If you hoped President Obama would quell the Orwellian tide that swept through the country during the Bush administration, you may be surprised to learn that the president has not only continued many of Bush’s policies, but has also expanded the powers of the executive branch.
The most recent example is the president’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The NDAA is an annual bill passed by Congress that lays out the Department of Defense’s budget and expenditures for the following fiscal year. The most recent bill, however, which was signed into law on Dec. 31, 2011, included provisions added by Senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., which codified into law the ability of the military to indefinitely detain “enemy combatants,” including American citizens, without trial.
Section 1031 of the bill allows military detention of anyone at home or abroad who “substantially supports” Al-Qaeda and the Taliban or “associated forces.”
Although a compromise amendment added by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to the NDAA claims to “preserve existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens,” the bill’s vague language allows for a broad interpretation.
This is because the Obama administration and other proponents of broad detention powers already argue that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution permits the detentions of United States citizens. In fact, the Obama and Bush administrations applied the AUMF to authorize their use of indefinite detentions around the world. The NDAA merely codified this into law.
Civil libertarians and others have been in an uproar over the bill, and the backlash has been strong against the administration.
A New York Times editorial lamented Obama’s decision to sign the bill, stating it was a “political cave-in” that “reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges went so far as filing a suit against the Obama administration, calling the bill “unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous.”
Apologists for Obama will come out and say the president had no choice but to sign the bill or else risk being politically vulnerable to Republicans. There would be some credence to those claims if it wasn’t for the fact that the Obama administration had language removed from the bill which expressly exempted U.S. citizens from indefinite detention.
Yet, this continuation of Bush administration policies is nothing unusual to Obama’s presidency.
Earlier last year, Obama signed an extension to the controversial Patriot Act, which allows the warrantless surveillance of citizens in the name of the War on Terror. This is despite data which demonstrated that delayed-notice search warrants authorized by the Patriot Act have only been used 15 times in cases of suspected terrorism — compared to the 1,618 times it has been used in drug-related cases.
The president committed what is arguably the most egregious attack on American civil liberties to date when he authorized the extra-judicial assassination of radical cleric and United States citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
Al-Awlaki’s assassination set the dangerous precedent of allowing American citizens to be killed by their government far from any battlefield and without the right to trial.
If these actions were committed by the Bush administration, then there would undoubtedly be fierce reactions by progressives.
So what gives?
Have progressives become so entrenched in the partisan politics of this country that they have sacrificed their ideals in order to cheer on their chosen candidate? Where is the backlash that we saw when Bush enacted similar policies? Where is the outrage?
Obama has shown time and again that he is willing to sacrifice American civil liberties to score political points, yet progressives and liberal-leaning independents will still flock to vote for him again in November.
We cannot lose ourselves to the political game. Instead, we must continue to defend our rights and hold Obama’s feet to the fire when he encroaches on them.
David Scheuermann is a 20-year-old mass communication and computer science sophomore from Kenner. Follow him on
Twitter at @TDR_dscheu.
 
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Contact David Sheuermann at [email protected]