2011 Campaigner Obama Hawkish Cheerleader?

Posted by Tina

Two items in the news recently has the President not just flip flopping on war related positions but doing multiple back flips with exuberant campaign mode glee!

The first story highlights a speech the President made before a military audience in North Carolina where he offered effusive and well deserved praise for our troops. As
reported by the website army.mil :

Moreover, the president spoke of how the U.S. military’s work during both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“All the fighting, all the crying and all the bleeding as well as the building, training and partnering has all led to this moment of success,” Obama said. “Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead, but we are leaving behind a solid, stable and self-reliant government that was elected by its people. We are building a new partnership between our nations, and we are ending a war not with a final battle but a final march home — an extraordinary achievement that was nine years in the making.”

Echoing President Bush, President Obama said, “We think that a successful, democratic Iraq can be a model for the entire region.”

I would have been impressed if the President had shown even the least bit of respect for the man whose decisions made success in Iraq possible or if he had suggested that perhaps his earlier remarks about the war were unjustified or wrong, but apparently he lacks the grace required to admit his own errors and give credit to his predecessor.

Obama’s early negative positions on the war are well documented. In 2002 Illinois Senator Barack Obama called the war in Iraq a “dumb war” at an anti-war rally:

“I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

While campaigning in 2008 Obama arrogantly referred to the war in Iraq as a “dangerous distraction”:

“As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. [John] McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was,” Obama said in what his campaign called a major policy address on Iraq, Afghanistan and national security.

He also vowed to bring troops in Iraq home within 16 months:

2008 – As a presidential candidate, Obama promises to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, which would be about May 2010.

In 2009 Obama signed an executive order vowing to shut down Guantanamo within a year:

Promising to return America to the “moral high ground” in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

He also expanded the Bush legal defense of warrantless wire taps:

April 8, 2009 In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government’s legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping efforts.

In fact, a close read of a government filing last Friday reveals that the Obama Administration has gone beyond any previous legal claims put forth by former President Bush.

Obama used an executive order in 2009 to retain executive authority enabling the use ofrenditions:

Under executive orders issued by Obama on Jan. 22, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as “renditions,” or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

It’s wonderful to see our troops returning home but it is also worth noting in this campaign season that Obama originally promised to bring the troops home within 16 months, a fact which the official White House page conveniently ignores as it touts Obamas “success” in bringing troops home:

December 2011 marks the end of our mission in Iraq, and the fulfillment of a promise Barack Obama made to the American people even before he became President.

In light of this and considering his ultimate record of adopting and even expanding so many of President Bush’s policies, his speech today is particularly offensive and disingenuous for its lack of honesty and humility.

The second story, a report from Salon, is further proof of that disingenuousness. The folks at Salon are pretty upset that President Obama will sign the Levin/McCain bill authorizing indefinite retention for Americans accused of terrorist acts on American soil:

Even the one substantive objection the White House expressed to the bill — mandatory military detention for accused American Terrorists captured on U.S. soil — was about Executive power, not due process or core liberties. The proof of that — the definitive, conclusive proof — is that Sen. Carl Levin has several times disclosed that it was the White House which demanded removal of a provision in his original draft that would have exempted U.S. citizens from military detention (see the clip of Levin explaining this in the video below). In other words, this was an example of the White House demanding greater detention powers in the bill by insisting on the removal of one of its few constraints (the prohibition on military detention for Americans captured on U.S. soil). That’s because the White House’s North Star on this bill — as they repeatedly made clear — was Presidential discretion: they were going to veto the bill if it contained any limits on the President’s detention powers, regardless of whether those limits forced him to put people in military prison or barred him from doing so.

Let us not be duped by this man of little conviction and honor who seeks historical credit and plays the hawk perhaps as a means of retaining power so he can “fundamentally transform” America.