There were great "Huzzahs!" across the liberal landscape last week as President Obama announced that he had signed a "waiver" of some of the most troubling of the provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. According to the announcement, the new rules which deal with Section 1022 of the law (previously Section 1032 as set forth in the original Senate bill). The White House announced that this section already is inapplicable to United States citizens and the President was waiving the applicability to legal resident aliens. Furthermore, the President was allowing for those who are required to be held under military custody to be transferred back to civilian custody when necessary..
Immediately following this announcement, both the liberal and mainstream press hailed this as a win for civil liberties (see the Huffington Post article on the announcement here). Posts on Reddit as well as on Facebook and the twitterverse were celebrating Obama's "veto" of the NDAA detention provisions. Once again President Obama was a friend to freedom and was living up to his promises to be the champion of civil liberties and the Constitution on which he campaigned in 2008.
Except that he isn't and his "rules" do no such thing.
I have previously discussed this bill on this blog in my post "We Are All Well and Truly F***ed" which can be found here. As pointed out there, this section of the NDAA only deals with the requirement that anyone covered under this bill be detained by the military and held indefinitely in military custody. It is true that this section does not apply to U.S. citizens and under these rules the President is agreeing that he is not going to apply this to legal permanent resident aliens either. Of course this does not prevent him from doing so if he changes his mind, which he can, of course, do since he is the one making the rules in the first place.
But what is genuinely appalling about the pass that the President is receiving on this is that nothing in these rules addresses the biggest and most troubling aspect of this law in the first place. That is that the President is still given the authority under this law to detain and hold indefinitely without charge or trial anyone, including United States citizens, who is deemed by the President in his sole judgment to be a terrorist or to have committed a belligerent act against the United States. Let me state that again so that you out there who are so scared of a Rick Santorum presidency that you are willing to buy any of the bullshit that the Obama campaign is shoveling at you: NOTHING IN THESE RULES CHANGES THE PRESIDENT'S ABILITY TO DETAIN AND HOLD INDEFINITELY WITHOUT CHARGE OR TRIAL ANYONE, INCLUDING UNITED STATES CITIZENS, WHO IS DEEMED BY THE PRESIDENT IN HIS SOLE JUDGMENT TO BE A TERRORIST OR TO HAVE COMMITTED A BELLIGERENT ACT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.
This law sets up a despotic presidency and it was supported by almost all of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Much was made in the media of the opposition to the bill by the FBI and CIA who said that it would harm their ability to pursue terrorist suspects in the United States. But, again, most of this coverage missed the point. The FBI and the CIA are all for indefinite detention without charge. It makes their life easier. They just didn't want the military to have all the fun, they wanted in the game themselves. Thus the changes to the law which cut out the requirement that the detention be by the military.
So, all of this celebrating among liberals over this decision of President Obama to do an about face and suddenly embrace individual liberties was all for nothing. The fact that the implementation of rules which have no effect on the very law which caused all of the rightful rancor among civil libertarians on both sides of the political divide in the first place, is being hailed as proof that a second Obama term would be much different than the first shows a lot about those doing the celebrating. It shows that the left is either willfully blind to what is happening due to their fear of a truly draconian right wing Presidency or it shows that they really didn't understand this law in the first place. Either conclusion is troubling.
If the left is being willfully blind to the abuses of the Obama administration in the realm of civil liberties, it shows a lack of real concern over these issues in the first place. It is one thing to vote for someone knowing that he is not the real deal because his opposition is so horrible, it is truly another to hail your choice as someone who truly believes in what you do. If you are voting for Barack Obama because you really believe that he is a civil libertarian and will fight for individual rights and liberties in his second term, you are stupid and there is nothing I can do for you. If you know this is not the case, but you are going to proclaim that he is such because he passed some meaningless rules regarding the worst piece of legislation he signed then you are a liar and any authority you claimed to have on these issues is forever forfeited.
It is also quite possible that those hailing this decision simply never understood the NDAA or its ramifications for the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans in the first place. This would certainly make sense since if people on either side of the political spectrum understood what this legislation, along with a whole host of other attacks on our civil liberties that have occurred over the last decade, there would have (or should have) been a revolution by now. Of course those on the left are not immune from the extraordinary lack of engagement in political and civil affairs that has seemed to become the norm for American citizens. Since 2001, the United States has seen the implementation of the largest Federal bureaucracy ever devised whose sole purpose is to restrict liberty and engage in unprecedented collection of information (read: spy) on American citizens in the history of our republic in the Department of Homeland Security, the unprecedented transfer of wealth to the richest individuals in the nation, as well as the largest criminal conspiracy ever to be pulled off in the banking meltdown of 2008, all done with the seal of approval of our Federal government. All the while, the only thing that the average American citizen seemed to care about was how cheap his gas was going to be and who was going to survive on this week's Dancing With the Stars. We get the government we deserve, and what we deserve right now is either Barack Obama or one of the four idiots who are battling to lose to him.
Look, I get that Barack Obama might be the lesser of two evils in 2012. But don't try and convince me that the lesser of two evils isn't evil.
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