American's Did Not Vote For This Obama
Politics / US Politics May 17, 2009 - 08:44 PM GMTBy: Mike_Whitney
Anyone who has ever wasted good money on a clunker only to drop the transmission 15 minutes after leaving the car-lot, knows the feeling. It's like a swift-kick in the groin followed by weeks of fist-pounding rage. It's called buyer's remorse; "Gawd, I wish I hadn't bought that piece of dogshite!"
There are probably a lot of former-Obama supporters feeling that same agonizing sense despair now that President Rainbow has done an about-face on every campaign promise he made. So much for "truth in advertising", eh?What a disaster. Did anyone know it was gonna be this bad?
For the record; I didn't vote for Obama because I didn't like the way he backpedaled on wiretapping and because he promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. (Like everyone else who voted for Ralph Nader; I got loads of grief for it) But that doesn't mean I didn't want Obama to succeed. I did. The country is in too big a mess NOT to hope that he would succeed. But now...?
Let's just forget about the fact that Obama never lifted a finger to stop Israel's two week rampage through Gaza which killed 1,100 unarmed civilians and destroyed much of the critical infrastructure. And let's give him a pass for equivocating on Iran, Georgia, missile defense in East Europe, Cuba, NAFTA, FISA, torture, war crimes, the Employee free Choice Act (EFCA) and any other issue that's important to liberals, progressives, leftists or anyone else who eats with a fork or walks on two legs. And let's excuse Obama for stepping up the air war in Afghanistan even though another 140 Afghan villagers were blown to bits 10 days ago while sitting in their schools, sleeping in their beds or having dinner with their families. (After all, Obama did say he was sorry, didn't he?)
But now Obama is backing off on his promise to withdrawal troops from Iraq in 16 months. And, now he's planning to restore Bush's kangaroo courts (Military tribunals) for prisoners at Guantanamo who've never even been formally charged with a crime! And, now, he's threatening to hold some prisoners indefinitely in the U.S. without trial. (http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/14/obama-mulls-indefinite-detention-without-trial-for-detainees/)
I don't know about you, but I believe that America is based on the idea that every man has certain basic rights, and the most fundamental of all those rights is the right to know why the state has thrown your ass in jail. That's numero uno! It's called habeas corpus and the whole judicial system rests on that one foundation stone. People like Obama, who don't believe in habeas, shouldn't even call themselves "American" in my book because they don't believe in the underlying principles.
Does Khalid Sheik Mohamed--the so-called "9-11 mastermind"-- deserve his day in court?
You're damn right he does! That's how the system works. Deal with it.
Obama is an unprincipled poseur; a snake charmer; a complete phony. No wonder the gushing David Brooks has been singing his praises lately. No wonder Andrew Sullivan calls him the "Neocon in Chief". Heck, even Cheney was talking-up Obama's bloody AfPak policy a few days ago. That says it all, doesn't it?
Here's a blurp from Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, that sums up Obama perfectly:
"Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that civilians courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney."
Hypocrite? We'd be better off with McCain. At least with McCain you know what you're getting.
By Mike Whitney
Email: fergiewhitney@msn.com
Mike is a well respected freelance writer living in Washington state, interested in politics and economics from a libertarian perspective.
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