Culture of impunity

The president is a big fan of personal responsibility. As Governor of Texas he presided over the execution of more than 150 people, this in a state where an underfunded public defender system has made a mockery of the 8th Amendment. But Mr Bush’s notion of personal responsibility clearly ends where he and his cronies begin, and his legal team has given administration officials an ingenious way to avoid the consequences of their actions – simply invoke the power of the Commander-in-Chief of the military to conduct the “war on terror” and anything goes – from torture to wiretapping to immunity from prosecution.

So far this administration has presided over the following gems of personal responsibility:

the protection from prosecution in Iraqi courts of all contractors working for occupation forces, courtesy of L. Paul Bremer’s Order 17. This has allowed mercenaries from companies like Blackwater to escape responsibility for such events as the Nisour Square massacre of September16, 2007 and the killing of an Iraqi official’s bodyguard inside the Green Zone. The contractors also operate in a legal gray zone as far as American courts are concerned – are they private companies not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice or government contractors who can’t be tried in civilian courts? The answer is still out on this.

The protection of any telecommunication companies involved in the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of American citizens, immunity granted through the FISA Modernization legislation passed by Congress this month. Interestingly, one member of Congress, Steve King (R-IA) used the contractor immunity as precedent:

To me I think those are the closest two comparisons that we can get. We protect contractors when they went to that smoking hole in that war zone. Why wouldn’t we protect telecommunications companies when they stepped up in good faith and believed that they were legally operating under the law.

An attempt in 2006 to amend the War Crimes Act of 1996 to grant immunity from prosecution to administration officials for pronouncements and legal opinions regarding interrogation techniques and the scope of the Geneva Conventions – officials like Alberto Gonzalez, who issued an opinion in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners captured in Afghanistan, an opinion invalidated by the Supreme Court’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision.

Yet this generosity around forgiving possible criminal activity or lack of personal responsibility does not extend beyond the president’s own sphere of influence. He still has little sympathy for homeowners who have borrowed beyond their means after falling for his blather on the “culture of ownership”; his justice department has prosecuted as criminals immigrants using the stolen social security numbers supplied to them whether they understood the concept of fraudulent paperwork or not; and he was quick to point out the criminality of those “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib who carried out the policies from on high even as he sought immunity for the authors of those policies. It should come as no surprise, then, that FEMA has requested immunity from civil lawsuits stemming from its use of toxic trailers to house displaced residents after the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Perhaps Congress should have left impeachment on the table after all.

Misreading Obama

Barack Obama has stated that those of us concerned (or upset, or infuriated) by his recent position shifts and actions have not been listening to him. That may be the case, but it takes two to communicate, and the senator’s statements do depend on his audience. The current flap over the candidate’s position on trade is a good case in point. While an upcoming article in Fortune magazine suggests that Obama has changed his mind on trade, the senator’s web site points out that he has always been a proponent of free trade, and that the article misrepresents his position. Additionally, the Huffington Post has published a critique of the Fortune interview that also highlights many of the senator’s positions on trade. So yes, Obama is not against free trade, he is against trade deals that don’t take workers’ rights and the environment into account.

Still, Obama wasn’t touting his free trade credentials prior to the Ohio and Texas primaries when he blasted Hillary Clinton for praising the North American Free Trade Agreement as one of her husband’s biggest successes. He, on the other hand, opposed NAFTA and always had. As he noted, “I don’t think NAFTA is good for America, and I never have”. Speaking in a state devastated by the effects of “free trade”, he must have known that the voting public might focus on his opposition to NAFTA, and not on his policy pronouncements on trade – policies he clearly enunciated to yet a different and somewhat less virulently anti-free-trade group of listeners at a meeting of the Alliance for American Manufacturing in April.

Obama expressed his strident opposition to NAFTA in trade-ravaged Ohio prior to the primary there, where economically devastated residents might equate his opposition to a particular trade pact with opposition to free trade in general. Was the public obtuse on trade, or was the senator exploiting vulnerabilities to gain votes. It certainly brings the Canadian Consulate flap into perspective.

On other issues, however, it is more difficult for the candidate to blame voters for misunderstanding him. Last October Obama was ready to filibuster the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act modernization bill that contained a provision immunizing the telecommunications companies that helped the Bush administration break the law from civil lawsuits. In February, prior to the “Potomac primaries”, Obama said:

“I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty.”

But now that Obama faces criticism from his Republican opponent on national security he has backtracked on his opposition to the legislation. His vote in favor of the FISA modernization bill handed immunity to yet another group of corporate lawbreakers, and legally sanctioned the ability of the current administration (and future ones as well) to spy on Americans. Calling the bill an imperfect compromise, he noted:

“Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.”

Clearly, whether on trade or illegal wiretapping, the candidate is trying to place himself in an advantageous political position. Senator Obama may be sincere in his determination to monitor, and as Russ Feingold has noted, correct, some of the more egregious aspects of the FISA legislation, but his vote has helped to legitimize yet another Bush administration illegal activity, and has denied aggrieved citizens their right to a day in court. Finally, should the Republican nominee prevail in November, we should expect no such close monitoring of executive power, especially as it pertains to the so-called war on terror.

Centrally located

Barack Obama’s vote in favor of the FISA overhaul bill was a disappointment even to those of us who did not see the Illinois senator as the great progressive hope. Earlier this year Obama had stated his opposition to any legislation that included immunity for the telecommunication companies that had helped the Bush administration break the law and he promised a filibuster of any such provisions. But in the end his vote added to the ability of the president and his associates to once again evade responsibility for their actions.

Obama is a centrist Democrat who took some very principled stands – especially his strong opposition to the Iraq war – that brought in many voters disgusted with the illegal conduct of the Bush administration and searching for change. Now, with the Democratic Party nomination squared way, Obama has begun to stress his less-than-progressive positions. In addition to his vote on the FISA expansion, his attempts at ingratiating himself with the coveted middle-of-the-road voter have included favoring additional taxpayer funding of faith-based initiatives, the death sentence for child rapists, and a “refinement” of his position on exactly how and when to bring our soldiers home from Iraq. Apparently the pushback on his Iraq pronouncement was so fierce that he had to reiterate his commitment to ending the war. This is just what the candidate needs, a reminder from his most committed supporters. His flip on the FISA bill created an uproar on his web site and a 19,000-strong user group that urged him, to no avail, to oppose the gutting of FISA.

While the senator eagerly courts his would-be centrist supporters, he would do well to remember the millions of people he inspired with slogans such as “change we can believe in”. Those voters, including many young people who have never voted before, may become disillusioned and stay away from the polls as the change they believed in becomes the change that is expedient.