Monday May 25, 2009 08:26 EDT
Backlash grows against Obama's preventive detention proposal
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
The backlash against President Obama's extraordinary proposal for indefinite "preventive detention" -- already widespread in the immediate aftermath of his speech -- continues to grow. On Friday, Sen. Russ Feingold sent a letter (.pdf) to Obama which, while praising some aspects of his speech, vowed to hold hearings on his detention proposal, and in the letter, Feingold rather emphatically highlighted the radical and dangerous aspects of Obama's approach:
My primary concern, however, relates to your reference to the possibility of indefinite detention without trial for certain detainees. While I appreciate your good faith desire to at least enact a statutory basis for such a regime, any system that permits the government to indefinitely detain individuals without charge or without a meaningful opportunity to have accusations against them adjudicated by an impartial arbiter violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional.
snip
Feingold's last point -- that the more Obama embraces radical Bush/Cheney polices, the more entrenched they become as bipartisan consensus -- is critically important, and extends to other policies as well, from the use of state secrets to block judicial review of executive branch lawbreaking, the concealment of evidence of government crimes, the veneration of "looking-forward political harmony" over the rule of law in cases of extreme government lawbreaking, and the denial of habeas corpus rights to individuals we abduct and transport to a war zone (such as Bagram).
On Twitter on Friday, Rachel Maddow pointed to the civil liberties questionnaire from Charlie Savage which Obama answered during the Democratic primary and asked rhetorically: "This is the same guy now proposing 'prolonged detention' without trial?" The New York Times' William Glaberson wrote that Obama's detention policy "would be a departure from the way this country sees itself"; observed that "in some countries, it is called 'administrative detention,' a designation with a slightly totalitarian ring"; and quoted the Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner as pointing out that "holding detainees domestically under a new system of preventive detention would simply 'move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name.'" And on Meet the Press this Sunday, the same bizarre (though entirely understandable) pattern continued to assert itself whereby the hardest-core followers of George Bush can barely contain their admiration for Obama's "counter-terrorism" policies (National Review's Rich Lowry: "it's kind of a funny debate because Obama has embraced the essentials of the Bush counterterrorism program. I think that program worked, I think it's wise of him to do that and it, it reflects some admirable kind of flexibility and pragmatism").
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/25/obama/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/greenwald
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