Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009 02:26 PST
Phil Carter's resignation from key detainee policy post
By Glenn Greenwald
Phillip Carter is a lawyer, a former Army Captain, a veteran of the Iraq War and a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. He was a vigorous supporter of Barack Obama's campaign, and in 2008, became the Obama campaign's National Veterans Director. In April of this year, he was appointed the top Pentagon official for detainee affairs, but yesterday, he suddenly "quit without explanation just days after Obama confirmed in an interview with Fox News in Beijing that his administration would miss its Jan. 22 Guantánamo closure deadline."
Carter said he was resigning due to "personal issues," and -- like Greg Craig before him -- remained loyal to Obama by refraining, at least thus far, from publicly criticizing any administration policies. I have no idea what actually motivated Carter's abrupt resignation, but here's what I do know: so many of the detention and other "War on Terror" policies Obama has explicitly adopted were the very same ones which Carter (as well as Obama) repeatedly railed against during the Bush years, in Carter's case primarily in blogs he maintained both at The Washington Post and at Slate. Whatever else is true, the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter's responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.
(snipping --see full article listing of his positions on Bush Admin policy)
Carter had also voiced serious concerns over the Bush DOJ's use of the "state secrets" privilege as a means of evading vital constitutional and other legal questions -- only to watch the Obama DOJ do the same thing. He insisted upon a distinction between conventional wars of the past and the "War on Terror" when claiming presidential power -- pointing out that conventional wars have limits and come to an end and the "War on Terror" doesn't -- only to watch the Obama administration discard that distinction and instead adopt exactly the Bush/Cheney "war" theory as a means to detain people with no charges. During the campaign, he expressed excitement over what appeared to be Obama's stated willingness to prosecute Bush officials for war crimes, only to watch Obama, once elected, quickly insist that we should Look Forward, not Backward. Relatedly, Carter advocated real consequences for DOJ torture-approving lawyers such as John Yoo (specifically, his firing from Berkeley), only to watch the Obama administration take multiple steps to protects such officials from any legal consequences. He applauded the Bush Pentagon's cancellation of a key appointment of Gen. Jay Hood to Pakistan on the ground that Hood had presided over Guantanamo and was thus "tained by torture," only to watch Obama appoint the highly tainted Gen. McChyrstal as his commander in Afghanistan.
As I said, I have no idea whether any of this played a role in Carter's resignation, and it's certainly possible that loyalty to Obama would prevent him from voicing these complaints. He's a thoughtful analyst who is not easily pigeon-holed and I don't want to attribute ideas to him he hasn't expressed . But what is abundantly clear is that many of the Bush/Cheney policies which Carter found most offensive are ones which the new administration has explicitly adopted as its own. Equally clear is that, following Greg Craig, this is now the second high-profile resignation of a relatively devoted civil libertarian in a short period of time. Combine that with the still-missing-and-unconfirmed Dawn Johnsen, and all of this leaves those who are indifferent or hostile to civil liberties values -- people like John Brennan and Rahm Emanuel -- with even fewer counter-weights than before
bold emphasis mine
link:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/25/carter/index.html
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