Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a familiar pattern

[Jefferson23]

Sunday March 15, 2009 17:01 EDT

(updated below)

Rich Lowry, National Review, Friday:

Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism.

First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity. Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement. Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult.

Dick Cheney, Sunday, with the incomparably reverent and vapid John King of CNN:


remainder here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/15/obama/index.html

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Oh lord.

What a load.

[Jefferson23]

2. Care to explain your comment?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Do I really need to?

Do I really need to explain why the utterly insane RW nutjob Rich Lowry, the guy who supports waterboarding muslims, is wrong?

Or why either trying detainees as criminals with due process or treating them like POWs is intrinsically different and superior to what George Bush did?

[Jefferson23]

7. Would help if you read it at the link.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. No, it really wouldn't.

It just adds Greenwald to the list of dumbasses.

[Jefferson23]

12. You won't read the article to find out what Greenwald is concerned

about, and you actually think he is the dumbass, that's a good one.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. I did read the article, that's why I mention Greenwald.

You're all full of shit.

[Jefferson23]

19. Right, I guess the ACLU is wrong too then, according to you.

[jenmito]

3. An opinion piece from Rich Lowry, National Review?!?!

I think you're in the wrong place.

[Jefferson23]

6. Perhaps if you actually read it at the link, you would see it is from Glenn Greenwald.

[jenmito]

10. What you quoted was from Richard Lowry. n/t

[biopowertoday]

9. no, its salon and Greenwald--critiquing the article. It is

worth a read.



......Bush's asserted power to detain as "enemy combatants" even those people who were detained outside of a traditional "battlefield" -- rather than charge them with crimes -- was one of the most controversial of the last eight years. Yet the Obama administration, when called upon to state their position, makes only the most cosmetic and inconsequential changes -- designed to generate headlines misleadingly depicting a significant reversal ("Obama drops 'enemy combatant' label") -- while, in fact, retaining the crux of Bush's extremist detention theory.

Or consider the new policies of transparency that Obama announced during his first week in office, ones that prompted lavish praise from most civil libertarians (including me). When it comes to a civil liberties restoration, few things are more important than drastically scaling back the Bush adminstration's endless reliance on frivolous national-security-based "secrecy" claims as a weapon for hiding virtually everything the Government does. Excessive secrecy was the linchpin of most of the Bush abuses.

[Jefferson23]

13. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

This should be a concern for all of us and we need to be as vigilant as possible.

[biopowertoday]

15. I do not

always like the critiques but I refuse to bury my head in the sand. For the most part I have confidence in Obama but some of this stuff is too big to ignore or wish it away.

[masuki bance]

4. Why help that meme along?

[Jefferson23]

14. Please click on the link, it is an article from Greenwald, thanks.

[masuki bance]

17. What you posted is from Lowry

That is all you posted, without comment or critique. A link to Greenwald and his thoughts on it doesn't change your complicity.

[Jefferson23]

18. You have no clue what you're talking about, Greenwald added that

from Lowry, not me, for a reason. LOL @ your charge of complicity, yea right.

[trapper914]

11. I don't know what to make of the new policy

...but could it be that by changing the language, Obama is truly changing the status of detainees to more of a definition of prisoner of war.

With the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I wouldn't be surprised to see them released. Obama gets political cover in the short term (by not looking like he's putting terrorists on the street), and America's image abroad could improve some.

[Jefferson23]

20. I hope so too, and I appreciate your response.