No subject

pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in
fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has
officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian
genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why
does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has
any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through
with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt
politicians, he ought to step down now - before he drags us further into
the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions". If a cop or
other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday,
you could be held in "prolonged detention". Reports in US state-controlled
media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic
terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also
kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone
else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military
dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than
consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their
people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't
control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime" - contempt for rulers that
might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than
un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western
jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human
decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is
an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an
election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse,
would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of
civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him.
Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader
just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster,
and he should remove himself from power.

"Prolonged detention", reported The New York Times, would be inflicted
upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried".

"Cannot be tried". Interesting choice of words.

Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged
with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this
writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with
piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the US has no jurisdiction. Anyone can
be tried.

What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys
languishing at Guantanamo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama
Administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted.
As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn't
enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone
conclusion.

Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in
American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump
and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what
to do with the most problematic group of Guantanamo detainees: those who
pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack
of evidence or because evidence is tainted".

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people
against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free.
In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of
fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence"
is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a
crime - an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime - in a fair trial, you release
him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless
behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason
alone, Obama should resign.

Copyright 2009 Ted Rall

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