Irrationally Raised Expectations

Well, the constitutional lawyer and community worker, the Senator and black activist who appealed to so many of his country's liberals and civil rights activists, the youth and the women, the disadvantaged, the people of colour, the immigrants, hasn't quite worked out as anticipated.  Still, what a milestone in a country where biracial relations have been fraught with suspicion, anger and fear, weighted down with traditions and history of shame for a proud country, to have elected Barack Obama with his country-wide smile and confidence.

He spoke of hope for the future and that's what people responded to.  They wanted the shame of Guantanamo to disappear, the Patriot Act to go away, and in their place reconciliation abroad and at home at the very least the imperative of vital social amenities that other countries have managed for their citizens to visit their country.  Universal health care finally to be achieved.  Pardons and acceptance for all those migrants crowding the corners of the country illegally.

Give him a B+ for effort.  He managed, on his authority and on his watch, to do what two of his predecessors could not; Osama bin Laden is now a bad dream.  Guantanamo is still there, and President Obama has offered partial succour to young illegals, made a really passionate stab at universal medicare, but the "surveillance superstructure" isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The american Civil Liberties Union is exercised over steps taken by this administration, advancing the National Defense Authorization Act.  "Obama has been an unmitigated disaster for civil liberties" according to one U.S. legal scholar.  In cases of suspected terrorism the military may hold suspects indefinitely under Section 1021 of the NDAA.

Anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces." Well, sounds perfectly reasonable.  Sounds like an attempt to deal with what used to be called treason.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU are busying themselves representing the family of Abdulrahman Al0-Aulaqi, a 16-year-old American Yemeni.  He died in a drone strike in Yemen, in October.  Two weeks after his father, Anwar Al-Awlaqi, a radical Muslim cleric with American citizenship as well as Yemeni.  Who was a viral propagandist for al-Qaeda.

It was celebration time when he was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, along with another American citizen turned against the United States.  "Undertaken without due process, in circumstances where lethal force was not a last resort to address a specific, concrete and imminent threat, and where the government failed to take required measures to protect bystanders, rises to a violation of the most elementary constitutional right afforded to all U.S. citizens - deprivation of life without due process of law."

True, true.  They're losing sleep over the situation, but it's highly doubtful that most Americans are disturbed by their president authorizing drone strikes to remove from action malevolent religious maniacs whose ferocious words urging other American Muslims into radicalized jihadis has been successful enough.  There have been a number of home-grown jihadis doing their bidding in the United States.

"Reconciling the dichotomy between its counter-terrorism rhetoric and policies requires that the Obama administration finally embrace the obvious: that the core of the Bush policies will remain necessary in America's fight against global terrorism for many years to come; and, more importantly, that the Obama administration's continuation (and refinement) of Bush's policies has in fact helped institutionalize an effective, bipartisan approach to fighting terrorism."  Stuart Gottlieb, adjunct professor of International and public affairs, Columbia University.