iemanja
iemanja's JournalObama and War Crimes, 2009, 2011 and 2014
Ever since I saw the fuss on DU on Friday, I've been wondering why people only now are outraged about the Obama administration's decision not to prosecute war crimes, when I recall it's being clear early on, even before his inauguration, that he had decided not to have the Justice Department pursue indictments.
I remember objecting to it at the time, but not many people seemed concerned. Yet suddenly Friday people here began to express outrage due to the comments in the President's press conference. We even have an OP reposting a piece by Charlies Pierce in Esquire, positioned below Cameron Diaz in a wet shirt, declaring the President's statement at the press conference "the single most revolting thing this president ever said in public."
Now I may be at a disadvantage in not having had television the past couple of months, but I am having trouble understanding why those comments were worse than his decision six years ago not to proceed with full investigations and prosecutions of war crimes. Is my lack of outrage due to being deprived a repeat loop on cable television reminding me how this above all else is a seminal moment the Obama Presidency? Did I hallucinate prior press coverage from years ago making clear no prosecutions would take place?
No, it turns out I did not hallucinate. Jan 11, 2009, NYTimes:
In the clearest indication so far of his thinking on the issue, Mr. Obama said on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” that there should be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law” but that his legal team was still evaluating interrogation and detention issues and would examine “past practices.”
Mr. Obama added that he also had “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
“And part of my job,” he continued, “is to make sure that, for example, at the C.I.A., you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.” . . .
There was no immediate reaction from Capitol Hill, where there has been a growing sense that Mr. Obama was not inclined to pursue these matters. In resisting pressure for a wider inquiry, he risks the ire of influential Democratic lawmakers on Congressional judiciary and intelligence committees and core constituencies who hoped his election would cast a spotlight on President Bush’s antiterror efforts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html?_r=0
Using the Google machine, I found some articles from 2011 maintaining that the President feared a coup if he pressed for prosecutions.
Christopher Edley Jr., law dean at the University of California and a high-ranking member of the Obama transition team, made the revelation during a 9/11 forum at his law school on September 2. Andrew Kreig, director of the D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project, reports that Edley's comments were in response to questions from Susan Harman, a long-time California peace advocate.
Edley apparently tried to justify Obama's "look forward, not backwards" policy toward Bush-era lawbreaking. Instead, Kreig writes, Edley revealed the Obama team's weakness in the face of Republican thuggery:
Edley's rationale implies that Obama and his team fear the military/national security forces that he is supposed be commanding--and that Republicans have intimidated him right from the start of his presidency even though voters in 2008 rejected Republicans by the largest combined presidential-congressional mandate in recent U.S. history. Edley responded to our request for additional information by providing a description of the transition team's fears, which we present below as an exclusive email interview. Among his important points is that transition officials, not Obama, agreed that he faced the possibility of a coup.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/07/1014303/-Obama-Advisors-Feared-a-Coup-if-the-Administration-Prosecuted-War-Crimes
I don't know if those fears about a coup were legitimate. They strike me as exaggerated, and I certainly can't comment on what actual threat might have existed. However, my question to DU is the following: Where were you on this issue in Jan. of 2009? Were you outraged then? Did you communicate those views to the President? Or did you wait until this past Friday to become upset? Why did it take six years? And why was the speech Friday worse than the interview on ABC's This Week in Jan. 2009 when it was clear he had decided not to move forward on prosecutions? Did you think he would magically change his mind over those six years? Or did you just not think about it until Friday's press conference? How is it possible that the statement on Friday can actually be worse than the decision not to prosecute six years ago?
Since WWII?
Why the limit? Most of the most contentious crises were in the nineteenth century, the Bank and Nullification being commonly cited. Ultimately the Secession of Southern States would prove to be the ultimate Constitutional Crisis, leading to Civil War.
Constitutional Crisis is a term greatly overused. Conflicts between branches of governments emerge that are not crises. While I would think it clear that the CIA's spying of the senate violated the constitution, a violation is not the same as a crisis. For it to be a crisis, the Executive and Congressional branches would both have to assert their actions were justified and that they each in turn had authority over the issue. The CIA and the White House are not claiming that to be the case. They admit it was a violation. Therefore no constitutional crisis is triggered. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.upenn.edu%2Flive%2Ffiles%2F104-levinsonbalkin157upalrev7072009pdf&ei=yn7cU9zKMoydyAT374KgAg&usg=AFQjCNECWsJN5yPSZcbzU8-8FViORj2riQ&sig2=zfq9x53DDQST5jv6vHQqBA
The author of the article above cites Little Rock in 1957 as an example of a type of constitutional crisis where different branches of government each assert authority and refuse to acknowledge the authority of the other.
I can tell you of constitutional violations I consider more concerning than spying on congress: NSA surveillance and effective nullification of the Fourth Amendment. I do not consider spying of congress more serious than of ordinary Americans. I am relieved to know that you discovered congress exists, however. You have spent at least a year focusing entirely on the Presidency and it's potential occupants.
I would also say suspension of Habeas Corpus during the war on terror is of greater concern.
In terms of the CIA particularly, involvement in the assassination of Americans on US soil in furtherance of a brutal right-wing dictatorship strikes me as more serious. http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/ As well as Americans and Chileans killed in the aftermath of the US sponsored coup that overturned the oldest democracy in Latin America. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=newssearch&cd=1&ved=0CBsQqQIoADAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeoplesworld.org%2Fjudicial-finding-in-chile-says-u-s-complicit-in-death-of-young-americans%2F&ei=1XPcU-HTMpOHyATVvoGQBw&usg=AFQjCNHAJIes8opvby8KPstz1HGrc1ZY9A&sig2=iD3l6HWU3ehcfP8B2OVyWw
The Iran Contra affair violated congressional authority since the White House and CIA broke the the Boland Amendment that made it illegal to arm the contra rebels seeking to overturn the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
The US sponsored coup against Arbenz in 1954 was atrocious. US action was influenced by the fact that both the Director of the CIA and Secretary of State were major stock holders in United Fruit, a US company whose holdings were threatened by land reform proposed by the Arbenz government (only lands not currently cultivated). That coup led to the installation of a series of military dictatorships that would, with military aid and instruction by the US military (in the School of the Americas) and CIA, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly indigenous, over the subsequent four decades. That included torture of Guatemalans and Americans, like Sister Diana Ortiz, who wrote about her torture at the hands of an American. http://www.amazon.com/The-Blindfolds-Eyes-Journey-Torture/dp/1570755639
Other horrors by the CIA included the overthrow in 1953, of the Mosaddegh administration in Iran. That would set the conditions that would lead to the Iranian revolution of 1979, whose consequences we continue to face, including through the arming of Hamas and the conflict going on this very moment.
Really, Brenner has nothing on Allen Dulles, head of CIA during both of the above coups as well as the Bay of Pigs.
So it's one thing to say the spying on congress is bad and to give reasons why, but your ahistorical hyperbole irritates me. It seems the point as ever is to pretend Obama is the worst President in history. I have long grown weary of it.
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