The New War President

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

'He raised the issue of preventive detention himself...'

WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.

More torture under Obama at Guantonomo: Say hello to the Immediate Reaction Force

While there’s been a lot of focus on torture under the Bush administration, what about under President Obama? In a new article, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill writes the Obama administration is continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo that regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes, dousing them with chemicals.

This force, officially known as the Immediate Reaction Force, has been labeled the “Extreme Repression Force” by Guantanamo prisoners, and human rights lawyers call their actions illegal, Jeremy writes. MORE

Hailing the leader as a War President and the powers that go with it

This week, Newsweek's Editor Jon Meacham interviewed Barack Obama, adopted Bush's label and applied it to Obama, asking him:

Can anything get you ready to be a war president?

Nothing excites our media stars more than saluting and fetishizing the President as a "War President" and "Commander-in-Chief" (David Broder today, in his column entitled "Obama in Command": Obama is "continuing, with minor modifications, the policies and practices of his Republican predecessor . . . . Obama's liberal critics are right. He is a different man now. He has learned what it means to be commander in chief"). But isn't the phrase "war president" a complete redundancy when it comes to the U.S.? Which American presidents were not "war presidents"?
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And I've omitted far more American military actions from this list than I included.

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In any event, the U.S. is, more or less, a nation permanently at war. One can debate whether all or some of our wars are good or not, but what can't be debated is that we fight wars far, far more than any other country -- basically, continuously. That's just a fact. After Bush 41's invasion of Panama, R.W. Apple wrote on the front page of The New York Times that the invasion "constituted a Presidential initiation rite" whereby:

For better or for worse, most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood to protect or advance what they construe as the national interest.

In other words, there's no such thing as an American President who is not a "war President."

That's why this media construct that things are different for "war presidents" -- we have to give "war presidents" greater power and leeway; demand less transparency and accept more secrecy; acquiesce to abridgments of civil liberties when "America is at war"; and, coming soon under the Change banner, allow them the right to imprison people indefinitely with no trials even beyond "war zones" -- is so manipulative and misleading. It implies that "America at war" is some sort of unusual and temporary circumstance rather than what it is: our permanent state of affairs. MORE

So. Full blown fascism in 10, 9, 8 ...

Comments

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Grr. So much for transparency...

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

so much for rule of law. and this from a constitutional law prof, no less.

[sajia.livejournal.com]

Something tells me that the Daily Show guys won't be so hard on him, and not just because he's black.

[yana-ambf.livejournal.com]

The US is def. a war state, no question. War and violence is how the US realizes its imperial ambitions and maintains its stranglehold on world resources. You gotta kill people to take stuff, and the US has never had a problem doing that. Like H. Rap Brown said, "Violence is as American as cherry pie."

[yana-ambf.livejournal.com]

We also have to question the concept of "the law." William Kunstler, a prominent human rights attorney and author, argued that the law was a guise, essentially, an excuse for the ruling class to realize its ambitions and interests.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Bad news.