The Red Cross Torture Report

What it Means.

Now and then, there has been talk of prosecuting the Bushies who ordered the creation of our torture regime and the commission of war crimes. I’d be completely in favor of that since I’m one of those people who thinks the US remains a nation of laws under God even when it is inconvenient to the fortunes of Movement Conservatives.

However, as some of the Left are now discovering, the big problem facing those who would like to pursue this course is not primarily GOP opposition (though it, of course, exists) but rather fellow lefties (including their very own President) who, having now seized the One Ring as suddenly reluctant to just give up all that reckless unilateral power.

And so guys like Glenn Greenwald, who carefully chronicled Bush/Cheney’s disastrous abuses of power over the past eight years, find themselves astonished and chagrined by the about face of the Obama cult:

In the last week alone, the Obama DOJ (a) attempted to shield Bush’s illegal spying programs from judicial review by (yet again) invoking the very “state secrets” argument that Democrats spent years condemning and by inventing a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim that not even the Bush administration espoused, and (b) argued that individuals abducted outside of Afghanistan by the U.S. and then “rendered” to and imprisoned in Bagram have no rights of any kind — not even to have a hearing to contest the accusations against them — even if they are not Afghans and were captured far away from any “battlefield.” These were merely the latest — and among the most disturbing — in a string of episodes in which the Obama administration has explicitly claimed to possess the very presidential powers that Bush critics spent years condemning as radical, lawless and authoritarian.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for honest Obama supporters to dismiss away or even minimize these criticisms and, especially, to malign the motives of critics. After all, the Obama DOJ’s embrace of many (though by no means all) of the most radical and extremist Bush/Cheney positions — and the contradictions between Obama’s campaign claims and his actions as President — are now so glaring and severe that the harshest denunciations of Obama’s actions are coming from those who, during the Bush years, were held up by liberals and by Obama supporters as the most trustworthy and praiseworthy authorities on these matters.

The parking on the left is now the parking on the right.

Greenwald, to his great credit, is not having any of it from the Administration or its cultists. His condemnation of Obama’s sudden and stark about-face is severe and uncompromising and I applaud him for it.

However, I am not a bit surprised to see that he now faces his own Coalition for Fog from fellow lefties who are just as eager to seek salvation through Leviathan by any means necessary as the most amoral torture apologist on the Right. As he raises his voice against Obama’s contemptible actions, he is greeted by catcalls that sound strangely familiar to me:

it seems much more plausible to me that Greenwald simply doesn’t have access to the same facts the current DOJ does;

None of us have seen the actual case files and can make informed judgments about whether revealing the relevant information in particular cases would actually pose a threat to national security. That applies equally to Greenwald, and he must know that; it makes his rant silly and intellectually dishonest;

But Obama picks his battles. You can be upset that he hasn’t chosen to make this one of them (I am too), but I’m not sure that it’s necessarily on the same plane as the economy, health care, energy independence, etc.;

look at Obama and tell us if you see a man who is interested in some kind of imperial all-powerful, unchecked presidency. what in his background, his demeanor or his other actions make you think he’s that kind of guy ? what does your gut tell you about him? he’s a power-hungry authoritarian who is seeking to grab as much power as he can ? bullshit.

I guess Glenzilla will end up on the cover of Newsweek and have an appearance on Morning Joe soon since he has now said effectively that President Obama is worse than Bush but he is just about to over play his normally spot on hand with his rhetoric;

Let’s also keep in mind here that one of Greenwald’s jobs is to get people to read his blog. It’s not like he’s doing this for Salon pro-bono.

Now that the Left has the One Ring, it will be interesting to see which voices emerge there to challenge the One as he consolidates for himself the immense unilateral power to do evil that was bequeathed to him by an Administration whose policies he clings to and expands even while professing to oppose them. Having seen allegedly small government Christian conservatives make complete whores of themselves for power, despite their own alleged principles, I wonder how Lefties who often don’t even profess the such principles will resist the whispers of the One Ring. After all, now it’s on the hand of the Best and the Brightest? Lesser men might be tempted to do evil with it. But surely not the cult of Obama!

So far, things don’t look too promising. May God help our Lefties be more successful than I was in denouncing Obama’s reach for the One Ring. The last thing we need is an Administration that adds Bush’s corruption of the rule of law to it’s own contempt for unborn human life.

On the bright side, Righties who cheered for Bush/Cheney reckless war crimes will reliably grow a fake conscience about this stuff as long as Obama is in office. Hopefully, it will be a prelude to growing a real one. Still, I expect more cavalcades of hypocrisy as the Left fights for abortion and unilateral executive power and capitulates to GOP demands not to look too closely into Bush era crimes in order to get the votes necessary to achieve that.

Anybody who thinks our ruling classes care about justice: I have a bridge to sell you.