Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Makes me sad

It seems that there are very few Obama supporters out there who care that Obama is behaving worse than Bush on matters that he and his administration were most despised for. Apart from myself, there are a few at Daily Kos, EFF, Andrew Sullivan, and the inimitable Glenn Greenwald that I count so far. Not many. I'm not sure how many would even bother to read the full story about what Obama is doing and just how wrong all of it really is.

When I wrote a letter to Bill Burton of the Obama campaign last year, explaining how Obama lost my support because of his reversed stance on the warrantless wiretapping issue, it got picked up by Glenn Greenwald, and by the New York Daily News. I got a big spike in traffic but I would rather that Obama would have just kept his word.

Obama pissed off a lot of his supporters other than the likes of me, because he knew that reversing his stance on immunity for telecoms made him look either weak and malleable (perhaps in the pocket of the likes of AT&T, who forked over the cash for the DNC convention), or just a fork-tongued liar. In a weak effort to try to appease some of the angry supporters, Obama issued a statement - perhaps knowingly dishonest even then - that immunity for telecoms didn't shield guilty government officials.

Well, Obama has not only changed his tune on that one, he actually goes one further than Bush. His DOJ is now trying to convince the courts that the government can't even be sued for information relevant to the warrantless wiretapping cases at all.

I guess in this case "change" means being worse than Bush?

I know other Obama supporters don't really care about this, because in their eyes he can do no wrong. He is, as has been said, the Benevolent Tyrant, it seems.

As for me, I'm very, very saddened by this. Saddened because of my own naiveté. Sad for thinking that is was remotely possible for a politician to not be a liar. I put so much effort into Obama's primary campaign because I believed he could be the one politician that could be trusted to do the right thing. Obama promised to bring a new degree of transparency to the White House, but the only transparency we've seen are the drapes pulled back on the front room. But we need light shining on the darkest corners of the White House to expose the evil of the Bush/Cheney regime. Yet, at every opportunity, Obama has done the opposite. Instead of working to hold them accountable, he helps them get away with their misdeeds.

The two most egregious examples of Bush's legacy are the warrantless wiretapping and illegals spying on Americans, and the torture of detainees. Obama is bending over backwards to shield Bush and Cheney and their cronies from accountability.

Obama has totally crossed the line.

Perhaps when the courts of other nations have their own trials, and convict Bush and Cheney of war crimes, then they can turn their attention to Obama for aiding and abetting known war criminals.

As Rachel Maddow says, "the arc of the Universe bends towards justice." Lets hope she's even just a little bit right.

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