That Hopey Changey Thing

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Barack Obama

I recently posted regarding our current situation in America. Some saw it as pessimistic, cynical and without a bright outlook for the future. I saw it as a inventory of our sins that has lead to our current situation. These were the conditions inherited by President Obama.

Before I start, I am going to anticipate a common confutation. Bush’s administration is over and Obama has been President for the last 3 years. In the Soviet Union, they had a trend that occurred when a party leader fell from favor from the party. The leader disappeared from the public eye and was not heard from again. Apparently, G.W. Bush has had the same phenomenon with the Republican Party. Contrary to Republican expediency, erasing him from history isn’t as easy as you may think. His legacy still remains.

I knew this was going to be a tough time for us all. I posted in my own blog about this right after Obama’s election. Let’s review some of the top promises that haven’t been fulfilled to the satisfaction of Obama’s critics:

• Guantanamo Bay hasn’t been closed. This was another mess inherited from Bush. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center was a fiasco that was assumed incorrectly to be beyond the reach of the U.S. Constitution. This is going to continue to be difficult to unravel and no one is offering solutions to this. Though we already have extracted all the information we can get from them, we don’t know how to unload the most dangerous of the prisoners while keeping them from being a further threat to our troops.
• Foreign Policy. This was an area where he received the most criticism during his 2008 campaign. Despite wins with bin Laden, Iraq and Libya; Obama has had the sense not to go all in with unwinnable situations such as the Israel/Palestinian impasse. He has shown outstanding courage with Pakistan despite it being a nuclear power.
• Obama promised change and an end to business as usual in Washington. Obama promised The Change We Need not the change that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. His attempts to reach across the aisle in Congress have been rejected by both sides of the aisle.
• TARP and the Stimulus were supposed to restart the economy. This claim was never made by either Bush or Obama. The economy went into toxic shock when credit froze at the end of 2008. TARP and the Stimulus were nothing more than life support for the economy until the private sector could recover enough to grow the economy. Unfortunately, the private sector has been DOA with nothing but excuses and no real American productivity.
• The Obama administration has been spending wildly. There have been some Obama initiatives that have had high price tags. These have not been the long term litany of unfunded programs that have been passed under the Bush administration which include the protracted military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D and the $1.5 trillion budget deficit that was passed on. The Bush administration ran up the credit card. The Obama administration has been left to pay for it.
• The Obama Healthcare Law. This is a campaign promise that has actually been fulfilled and is his landmark achievement. This is something that administrations past have tried for decades and have failed. It has come under fire because it actually requires Americans to take responsibility for their own actions; an apparently great bumper sticker, but an unpopular requirement. We don’t like that it is a hybrid of workable ideas instead of a bunch of fantasy giveaways.
• The Obama administration is leading us into socialism. This is one of my favorites. Bush did the closest thing to socialism when he nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during his administration. The auto industry was subsidized by the government through purchase of GM and Chrysler shares of stock. Although unprecedented, so is the success of the recovery of the American auto industry.
• Obama is doing wealth distribution. Some say this is unfair. A child going to bed hungry because his single mother, despite her holding multiple jobs, can’t afford to feed him is unfair. Focusing on the welfare of the majority middle class at the expense of the few lavishly affluent is democracy in action. We have more guys. We win.

One of the huge demands for the election of 2008 was transparency in government. The secrecy of the Bush administration spurred this because the American people felt that we deserved the truth regarding our security and we should be able to make our own decisions.

It seems that our entire American political landscape consists of a marketing campaign created from sound bites, 140 character mass texting (or Twitter, if you prefer), vitriolic and melodramatic tabloid talk radio, equally scandalous internet memes and 24 hour cable news channels abandoning truth for ratings. We haven’t been able to hear the general public for all the noise. The Republican side is no longer about governance, but about political theater. America has not become more divided. We have just become more uncompromising.

Comments

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Guantanamo Bay hasn’t been closed. This was another mess inherited from Bush. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center was a fiasco that was assumed incorrectly to be beyond the reach of the U.S. Constitution. This is going to continue to be difficult to unravel and no one is offering solutions to this. Though we already have extracted all the information we can get from them, we don’t know how to unload the most dangerous of the prisoners while keeping them from being a further threat to our troops.

Would they not be a threat if they hadn't been captured in the first place?
(It is nice to see no one is advocating civilian trials anymore.)

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I'd still argue for civilian trials. There was a time when terrorism was a legal issue. Eric Holder called the civilian, constitutional courts "our best weapon against terror." I'd agree. First, it allows us to see the full evidence against an individual in the light of day - to really understand the threat. If the threat is as great as is claimed, then this is a good thing because it reminds us that it is ongoing, and clarifies the scope in a way that is reliable and tested by opposition counsel. Second, it adheres to the basic rule of law, which is an important point if you're claiming the moral high ground. In a war between jihadists who use suicide bombers, and a military that refuses to adhere to its own law, there are no good guys, only winners and losers. Third, it ensures that terrorists themselves see that our society isn't crumbling into fear-based responses. I know it's cliche, but every time we make some knee-jerk silly decision based on fear, that's a victory for the other side. If the entire point of terrorism is to change our policy through fear, then it looks to me as though they've been succeeding for well over a decade. Our fear of the civilian court system is the most insidious change, because so few people seem to care about it, and its effects will be long-standing and hard to expunge.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Eric Holder called the civilian, constitutional courts "our best weapon against terror."

He may have said that, but, how many trials have there been the last 3 years? (Besides the one where the terrorist was acquitted on almost every count).

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Who needs trials? How many folk in Guantanamo have come to trial? Are the grey-area courts, somewhat like the Diplock courts which led to suspected terrorist internment in Northern Ireland, effective in any way apart from internment? Oh, and the odd bit of interesting and vigorous questioning, often in the groinal area, has that any useful purpose apart, like in N. Ireland, to unite folk against whatever it is that such courts stand for?

I mean it's always possible to respond to a question with questions in kind: but are those questions strictly relevant? Or are they just diversionary? a_new_machine argues in favour of civilian courts, gives his reasons (with which I agree) and then, in the face of the specific argument, we have a tangential comment which, despite there not being civilian courts trying these folk, asks how many trials there have been. Er.

Now please don't get me wrong. I'd prefer Obama to be elected over any of the Republican candidates, but anyone arguing for due process and proper justice will always find me sympathetic. And anyone arguing that we need such due process to really be the good guys will also find me in agreement.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I mean it's always possible to respond to a question with questions in kind: but are those questions strictly relevant?

Considering he was using Eric Holder's words to support his argument, and Eric Holder and the administration's actions have been completely contrary to those words, then yes, the (essentially rhetorical) question was quite relevant.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Using Obama's and his administrations own words against him is unfair.

The funny thing is, people expect in this day and age to have people not remember what happened 3 years ago.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Likewise with regard to such minor things as Donald Rumsfeld ensuring Iraq was able to use chemical weapons against its own civilians with impunity, or with regard to the younger Bush's open embracing of the Gadafi regime before Gadafi got a bullet as his retirement plan. Or even with such minor and significant things as the USA's alliance with the terrorist-sponsoring Saudi regime against the terrorist-sponsoring Iranian regime and claiming King Abdullah is a champion of freedom and democracy.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Point. Except I'm not disagreeing with you or Mr new_machine about Obama's deficiencies in this matter: nor that he/his administration has failed to deliver on this issue, or even that whoever wants to claim the moral high ground here has to close Guantanamo and try these folk with due process - this latter point with which you might disagree.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll admit that the administration has fucked this up pretty royally. I mean, they brought perhaps the weakest case ever against Osama's driver as their first big civilian trial. Now, they've got some pretty high-value people sitting in Gitmo waiting for disposition. The fact is that the non-civilian system is pretty terrible about determining whether these guys are dangerous, it just takes a helluva lot longer than a speedy-trial-bound system would. Of the 700-odd men to have gone through Gitmo, we have actually charged... 20 (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/guantanamo/search/?category=charged&category_val=yes). About 2% of the people we've detained, most of whom we detained for several years before we released them. Heck, the poor Uighurs we picked up in 2001 are still there, several years after their release was ordered by a habeas court. That's right, a lawful order of release has been blatantly ignored because, DoD claims, they can't find a place outside the US to release them, and they refuse to allow them into the US. So those men continue their detention, which has now lasted over a decade in some of the worst conditions imaginable (after the habeas decision in 2007, they were allowed access to luxuries like showers and natural light! oh joy!). If you can't see how this is toxic to the rule of law, and a bad thing all around, I dunno how to help you.