A post-9/11 betrayal endures
Tim Rutten
James Madison once wrote, "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." In armed conflict, he argued, "the discretionary power of the executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.... No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
Nine years ago today, the roar of falling aircraft and crumbling buildings gave way to the cries of dying innocents, and that tragic cacophony shook this nation to its foundations. The echoes of that awful, unnatural din still resound in unwelcome ways. Who, for example, could have foreseen that it would crowd from our national conversation the quiet wisdom of voices like Madison's?
The story of how the Bush-Cheney administration rushed to make torture an instrument of national policy in its "war on terror," and of how it created an international gulag in which to abuse prisoners, is well known. Less remarked on — for reasons that do nobody credit — is the fact that President Obama and his administration have embraced the secrecy and usurpations of power that made possible the Bush-Cheney betrayal of American values.
Obama campaigned on the promise to end torture and shut down the gulag, but the infamous prison camp at Guantanamo remains, trials for accused terrorists have yet to be conducted and the "extraordinary renditions" reportedly continue. (We don't know for sure because they're done in secret.) Equally troubling, the White House reportedly has authorized U.S. intelligence agencies to kill Anwar Awlaki, an Islamic clergyman turned jihadist who was born and raised in the U.S. and is now hiding in Yemen. The summary execution of a U.S. citizen is something not even Bush and Cheney authorized.
As former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told the Washington Times this week, differences between the Bush-Cheney White House for which he worked and the Obama administration on these issues essentially are minor.
"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners," Hayden said. "Although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."
articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/11/opinion/la-oe-0911-rutten-20100911