Savaging Obama on Continuing Bush Policy

By Cernig

Charlie Savage today (via Glenn Greenwald):

Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

These and other signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared — prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.

That the Obama administration is now resurrecting Bush's defense of using blanket "state secrets" claims to keep lawsuits on such matters as torture and warrantless eavesdropping, and even saying that it's doing so as not to "undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency" - a direct take from Bush's executive privilege claims - isn't too surprising. We didn't ask the question nearly loudly enough or often enough, myself included.

As St. Petersburg Times columnist and former Florida ACLU director Robyn Blummer wrote, way back in May 2006:

Bush has taught tomorrow's leaders that, if there are no consequences for ignoring legal constraints on power and if no one stops you from conducting the nation's business in secret, you don't have to be accountable. He is ruling through the tautological doctrine of Richard Nixon, who told interviewer David Frost that as long as the president's doing it "that means it is not illegal.'' ...

Being answerable to another is humbling. It makes you more careful in your actions. It requires that you consider how you will defend your decisions. George Bush has freed himself of this constitutional imperative and is showing the next president, and the next, how it is done.

And as Sully writes today:

the whole point of our resistance to the war crimes of the last seven years was not to rely on our subjective beliefs about the moral integrity of a lone man in the Oval Office. It is to restore a maximally transparent, lawful and effective policy against Jihadist terrorism under the rule of law and the Constitution. Obama needs to be held to exactly the same standards as Bush. And if he thinks we will give him a pass, he needs to think again.

O.K. so the Left slipped up there. We didn't hold the candidate's feet to the fire enough during the primaries. Let's not compound that error by partisanly defending "our president" over stuff we shouldn't defend him on. No more heads in the sand.