MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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More Greenwald Idiocy
By A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 2:46pm |One of the questions frequently asked about the NSA scandal was why Bush and Cheney decided to eavesdrop in violation of the law rather than having Congress approve their program; in the wake of 9/11, both parties in Congress were as subservient as could be, and would have offered zero resistance to requests by the administration for increased eavesdropping powers (the same question was asked of Bush's refusal to seek Congressional approval for the detention and military commissions regime at Guantanamo). The answer to that question ultimately became clear: they did not want to seek Congressional approval, even though they easily could have obtained it, because they wanted to establish the "principle" that the President is omnipotent in these areas and needs nobody's permission (neither from Congress nor the courts) to do what the President wants.
URL:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/?source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110
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Comments
If both Bush and Obama easily could have obtained Congressioanl approval (and Glenn's logic seems sound enough), it does beg the question why they didn't. I'd be interested to hear any reason besides 'to show a President can', really. That Harold Koh must have some sway over Obama...or do I mean vice versa? ;o) Quite a scoop, there, Charlie Savage.
by we are stardust on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 4:52pm
I'm afraid I have to agree with....Greenwald.
Those in Washington are merely puppets with the puppeteers in Wall Street pulling the stings. Changing the puppets or the political pins or face paint will do no good because they will still do the same dance to the same tune since Wall Street pulls their strings.
What needs to be done is to eliminate the puppeteers.
by cmaukonen on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 5:05pm
So, what about the excerpt you highlight here do you find idiotic?
In terms of Bush (who the quote quite specifically refers to), I think he is pretty close to spot-on. Or at least in terms of the team Bush assembled ... Wolfowitz/Libby/etc. have a long history of advocating the view of establishing a war-power executive with near omnipotence as does Cheney.
I don't necessarily see Obama having the specific ideological objective that team Bush did. I think he's just kind of an arrogant prick using the low-bar set by his predecessor as useful precedent when it suits his purpose.
He initially requested congressional approval. The approval was granted in the Senate, it simply hasn't gotten a hearing in the House yet. Certainly seems at some stage Obama acknowledged a need and requested congressional approval for the operation. Now, rather than press congress to vote and approve it Obama changes his tune and announces he never needed approval in the first place.
So. What? As long as "accommodating" the law achieves an outcome he likes, Obama is all about giving the appearance of submitting to oversight ... and if there is a chance the outcome won't be what he wants he just says "Oh, never mind ... what we meant was we don't give a fuck what you think - we're going to do whatever we want anyhow. We were just hoping you'd approve this so it looked like we were all transparent and shit."
In some ways that is far more crass than having a fucked up (and reasonably public) anti-constitutional ideological belief about executive power that ends up manifesting in policy and work product. I'm not going to characterize one as worse than the other ... IMO, both suck.
Any way it goes. Obama's decision to play this lawyer-shuffle rather than brick-bat Bohner (perfect opportunity to cast the GOP as weak on democracy and defense) makes discussion of the similarities and contrasts with Bush's lawyer games a totally reasonable and germane discussion to help contextualize and understand the current political situation.
"Those who forget what happened five years ago may be destined to repeat what happened five years ago."
(Maybe their "links summit" or whatever the jackasses in the press call the round of golf O/B played will result in Bohner bringing it to the floor just in the nick of time and render the whole thing largely irrelevant. Lord knows who Obama would have to sell out to make that happen ... sometimes it feels like American constituencies are lined up in a perverse game of Russian roulette where the gun gets pointed at one us every time Obama wants to achieve a political "win". He "wins" - one of us gets shot. Some corporation feasts. Some politician or PAC gets paid ... nope, not feeling cynical at all.)
by kgb999 on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 6:30pm
I'm pretty sure he was being ironic; Greenwald has some...mmm... detractors at dagblog. ;o)
by we are stardust on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 6:47pm
Heh. Guess my irony meter is kind of off-kilter. Yeah, some folks are kind of like a broken record when it comes to debate/discussion of events ("ODS! ODS! ODS! Republicans are WORSE.") ... but not everyone ... taken without irony, thought maybe there was actually something LuLu found idiotic about it.
It was an interesting move by Obama. I really don't get what his advisers are thinking ... unless it's all him, in which case I don't get what he's thinking. I mean, hell, pull out treaty obligations on them and challenge them to disband NATO. Do fucking *something* that can be called a clearly signature alpha move.
Not talking right or wrong here, just politically. Whatever else Obama does between now and 2012 it needs to begin to definitively establish him as standing far-and-apart from Bush. Not some multi-paragraph explanation - an in your face break and repudiation. And it's not for the benefit liberals. Everyone pretty much still agrees, Bush sucked. Ironically, this cycle it seems as if Bush's tarnished legacy has become a stone around Obama's neck more than it is the GOP's were that ghost to rear it's ugly head (and with Lizardbreath Cheney skulking around...). The so-called conservatives largely branded Bush a traitor to their ideology and spent 2008 washing their hands of him ... born anew as bouncier, conservativier, tea partyerier neocon jackasses. Psycho, sure ... but not Bush.
As it sits the GOP can just hammer home a meme that Bush wasn't really a conservative republican (check); Obama did a bunch of the stuff that Bush did; ergo anything that sucked which was done by both is actually non-conservative and non-republican ... it is, in fact, liberal - just as Obama is always and Bush is in his weakness.
And of course, the GOP will have gotten this idea from the liberals when they were criticizing Obama. Rove would have never thought of that one on his own in advance. Nope. Couldn't happen.
by kgb999 on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 9:15pm
You are right. My headline, which I meant to be sarcastic, does not fit well with the excerpt I posted unless you take it, the headline, in a local context and accept it as sarcasm that was intended to spark interest in reading the entire article.
G.G. has been comparing Bush policies on important matters a lot lately and finding little contrast. Obviously, those policies which he believes to be bad and/or unconstitutional are the ones he brings to our attention. As do most people, I feel I have at least a semi-accurate appraisal of the "why's" behind the decisions that G.Junior made. They mostly seem to be the result of a shallow mind having its ego fed after a lifetime of being spotted a stand on third base and never being able score. Finally, home was stolen for him, and he must have known it as well as anyone and been a bit haunted by it, and then after his bullhorn moment he thought he was a home-run hitter. The whole world seemed to love him and he glowed like he just got his first kiss. The question of why Bush did anything during his term becomes a question of the motives of others who were smart enough and long involved enough to have motives beyond the moment. The motives of Obama are not clear at all to me. He is certainly smart enough and well enough informed by years of study, and involvement, and paying attention, to have his own mind. For that reason I hold what I consider to be his transgressions much more personally against him where previously I held them against the gang that surrounded Bush.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 06/19/2011 - 7:44pm