce the deportation of migrant youth

Dozens of people rallied today outside the US federal building in downtown Los Angeles to show solidarity with tens of thousands of migrant children who have sought refuge in the United States – and to denounce President Barack Obama's efforts to send them back to the countries they fled.

“I call upon the president not to deport any of these children and to embrace them as refugees,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo, who joined other speakers in attributing the recent influx of children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to decisions made in Washington. “They are products of our foreign policy. They are seeking an opportunity.”

The rally, organized by the Human Rights Alliance for Child Refugees and Families, came as the president is seeking another $2 billion to bolster border security and speed up the deportation process, a request that comes in response to a significant rise over the last couple years in the number of unaccompanied minors from the Americas crossing into the United States. In fiscal year 2012, just over 10,000 youth sought refuge in the US; between October 2013 and June 2014 alone, that number rose to more than 39,000.

The dominant media narrative has been that these children are coming to the United States because of misinformation; because they believe that the administration which has deported more immigrants than any of its predecessors would show them leniency. But Leisy Abrego, a professor of Chicano/a studies at UCLA, said that what was causing these children to leave the only land they have ever known – and to leave everything, including their parents, behind – was the dire situation in their home countries.

“Today, as I see these very heartbreaking images of children coming here, risking their lives . . . I remember that this is just the most recent chapter of a very long and painful history in the region,” said Abrego, who came to the US as child after fleeing a US-backed civil war in El Salvador.

“As a child, I did not understand what was causing the bombings and shootings that forced us to leave our country,” said Abrego. “It took many years for me to learn that history and to understand the very central role of the US government.” Today, she argued, US-backed violence continues under the guise of “free trade” agreements that compel the nations of Central America to favor US corporations at the expense of independent economic development.

For its part, the Obama administration has sought to dispel the notion that it is welcoming of those fleeing violence and economic hardship in Central America, arguing that it would be deporting these children at a faster pace were it not for a law signed by President George W. Bush in 2008 that “made it nearly impossible to repatriate unaccompanied minors to Central America without letting them appear before an immigration judge,” as The Los Angeles Times reported. Because of the law, which the administration is trying to change, these children are allowed to request asylum, which delays deportation but is almost never granted to Latin Americans.

Alex Sanchez, who also fled the war in El Salvador as a child – “seeking refuge, ironically, in the country that was investing in the war” – said the Obama administration should show compassion toward those child migrants who are today fleeing “economic violence” and breakdown of society caused by the US-backed war on drugs.

“We need to have the US government redirect those 2 billion dollars to support those children here,” said Sanchez, who founded the group Homies Unidos, which works with LA youth to provide peaceful alternatives to gang life. “These are children. Children! These are children coming here seeking refuge.”
And these are children the Obama administration are deporting – children who have learned that talk of American compassion was just a rumor.

Check out more pictures from the rally and watch a video of the press conference:

90 days, 90,000 deportations

March 14, 2014:

US President Barack Obama has directed officials to review how to enforce immigration laws "more humanely."

April 6, 2014:

After ordering the review, Mr. Obama called the [immigration] advocates together again. While the White House hoped to intensify pressure on Republicans for comprehensive reform, the advocates had all but given up hope, and have instead directed much of their attention — and outrage — at the administration.

Mr. Obama asked them to skip the stories of pain and suffering, not because he did not care, but because he felt it more productive to discuss strategy for winning permanent relief, people who attended the meeting said.

The odds were not good, Mr. Obama acknowledged. But he asked the advocates to stick with him another 90 days, and press hard on Congress. If those efforts failed to lead to reform, Mr. Obama said he would work with them on administrative relief.

May 28, 2014:

President Barack Obama has asked his Homeland Security chief to hold off on completing a review of U.S. deportation policies until the end of the summer.

June 20, 2014:

White House officials . . . on Friday announced plans to detain more [immigrants] and to accelerate their court cases so as to deport them more quickly.

This is about how many days it has been since Obama told immigrant rights activists to stick with him for 90 more days (it's been more than 90).

Sorry, those are the rules

Barack Obama may not have pulled the trigger that led 15 members of a wedding party in Yemen to lose their lives — to be murdered by an anonymous killer remotely piloting an American drone — but according to the US president’s own administration, he bears responsibility for their deaths just as much as if he had carried out the killings with his own two hands.

“The commander-in-chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership,” said the US State Department four months ago, “even if command and control – he’s not the one that pushes the button or said, ‘Go,’ on this.”

Since the United States is a country where the rule of law is respected and political leaders are judged by the same standards they impose on others, Obama’s trial for murder should begin any day now, which raises the obvious question: How will this impact the race for the White House in 2016?

Religous students found guilty of being Pakistani

When a man shot up a Sikh temple in Wisconsin last year, Barack Obama announced how “deeply saddened” he was that such an attack "took place at a house of worship.” His Republican challenger for the presidency, Mitt Romney, likewise expressed his disgusted at “a senseless act of violence . . . that should never befall any house of worship.”

At the time, that was grotesquely funny because, by that point, Barack Obama had himself committed numerous acts of senseless violence against houses of worship. And, being the commander-in-chief of a military fighting a war in Afghanistan and Pakistan that he dramatically expanded upon taking office, he has continued to bomb religious institutions ever since.

As Reuters reported on Wednesday:

A suspected U.S. drone fired on an Islamic seminary in Pakistan's northwestern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa early on Thursday, killing at least five people, police said.

#####

Fareed Khan, a police officer, said the unmanned aircraft fired at least three rockets at the madrassa in the Hangu district, killing two teachers and three students just before sunrise on Thursday.

Now, and this is important: an anonymous official did say a potentially bad person was potentially seen at that madrassa a few days earlier (potentially), so Barack Obama can sleep soundly at night knowing he authorized the killing of a few people who were probably familiar with that bad guy, even if that bad guy himself is currently back at home alive and well playing Call of Duty: Death to America.

Meanwhile:

The attack took place a day after Pakistan's foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz was quoted as saying that the United States had promised not to conduct drone strikes while the government tries to engage the Taliban in peace talks.

The United States has not commented on Aziz's remarks.

I'm really pretty sure that it has.

Barack Obama, enemy of equality

According to the president of the United States, "we're all created equal and every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law."

Of course, Barack Obama, like other US politicians, does not actually believe we, the people of Earth, are all created equal. That's clear enough from his exclusion of non-Americans when he describes who "deserves" equal treatment before the law. As a conservative nationalist, Obama believes some nationalities are more entitled to legal protections than others. Born in America, he might deign to give you a trial; born in Pakistan, he won't even bother identifying the remains left in the wake of a Predator drone.

But Obama wasn't talking about state-sanctioned murder. Instead, in a blog  for the Huffington Post, he was condemning the continued, legal discrimination on the part of employers against LGBT employees.

"It's offensive," an Obama staffer presumably wrote. "It's wrong. And it needs to stop because, in the United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a fire-able offense."

This is a great bit of rhetoric that's ready to be slapped on a photo of a happy gay couple and shared 83,000 times on Facebook. It's also incredibly disgingeous.

Barack Obama, right now, without needing to convince any bad mean stupid Republicans in Congress, could sign an executive order banning federal contractors from engaging in discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation. He could have done that yesterday. He doesn't need legislation: he could have ended that discrimination instead of blogging, instantly providing greater job security to the tens of thousands of people working right now for the private contractors who effectively provide government services any more.

But he didn't because Obama and the Democratic Party run a neat little scam, whereby they set themselves up as 0.05 percent more progressive than the GOP -- for which they expect accolades and tribute -- and then rely on the public's ignorance of process to explain away why they're not actually doing anything to make things even 0.05 percent better. In this case, John Boehner and his gang of angry white homophobes in the House get blamed for setting back Progress; discrimination against LGBT people continues; and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee then sends out a mailer with that happy gay couple meme on it asking if you will please donate to help defeat the forces of darkness.

And then they laugh and they laugh and they laugh.

Bomb Syria for Obamacare

On Thursday, Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that Syria is "simply not our problem." I am not a fan of this argument. The civil war in Syria may not be the US government's "problem," or at least it shouldn't be given its record from Vietnam to Iraq of killing the people it ostensibly wants to save, but I don't think people here should simply avoid addressing a problem because it's happening to people over there. We should probably just do it without bombs.

Some have called Grayson's comments disgusting, language they'd never use to describe a US air strike that kills civilians. I think Grayson's just trying to make what he believes to be the most compelling antiwar argument to the American public: that shit's bad enough here at home, so what are we doing trying to fix other people's problems? But Grayson is still perpetuating the idea that one's concern for a fellow human being should be determined by which nation-state they were born in, which is indeed gross. A better argument is that the US government never goes to war for "humanitarian" reasons and, when it says it does, it ends up making things worse.

But Grayson could be on to something: his argument may be the most compelling to the average American who still thinks Syria is a George Clooney film. And far more troubling than nationalist arguments against killing people is the partisan argument that we ought to maybe just give Obama his little war because: Republicans. That argument was put to Grayson by Hayes, who told the congressman:

You're going to have a conversation with Nancy Pelosi in the next few days in which she's going to say to you, not I think implausibly, if this vote goes down you're destroying the last three years of this president's administration, you're destroying his political capital and frittering away any opportunity to get any meaningful legislation passed because you have essentially declared your own party's president a lame duck.

There's nothing grosser than the suggestion that we must drop bombs on people in another country, not because it's a "last resort" or in self-defense or to save the whales or whatnot, but because the president needs his "political capital." Hayes says he would vote against an attack on Syria were he in Congress, so I don't fault him for bringing the argument up. It's revealing, though, as that is clearly the argument on the lips of Democratic partisans or else it wouldn't make it's way on to their preferred cable news network.

Indeed, the Democratic partisan's favorite political magazine, Mother Jones, notes the same argument. As editor David Corn writes, while Democrats in Congress may have "anti-war inclinations" -- let's let that one slide -- "this time the decision for many Democrats is more difficult due to the overarching political context." What's that context?

The president is about to engage the Republicans on two contentious fronts: a battle over the funding of the federal government (with a possible government shutdown at risk) and a fight over raising the debt ceiling (with a possible financial crisis at risk). And tea party Republicans are attempting to bring Obamacare into the brewing mess. (Their threat: If you don't defund Obamacare, we'll shut down the government.) With all this looming, Democrats certainly don't want Obama's standing weakened, and if he loses the vote on the Syria resolution, he will be diminished.

There are arguments for and against the bombing of Syria. Some of them are bad, some of them not so bad. That we need to bomb Syrians so Americans can be forced to buy overpriced health insurance is the worst.

Syria is not Iraq (and apples are not oranges)

Like other Democratic consultants with careers to keep in mind, Robert Creamer, husband of liberal Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, is currently busy reassuring progressives that Barack Obama's desired attack on Syria will be "completely different" from the shock and awe that George W. Bush and Senate Democrats helped bring to Baghdad. And, it should be said, there's a lot of truth to that. They are, indeed, different situations occurring at different times (the US government had more allies when it destroyed Iraq, for instance).

But while the situations differ and lazy comparisons should always be avoided, Creamer's number one reason for why Syria is not Iraq is wrong in a big way. Being generous, it's the result of a lazy misremembering of history. Being realistic, it's a lie.

According to Creamer, writing for The Huffington Post:

1). The President is asking for a narrow authorization that the U.S. exact a near-term military price for Assad's use of chemical weapons. He is not asking for a declaration of War - which is exactly what George Bush asked from Congress in Iraq.

George W. Bush did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, which no president has done since WWII. He asked Congress to pass an, "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq." Barack Obama, meanwhile, is asking Congress to pass an, “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Government of Syria to Respond to Use of Chemical Weapons."

Obama's request does include a clause stating that it is not intended to authorize the use of "combat" troops on the ground. At the same time, while there does not appear to be much elite interest in a full-scale occupation of Syria at this point -- though calculations on all sides of the conflict could change when the bombs start falling -- the AUMF recognizes the president's "inherent" right to use military force to counter what he perceives to be threats to national security. Limits on "combat" troops are there for political reasons, not legally binding ones.

In other words, what Obama is asking for is "exactly" what Bush asked for, which is: political cover for using the US military any way he sees fit. What's different is the target and the perception that there's no real risk of being embroiled in a quagmire: just a few bombing raids carried out in time to pick up the kids from soccer practice.

You may be not at all surprised to learn that Creamer, who somehow managed to get this basic fact wrong, is a convicted liar. Indeed, he pleaded guilty to multiple felonies for defrauding a bank. But the people Creamer is lying to now don't run banks. Defrauding the public in order to sell a war won't get him a conviction, but a new hot tub and perhaps an appearance or two on a liberal chat show.

In terms of the dishonesty involved in selling a war on it, Syria is looking a lot like Iraq, actually.

We could use more rebels

What should you do if you uncover wrongdoing and the people responsible are the same ones who are supposed to investigate it? The way our politicians and elite media figures talk, you would think there's something honorable about tipping them off (or shutting your mouth). In the political arena, the bold person of conscience – the rebel, the maverick, the damn-the-costs truth-teller – is the bad guy, not the action hero; the company man is played by Bruce Willis.

When Edward Snowden gave up a lucrative career in an island paradise to blow the whistle about the US government's staggeringly broad spying operations – revealing what thousands of others with access to the same information wouldn't – he was going up against a system that values loyalty to those who sign your paychecks over loyalty to principle or the public. A columnist for The New York Times, which is very much a part of that system, denounced him in terms one would think would be reserved for our leaders, declaring that Snowden had “betrayed the Constitution” and “the privacy of us all” by leaking evidence of the Obama administration doing just that.

Snowden need not be the world's greatest human being for us to recognize the courage it took to do what he did. When compliance with a system makes one an accomplice to wrongdoing, there's no virtue in being compliant. There's no virtue in abiding by the “honor codes of all those who enabled [one] to rise,” as the Times columnist put it, when that code doesn't respect the rights of everyone else. We recognize that when we go to the movies. Maybe we should stop condemning it in real life?

Instead of getting caught up in media attempts to pathologize a whistle-blower, we should also probably look more closely at what the whistle was blown on, because what Snowden revealed should be concerning, even if you don't have relatives in Yemen.

This Matters

According to leaked classified documents, the US National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting data on nearly every call made by nearly every American, from the time it was placed, who was called and from where it originated. The NSA also has relationships with nearly every major Internet company, from Facebook to Google, granting the agency streamlined access to your user history. Everything you email or post to your wall could end up on an NSA server somewhere. That's a lot of data, which is why the agency is building a 1.5 million square feet server farm in Utah to hold it, at a cost of $1.2 billion.

The Obama administration claims the information it belatedly admits it collects is only later accessed with a court order. But then, those court orders are classified, granted by judges in a secret court in front of which only the government can appear. Meanwhile, the White House has refused to release its legal rationale for the spying program, which senators from the president's own party suggest is both illegal and unnecessary. It has, however, publicly credited the program with breaking up terrorist plots, though those claims – like its earlier denials that the spying program existed – have proven false.

But while it's intrusive, sure, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right? Well, no. Even if you don't have grandparents in Yemen, you should be concerned about any agency – that is, a collection of fallible human beings – that claims the right and has the power to know pretty much everything you've ever done on your iPhone. Go ahead and assume the best motives on the part of those in power, just don't forget that even the most honorable people have ex-lovers too. Even saints can be seduced by power.

Most spooks aren't saints, either. They're like us: fallen. And what would you do if you were invisible? For some NSA employees, listening to your phone calls is the equivalent of sneaking into the locker room, several of them telling ABC News that the agency routinely eavesdrops on the phone calls of Americans abroad as they call friends and family back home.

“Hey, check this out,” the agents would tell each other, according to one whistle-blower. "There's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out.” Not exactly the model of professionalism one would hope for in someone who has god-like eavesdropping powers.

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said another military whistleblower. Journalists and aid workers had their communications intercepted on a regular basis.

That was a decade ago.

It's Gotten Worse

These days, the NSA is now known to be intercepting a much broader range of communication. Revelations to The Guardian show it claims the ability to tap into not just email communication, but live Skype calls. Basically everything you do on the Internet could potentially be viewed by a US government agent. There's no need for black helicopters when you voluntarily divulge your life secrets with the help of a black box made by Sony. Or a white one by Apple.

You should be especially concerned if you have opinions about things going on in our world. When a group of Pennsylvanians began working to stop a natural gas fracking project in their community, they found themselves listed on a state Department of Homeland Security bulletin. “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies,” the Secretary of Homeland Security, a Democrat, stated in an email.

If you oppose corporate America's destruction of your community, you could end up being lumped in with actual terrorist threats. And once the word “terrorism” is invoked, all bets are off, potentially leading to a government agent, working on behalf of their corporate stakeholders, going through every ill-considered email you ever sent.

Sometimes, simply stating one's political beliefs is enough to grab the state's attention. In Seattle, the NSA's partners in surveillance at the FBI tracked a group of young anarchists to a May Day demonstration, not because they were wanted for any crimes, but because they called themselves anarchists.

“Although many anarchists are law-abiding,” an FBI agent explained, “there is a history in the Pacific Northwest of some anarchists participating in property destruction and other criminal activity in support of their political philosophy.” And so we track them. And with the surveillance capabilities we have today, it's not hard to make even the most innocent acts seem sinister, particularly when one has unpopular political beliefs or presents a challenge to corporate or state power.

It Could Be You

Combined with expansive terrorism laws, that could be a nightmare for those who fall in the arbitrary crosshairs of a government prosecutor looking to make a name for themselves. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that humanitarian groups can be convicted of “material support” for terrorism even if that support consists solely of helping seek conflict resolution. As former president Jimmy Carter said at the time, “the vague language of the law leaves us wondering if we will be prosecuted for our work to promote peace and freedom.”

Others don't have to wonder. Since 2010, antiwar activists across the country have been subpoened and forced to testify before grand juries into a “material support” for terrorism investigation that has succeeded in scaring those who do humanitarian work in Palestine and Colombia, but as of yet yielded no convictions. Perhaps our broad spying and terrorism laws are working, just not in the way our leaders tell us. And, as these activists can attest: you don't need to be convicted of anything to be constantly spied on.

As another NSA whistle-blower, William Binney, recently told journalist Amy Goodman, “if you're doing something that irritates or is against what the government wants to be expressed to the American public, then you can become a target.” It's as easy as that. And whenever you call a friend, keep in mind that you're calling every friend your friend has ever called. Are you absolutely sure you have nothing to hide?

In Washington, most politicians seem annoyed that you now know this. They wish you didn't. As Senator Al Franken explained, “Anything that the American people know, the bad guys know so there's a line here, right?”

That's how those in Washington often view those they claim to represent in our representative democracy: lumped in with the bad guys. Indeed, aiding us in our knowledge of what the government is doing in our name, as Bradley Manning and now Edward Snowden have done, is often likened with aiding the enemy.

“I don't look at this as being a whistle-blower,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said of the NSA leaks. “I think it's an act of treason.”

Feinstein voted for a war in Iraq that she and her husband personally profited from, so she knows a thing or two dozen about treachery. But she's off base here. The American public is not the enemy, nor should informing them about the things being done to them with their own money be construed as the act of a traitor. Edward Snowden may not be the world's greatest human being; who reading this has met him? What we do know his act did a lot of good by exposing a lot of wrong and took a lot more courage than it takes to criticize him on Capitol Hill. Since they don't see that very often there, no wonder they mistake it as treason.

Does he fear getting droned too?

Barack Obama said some shit today. Among the shit he said was this, in response to reports his administration is tracking every phone call made in America, while also directly tapping into the servers of Facebook and Google:

"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs," Obama said. "My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards."

The president says he was skeptical of this power until, friends, you have to hear this funny story: the power became his. And what head of state wants to be less powerful than their predecessor? Also there was scrubbing and safeguarding involved (we can't really get into details).

But Obama won't be a head of state forever, he reminded the press, actually saying this out loud in front of people who didn't snicker:

"With respect to my concerns about privacy issues: I will leave this office at some point—sometime in the next three and a half years—and after that I'll be a private citizen," he said. "And I suspect that on a list of people who might be targeted so that somebody could read their emails or listen to their phone calls, I’d probably be pretty high on that list. So it's not as though I don't have a a personal interest in making sure my privacy is protected."

If you honestly believe the world's most powerful man is honestly concerned he will be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as other private citizens -- and, more importantly, that he fears facing the same consequences (what, is he going to be Jose Padilla'd?) -- you should immediately transfer power of attorney to a trusted love one. Once he leaves office, Obama will be making millions of dollars a year giving speeches at stockholder meetings. Maybe a spook or two will glance at his email now and again, but that won't be because of any program he established; they'd do that anyway. And legally speaking, he'll face the same consequences as George W. Bush.

When presidents and former presidents do it, that means it's not illegal.

Also, this. Obama said this:

"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here."

Barack Obama already claims the right to unilaterally kill all sorts of people endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them I recall being "life." We have some problems here.

'The Wire' wasn't that great

David Simon, creator of the American television series, The Wire:

• Opposes marijuana legalization because he says it will only help rich white kids, which isn't true.
• Opposes the free dissemination of information, encouraging major media companies to form a cartel aimed at ensuring only rich people like him can afford to read the news.
• Supports intellectual property laws that guarantee people like him are overpaid, arguing that "journalism, literature, film, music -- these endeavors need people operating at the highest professional level," by which he means: I like living in a big house (ask yourself: does the best journalism, literature, film and music tend to be produced by the really rich or those that don't much care for money?)
• Supports Barack Obama's dragnet PRISM program, which collects data on all phone calls placed in the United States, on the look how much I know basis that the government has done stuff like this before, the only thing different being "the scale." Yes, David. And LOL

All of which is to say: The Wire had its moments, but it was still just a cop show and as a one-time straight news reporter I found the last season to be unwatchable. Newspapers always sucked and I hope the next gig David Simon is up for is given to a blogger.

Chuck Hagel and the fight to keep Hope alive

Before he was confirmed, some on the liberal left sold US defense secretary Chuck Hagel as a voice for "less war, more diplomacy." I don't have to tell you what has happened since confirmation, but then I also won't get money for rent if I don't, so read my latest piece for Qatar's state-controlled media to see if Hagel has lived up to his billing.

James Comey ain't your homie

President Obama is reportedly picking a former hedge fund executive turned senior Bush administration official at the Justice Department by the name James Comey to be his next head of the FBI. Like Chuck Hagel, this largely meaningless nomination in terms of actual policy is being played up as meaningful by the hacks whose job it is to do that sort of thing.

Forget the pundits. Here's what the nomination means, if anything, by way of remarks Comey made at a press conference in 2004:

Had we tried to make a case against Jose Padilla through our criminal justice system, something that I, as the United States attorney in New York, could not do at that time without jeopardizing intelligence sources, he would very likely have followed his lawyer's advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. 

He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and hope -- pray, really -- that we didn't lose him.

Trials can be so inconvenient, especially when the criminal justice system only affords the state a 93 percent conviction rate. You really don't want to take any risks when it comes to national security. Indeed, "We could care less about a criminal case when right before us is the need to protect American citizens and to save lives," Comey told reporters, presumably grabbing his genitals. "We'll figure out down the road what we do with Jose Padilla." His remarks mean he will do well at the FBI, that Comey, leading a department where protecting Americans has long served as justification for ignoring their rights.

Padilla ended up being labeled an "enemy combatant" and stashed away in a Naval brig, spending nearly four years in solitary confinement, which in the words of a psychiatrist who examined him led to the "destruction of a human being’s mind.” Despite his years spent being tortured in military custody, however, Padilla was ultimately tried and convicted within the civilian criminal justice system. A final punch to the gut, because this America and we are terrible: the mentally destroyed Padilla's original conviction of 17 years in prison for expressing an interest in (if not actually engaging in) violent jihad was overturned for being too lenient.

I hope you like your humor dark.

(Transcript via Kevin Gosztola)

Obama condemns indefinite detention (and himself)

US President Barack Obama today condemned the Guantanamo Bay prison camp run by US President Barack Obama, channeling the moral outrage last heard on the 2008 campaign trail.

"The idea that we would still detain forever a group of individuals that have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, that is contrary to our interests and it has to stop,” the president said during a press conference at the White House.

The rhetoric was bold and progressive. The reality? At least half of 166 never-tried, never-convicted prisoners that reside at Guantanamo Bay are engaged in a hunger strike that is making the president look bad. And so the man with a kill list who is ultimately responsible for them being there – and who's initial plan for closing the prison was simply moving it to Illinois – had to act as if he was deeply troubled by his poor human rights record, like an oil executive shedding tears for Mother Earth after a big spill.

What Obama is banking on is the fact that most people (including his base) aren't terribly detail oriented. The tale liberal Democrats tell themselves, and which the liberal media tells the rest of us, is that the fight over Guantanamo Bay is Obama and a bunch of ACLU lawyers on one side, the forces of fear-mongering, reactionary insanity on the other. The president, it is to be understood, is facing irrational hostility from the Chicken Littles of the right and would like to the do the right thing -- of course he would -- but, you know: Republicans.

That narrative, unfortunately, is false. The true story, obfuscated by the president's occasional condemnations of his own human rights record, is that Obama himself signed an executive order creating "a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay." Rather than repudiate the notion of “detain[ing] forever a group of individuals that have not been tried,” Obama (through a task force he commissioned) determined that 48 of the prison camp's detainees were “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution.” The evidence against those men would not be admissible even by the weakened standards of a military court – that is, it was probably gained through torture – but rather than release them, as if they were persons endowed with certain inalienable rights, the Obama administration would prefer to lock them away until they die.

The president has even refused to release dozens of Yemeni citizens who have been cleared of all wrongdoing. Obama also signed (and his lawyers later defended in court) a bill that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens. And let's not forget that kill list, which is based on the idea that it's alright for the president to act as judge, jury and executioner, so long as the unilateral justice is being delivered abroad. So when the president of the United States righteously condemns the idea of imprisoning someone forever without charge or trial, it's important to remember the truth about his record. It's important to remember he is lying.

Winding up

Last week, I noted this quote from Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo:

"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush." 

Now here's Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, speaking at a forum on US foreign policy over the weekend:

“You're thinking we're winding down. You think we're out of Iraq? Maybe boots and uniforms we might be, but we're probably 30,000-plus strong contractors. You think we're downsizing in Afghanistan? We are. Military. We're still 100,000-strong contractors."

In other words, basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to wind up (and institutionalize) the for-profit thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush.

Basically

I came across this quote today from Josh Marshall, editor of the liberal Talking Points Memo, while doing some research for a column. It's a good one.

"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush."

Smart take, career wise. But I bet the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Guantanamo Bay have a different one.

The enabling opposition

My latest column for Al Jazeera addresses progressive Democrats and their faux-opposition to murder by drone. Check it out, kid.

A matter of shared sacrifice

Speaking to The Middle Class today, Barack Obama made a promise, pledging not to pursue spending cuts "that will hurt seniors, or hurt students, or hurt middle- class families." Such is the state of liberal politics today: the most our recently reelected progressive president is willing to offer his supporters is a pledge not to actively harm them.

Of course, being the head of an empire that feeds on death and consumer debt, the president didn't even really offer that. Instead, the sentence containing his grand promise continued, clarifying that Obama only meant he wouldn't harm the middle class "without asking also equivalent sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists, et cetera."

"[I]t’s going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice," he added.

So, in exchange for cutting your grandmother's already inadequate Social Security, a Fortune 500 CEO will -- no, let's go with "may" -- be bumped up to a higher tax rate, which could require as many as two to three additional billable hours for their accountant to successfully evade. No one, least of all our secretly Marxist commander in chief, will point out how the middle (and lower) class already sacrifices its claim to the country's abundant resources to the capitalist class, which the state grants monopoly privileges over what ought to be our shared abundance.

Seems about right.

A defense secretary of their own

How bad has it gotten for the US antiwar movement? After the president its most prominent leaders supported in 2008 took George W. Bush's war on terror and institutionalized it, they have been at a strategic loss, unable to kick their dogmatic, electoral-minded tactics to the point that they are now engaged in an awkward campaign to get a conservative Republican appointed to administer Barack Obama's wars. Indeed, after getting a commander-in-chief of its own, the down-and-out antiwar movement is now angling to get its own defense secretary.

The logic behind the leftists for Chuck Hagel campaign -- sometimes unstated -- is not so much that he's a great guy, but that the people attacking him are even worse. And to be fair, they're right. Most of the people blasting the former Nebraska senator hail from the belligerent far right, primarily employed by neoconservative media outlets like the Weekly Standard and Washington Post. Their critique is that Hagel is no friend of the Jewish state, and perhaps even anti-Semitic, because he once made comments critical of its influential lobby in DC and opposed Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon (an undeniably good thing). He's also talked about giving diplomacy a shot with Iran, when the proper line is supposed to be "nah, fuck those guys."

Hagel has also come under fire from military lobbyists for his stated desire to cut bloat at the Pentagon, though it's worth remembering that Bush/Obama secretary of defense Robert Gates pledged the same thing while burning through the biggest military budgets in world history. In other words, the usual sky-is-falling crowd is making much ado about nothing with respect to a guy who, outside of a few maverick-y speeches over the years, adheres to the Washington consensus as much as the next old white guy. Their goal? Maybe a nice little war with a third-rate power and a bit larger share of the GDP. But like executives at Goldman Sachs, they know they're going to be pretty much fine no matter who is in office.

It would be one thing to simply point this out; that yes, some of the charges against Hagel can politely be called “silly.” One can disagree about the wisdom of Israeli wars, for instance, without being a raging anti-Semite, and indeed much of the Israeli establishment would privately concede their 2006 war was a bust. And with politicians talking of slashing Social Security, you damned well better believe it's not a gaffe to say maybe we ought to take a quick look at where half the average American's income tax goes: the military. Such a defense might have some value.

Unfortunately, that's not what the pro-Hagel campaign is doing. Instead, they're billing the fight over Hagel's nomination as a defining battle of Obama's second term. If Hagel wins, the argument goes, AIPAC loses, opening up the foreign policy debate in Washington and increasing the possibility of peace in our time. If his nomination goes down, however, that reinforces the idea that the hawkish foreign policy consensus in Washington shall not be challenged and that even the mildest criticisms of Israel cannot be tolerated. Some even suggest that who administers the Defense Department could decide if there's a war with Iran or not, perhaps forgetting the chain of command.

Indeed, most of Hagel's defenders aren't defending his occasionally heterodox views on Israel and unilateral sanctions (he's cool with the multilateral, 500,000-dead-children-in-Iraq kind), but rather trumpeting his commitment to orthodoxy. The Center for American Progress, for instance, has released a dossier detailing “Chuck Hagel's Pro-Israel Record,” noting his oft-stated verbal and legislative commitment to the “special relationship.” Some of his former staffers have also issued a fact sheet showing that all of Hagel's alleged heretical views are well within the hawkish mainstream.

Further left on the spectrum, it's not much different. The Washington-based group Just Foreign Policy, for instance, has revived Democratic rhetoric from 2004 to pitch the fight over the potential Hagel nomination in black and white terms of good and evil.

“The Obama-hating Neocon Right is trying to 'Swift Boat' the expected nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense,” the group states in a recent email blast to supporters. Neoconservatives have been “making up a fantasy scare story that Hagel . . . is 'anti-Israel,'” it continues, helpfully informing us that the Hagel the neocons make out to be such a reasonable guy is indeed a fantasy. Finally, it ends with an appeal: “We cannot stand idly by as the neocons stage a coup of our foreign policy,” followed by a petition supporting Hagel's nomination hosted by MoveOn.org sure to defeat any military coup.

In a blog, the group's policy director, Robert Naiman, likewise pitches the battle over Hagel's nomination in terms of Obama vs. The Warmongers. “Hagel represents the foreign policy that the majority of Americans voted for in 2008 and 2012: less war, more diplomacy,” he writes, pointing to past statements he's made about the wisdom of a war with Iran.

Of course, the unfortunate truth is that American's didn't vote for “less war, more diplomacy,” as comforting as that thought may be, because they haven't had the chance. In this past election, Obama often ran to the right of Mitt Romney, his campaign frequently suggesting the latter would not have had the guts to kill Osama bin Laden. The DNC ridiculed Romney for suggesting he'd consider the war's legality before bombing Iran. “Romney Said He Would Talk To His Lawyers Before Deciding Whether To Use Military Force,” read the press release, as if that's a bad thing. Obama, bomber of a half-dozen countries, never forgot to mention the “crippling” sanctions he's imposed.

And J Street, the group that just co-sponsored a rally with AIPAC backing the Israeli state's latest killing spree? Ask a resident of Gaza how “pro-peace” it is.

But, in order to create a sign-this-petition! narrative, one often can't do nuance. So Naiman doesn't. In another post, this one highlighting Hagel's establishment support, because antiwar activists care about that sort of thing, he casually refers to former ambassador Ryan Crocker as among the “diplomacy champions and war skeptics” backing the former senator. This would be the same Ryan Crocker appointed by George W. Buish who has said “it's simply not the case that Afghans would rather have US forces gone,” and dismissed the killing of at least 25 people in Afghanistan, including children, as “not a very big deal.”

That should give you a good idea of the obfuscation going on in the antiwar campaign for a Pentagon chief. This is a problem. If you're going to play the role of the savvy Washington activist and get involved in the inside baseball that is fights over cabinet appointments, ostensibly to reframe the debate more than anything – we must defeat AIPAC! – you ought not go about reinforcing adherence to orthodoxy and the perceived value of establishment support and credentials. And you ought not cast as heroes of the peace movement people that really shouldn't be. That's actually really dangerous.

Yet, some would rather play down Hagel's pro-war credentials for the all-important narrative. So we cast him as a staunch opponent of a war with Iran, ignoring his repeated assertions that we must “keep all options on the table” with respect to the Islamic Republic, including killing men, women and children. In a piece he coauthored with other establishment foreign policy figures, Hagel's opposition to war amounted merely to a call to consider its costs – and its benefits.

For instance, “a U.S. attack would demonstrate the country’s credibility as an ally to other nations in the region and would derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions for several years, providing space for other, potentially longer-term solutions,” the senator and his friends wrote. “An attack would also make clear the United States’ full commitment to nonproliferation as other nations contemplate moves in that direction.” Ah, but he mentioned there could be “costs” (though none of those he mentioned were “dead people”). Such is brave, antiwar opposition in Washington.

But that's the cynical game played in DC by some of the would-be movers-and-shakers on the outskirts of the policy conversation: cynically play down a politician's faults to please funders, other politicians and one's own sense of savvy self-satisfaction. It's how the antiwar movement ended up dissolving and largely getting behind a president who more than doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan. People were presented a rosy image of a candidate who was on their side and they concluded their work was done upon his election. The same thing threatens to be the case with Chuck Hagel. Indeed, as The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg notes, “who better to sell the president's militant Iran position than someone who comes from the realist camp?”

When I privately raised some of these concerns with Naiman, he got snooty quick, just as he did with other writers who questioned whether the quest to “defeat AIPAC” should be conducted by stressing why AIPAC should love the guy. To me, Naiman wrote that if I had concerns about the antiwar movement taking ownership of a defense secretary, “There are plenty of organizations that pursue an ultra-left, ideological purist line. Why don't you give them your support and be happy?”

We live in an an age where ideological purity is defined as being uncomfortable with an antiwar organization throwing unequivocal support behind a conservative Republican to head the Pentagon. It's an amazing world.

Rather than engage in the reactionary politics of supporting what one perceives to be the least-evil administrator of war, those on the antiwar left and right ought to be truth tellers. Let's not sugar coat this: The problem isn't just AIPAC and the neocons, but the Center for American Progress and the neoliberals. Dumbing down the reality only serves to bolster one faction of the war party. And it kills antiwar movements.

The liberal presidency

Go read my latest piece over at Al Jazeera, where I argue that his progressive fans are right: Barack Obama really is a liberal.