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Obama Should Veto Empire Over Republic
The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our constitutional republic into a powerful, unaccountable military empire. Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 7 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 which allows the military to operate domestically within the borders of the United States and to possibly (or most probably) detain U.S. citizens without trial. Forget that the ACLU called it "an historic threat to American citizens", this bill is so dangerous not only to our rights but to our country's security that it was criticized by the Directors of the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Director and the U.S. Defense Secretary! For the first time in our history, if this Act is not vetoed, American citizens may not be guaranteed their Article III right to trial.
The government would be able to decide who gets an old fashioned trial (along with right to attorney and right against self-incrimination) and who gets detained without due process and put into a modern legal limbo. Does anyone remember that none of the first thousand people the FBI rounded up after 9-11, and which were imprisoned for several months (some brutalized) were ever charged with terrorism? Does anyone remember that hundreds of the Gitmo detainees who were handed over to their American military captors in exchange for monetary bounties were found, after years of imprisonment, to have no connection to terrorism?
When in doubt about a case, what do you think the government will again do? Does it prefer to submit its evidence to a jury's scrutiny and its witnesses to the trouble of being cross-examined in court by a defense attorney or would it be easier to have no questions asked and dump the accused into detainee prison without rights? I think we already know that answer from the nearly ten years of experience at Guantanamo.
Senator Lindsey Graham declared that suspected citizens open themselves up "to imprisonment and death". "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them: 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'"
Of course, the politicians will say we are just talking about a few cases. But in fact the sky's probably the limit given the current legal ambiguity in the Patriot Act expansion of "material support for terrorism" to now include humanitarian aid and even mere advocacy speech without any need to prove an accused person intended to support any kind of terrorist violence. The Department of Justice has been currently using this ambiguity for over a year to investigate twenty three American citizens who are anti-war activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. Additionally, the "war on terror" will undoubtedly expand even more when it is de-linked from 9-11 -- see "The War on Terrorism Congress Never Declared -- But Soon Might" by Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor, expert on these issues and associate dean for scholarship at American University Washington College of Law:
... an individual may be detained for providing "direct support" (which, in the government's view, may be nothing more than minor financial or logistical assistance) in aid of "associated forces" that are "engaged in hostilities against ... coalition partners." Thus, the NDAA effectively authorizes the military detention of any individual who provides such assistance anywhere in the world to any group engaged in hostilities against any of our coalition partners, whether or not the United States is in any way involved in (or even affected by) that particular conflict.
Given this expansion of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force contained in the 2012 NDAA to encompass undefined "associated forces", we could witness the US government targeting a large range of political dissidents, human rights activists, humanitarians, and maybe even "occupiers".
The NDAA is deliberately confusing for political purposes but much is at stake. Obama's determination as to whether or not he will veto the problematic 2012 war funding bill will determine how Benjamin Franklin's glib response to the woman waiting outside the Constitutional Convention is ultimately answered. Franklin and other founding fathers had created "a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it". But a lawless Military Empire could now await where U.S. "emergency war powers" trump the Constitution, where the Commander in Chief becomes king for a term(s), the military enters into police state actions in violation of 130 years of Posse Comitatus law, and the Constitution becomes as quaint as the Geneva Conventions were for Alberto Gonzalez and the Bush Administration.
Corrupted, compliant politicians have already allowed their fears to get the better of them by going along with pre-emptive war in violation of the Nuremberg Principles and international law and torturing in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture. So why should they also not go for detaining American citizens without constitutional rights or trial?
56 Comments so far
Show AllWhich Senators voted against this bill ?
Based on his serial anti-constitutional actions during the past three years, the constitutional law expert president is certain to sign this bill.
Good question. The numbers here, 93 - 7, really tell the tale. I often wonder whether it is simple greed or fear that motivates these talking turds. To be clear, I'm not talking about fear of the boogie terrorist men, rather, fear of their superiors, the string pullers, the supra creeps, like the old Bill Hicks bit about Clinton being shown a film of JFK's assassination from a different angle.
Anything is possible when dealing with these super creeps, super creeps, they're super creepy.
Tom Harkin, Democrat, Iowa
Rand Paul, Republican, Kentucky
Tom Coburn, Republican, Oklahoma
Jeff Merkley, Democrat, Oregon
Ron Wyden, Democrat, Oregon
Mike Lee, Republican, Utah
Bernie Sanders, Independent, Vermont
Your doing leg work (or finger work) much appreciated.
This act of sedition by practically the whole of the US Senate just re-enforces my resolve to never again vote for a democrat (only a fool would vote for a republican). I will piss on Menendez and Lautenberg when the opportunity arises and in the only way I can, with an absentee vote for anyone other than a repub or dem - will be living in parts outside US in future election cycles. I will be taking a long rest from this "Land for a fee and the home of the naves".
Yes, thanks for the info. Most interesting. Remember when much ado was made over the election of the great comedic liberal thinking Al Franken, which was supposed to put the left in complete control? Hmmm, must be an accidental omission to the list.
Thanks VDB --
Hey, how about Oregon! Do they deserve the right to peacefully secede from the Amerikan Empire or not? Maybe Oregon could even keep the Bill of Rights in place as sort of a fossil Republic -- something like a coelacanth.
3 Dims, 3 Repugs & 1 'socialist'.
Kudos to Coleen Rowley for taking a principled stand after 9/11, and working diligently -- if fruitlessly -- to try to save the Republic from its lurching experiment with neo-fascism. It says something positive about the FBI -- the Amerikan flavor of the NKVD -- that she could work there for 24 years without getting fired.
When the ruling class starts feeling antsy about threats from the rabble below, the gloves come off.
Yes, 9/11 was the key to our very own Ermächtigungsgesetz -- although the antecedents & roots go back long before that 'catastrophic event'.
Obama won't sign this bill because, get this, it doesn't give him enough latitude in ignoring the constitutional protections of U.S. citizens. Even more than W., Obomination believes that he should have the right to do absolutely anything he feels needs to be done, regardless of whether that might contradict established norms, laws, or legal precedence. This civil rights destroying nightmare of a bill, doesn't destroy civil rights quite enough for our president.
Bingo! This is a struggle between executive power to do whatever it wants without congressional oversight. POTUS just wants to keep keepin on.....
NOTE this article by Paul Craig Roberts @ Global Research; 'Misreading the Fight over Military Detention: The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples' - www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28030
>' I [Paul Craig Roberts] said that the US Constitution had been shredded by the failure of the US Senate to protect American citizens from the detainee amendment sponsored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin to the Defense Authorization Bill.
The amendment permits indefinite detention of US citizens by the US military. I also gave my opinion that the fact that all but two Republican members of the Senate had voted to strip American citizens of their constitutional protections and of the protection of the Posse Comitatus Act indicated that the Republican Party had degenerated into a Gestapo Party.
However, I jumped to conclusions when I implied that the Obama regime opposes military detention on constitutional grounds. Ray McGovern and Glenn Greenwald may have jumped to the same conclusions.
Upon further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”
The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.
By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees...' <
PS: With 90+ Senators voting for this Police-State Authorization Act & only 37 senators voting for the Udall Amendment to insure protections for US citizens- especially in the US itself; unless the House of Reps votes against it [or at least about +40% of them do so] - this Police-State Authorization Act may in fact be Veto-Proof even if O-Bomb-em does veto it [& thats a BIG IF]!
Franklin never expected us to be able to "keep" the Republic. Everyone knew what the Antifederalists knew.
Here is Patrick Henry (Give me liberty or give me death.) speaking against ratification:
A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment? In what situation are we to be? The clause before you gives a power of direct taxation, unbounded and unlimited, exclusive power of legislation, in all cases whatsoever, for ten miles square, and over all places purchased for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, &c. What resistance could be made? The attempt would be madness. You will find all the strength of this country in the hands of your enemies; their garrisons will naturally be the strongest places in the country.
Another, "Obama Should" title for an article. When are people going to get it? The only thing Obama, or any of our criminal "leaders" should do is turn themselves in to be put on trial for treason and crimes against the Constitution, not to mention war crimes. As long as we beseech our sociopathic leaders, we give them power instead of being the power ourselves.
Ms. Rowley's informative and impassioned editorial is commendable food for thought for readers who are at best a bit behind the curve.
To me, Rowley is similar to Ray McGovern-- another career state security apparatchik who's evolved, if not exactly radicalized, into a cogent critic and active opponent of the Amerikan Imperial Hollow State.
Like McGovern's writings, and other authors and pundits regularly published here, when read by those of us steeped in a more radical skepticism and critical perspective, they can seem too optimistic or restrained insofar as they tend to rhetorically couch their cautionary warnings as if the problems they discuss are newly emergent or arise chiefly from inadvertence.
Phrases like "But a lawless Military Empire could now await..." and "Corrupted, compliant politicians have already allowed their fears to get the better of them..." don't exactly contradict the bolder lede: "The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our constitutional republic into a powerful, unaccountable military empire."
But "could" gives the impression that Amerika isn't actually there yet.
And while it's true enough that even complicit Elected Misrepresentatives are subject to becoming carried away with, and caught up in, their own demagogic fearmongering, it shouldn't be ignored that that many, even most, of the power elite promote and serve the nascent "lawless Military Empire" with cold calculation and deliberation.
That is, some polticians within the political food chain may be acting rashly as a result of becoming themselves infected with the free-floating fear and hysteria that Amerikan government deliberately manufactures and sustains to keep the populace perpetually insecure, divided, vulnerable, and feckless. But the ones with real power aren't, and they're controlling and manipulating those who are.
CD editors routinely publish articles like this, presumably upon the theory that they may edify complacent, unreflective visitors and raise their consciousnesses up a notch or two.
All THAT said, FWIW I too flinch at the unfortunate phrase "Obama Should...". Since, to Rowley's credit, the phrase appears nowhere in the text, I assume it's just the usual lazy, uninspired clichémongering of some headline or copy editor.
It's a shame-- because, like sticking the inane suffix "-gate" on every story about institutional scandal or controversy, the phrase has signaled the presence of so much drivel and dreck that the very sight of it pins the needle on my Crap Detect-o-Meter. Like all bad first impressions, it's difficult to overcome.
"That is, some polticians within the political food chain may be acting rashly as a result of becoming themselves infected with the free-floating fear and hysteria that Amerikan government deliberately manufactures and sustains to keep the populace perpetually insecure, divided, vulnerable, and feckless. But the ones with real power aren't, and they're controlling and manipulating those who are."
very insightful post that cuts to the chase. the american republic has devolved considerably over time into a parlor game of smoke and mirrors for the unmentioned, unidentified sovereigns.
...peace...
Great post. I was going to say something, but now I don't need to. You never miss.
(At least her name isn't Robert.)
Yes, especially good post, Obedient Servant. Double-good!
"The only thing Obama, or any of our criminal 'leaders' should do is turn themselves in to be put on trial for treason and crimes against the Constitution, not to mention war crimes."
Disagree. There is no guarantee that the courts would render the proper verdicts. No, what Barry, George, Dick, and each other member of the merry murderous gang should do is the honorable thing. That means that each should grab a pistol, insert one bullet, enter his/her own office alone, shut the door, place the muzzle under the chin, and pull the trigger. That is what they should do.
The likelihood that this will fly through the House, emerge worse than its flight through the Senate, and be signed by somber faced Consummate Con Man Obama, is rather a certainty.
That some people on this forum, after all of this, still can't fathom that 9/11 might have been a red flag event, is perplexing to me. Especially, given the collapse of WTC7, that screams LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!!!!!!!!
It has been proven without a shadow of doubt, that our government has been completely taken over by those 1%, who planned and then profited from our resource wars, and who are raking in money hand over fist by redistributing money from the many to the few who are either bankers, military contractors, medical insurance and pharmaceuticals, and the vast terrifying array of companies that make up the burgeoning security industrial complex.
But no, of course, no one in our government, where secrecy prevails, would dare do something like 9/11 (please don't miss the sarcasm). And it really doesn't matter that the official story doesn't add up right?
The three wise monkeys are alive and well, and are an indispensable tool of the ongoing coup, by the 1%.
I'm sorry I went there everyone who hates this topic here, but given that this bill seems allow the last nail be driven in the coffin of our freedoms in this country, and given the fact, that no so called "terrorist" from a foreign land has laid a hand on our Constitution, I do think the subject is appropriate.
Hue, if you really want to know what is happening and who is setting the agenda, look at thrivemovement.com.
Someone here posted this site last week.
It lays out the whole agenda of TNWO and who is behind it.
It has been in the works for over 100 years.
Many of us knew abot Bildeberg, Rockefellers, ect, but the rest is interesting.
I mentioned these names on KOS and got HR'd.
joecool9,
thanks for the link. you might also find this article interesting, especially the graphic sphere that accompanies the piece (visual representation - a sphere - of how these capitalists/financiers/corporations are interconnected).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world
Updated 13:15 24 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed%20-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html
{"AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable."}
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
...peace...
For other websites that illustrate the corporatocracy network, see:
____________________________________________________
http://www.theyrule.net/
__________________________________-
http://littlesis.org/
________________________________________
I spent a few hours punching in the names of the power elite and of corporations and looking at the connections. On theyrule, try typing in, say, Goldman Sachs and some defense contractor and look at the interlocking directorships. The theyrule website could be layed out better though.
I highly suggest "Holes in Heaven" documentary. Watch it online. HAARP is very real and quite frankly puts much in perspective. It does exist and has been debated internationally. It is ground based star wars weapon which ............well. Just view the video. After that, and discovering the direction that warfare has really taken over the past twenty years...............It seems like a done deal. But,
Creativity is a force more powerful than an weapon system.
What does "HR'd" mean? I watched the film. I'm not sure what to make of it. The creaters - Foster Gamble - of the Proctor and Gamble fortune - and his wife seem sincere in there desire to create a better world, yet, though I am interested in alternative physics and sacred geometry, i dont know about zero-point energy technology and how far it has really been developed.
joecool9: Thank you for the link to Thrive. The graphic for the "Follow The Money" pyramid makes the levels of global control very clear. Many CD'ers appear unable or unwilling to look at what is above the corporate and government criminals in the hierarchy.
I don't know what HR'd means, but it doesn't sound good. There are also CD posters (not to mention the usual site trolls) who are quite ready to pounce and hammer anyone who mentions the surname of the premier banking family who got the ball rolling for the Rockefellers, Morgans et al.
hue_sir_name: I share your pain and your sarcasm. Keep on posting about the lies of 9-11 when the opportunity presents itself. Newbies need to hear it.
Coleen Rowley commited a very honourable deed when she testified and basically blew the whistle on the corrupt elements in the FBI.
However, her appeal to Obama to do the right thing bespeaks a complete lack of understanding of the mechanisms that preside over the functioning of Empire and of the fact that Obama is at the service of Empire. I am afraid that Ms. Rowley has not done her homework on Amerikkkan imperialism.
I've little doubt Ms. Rowley is far smarter than you. Empire does not have to continually get worse. If enough care we can push politicians in a better direction.
Anyone who thinks that the Empire is somehow reformable is obviously not cognizant of the workings of the Empire.
"this bill is so dangerous not only to our rights but to our country's security that it was criticized by the Directors of the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Director and the U.S. Defense Secretary!"
based on that one statement, I can assure you that Obastard will sign the bill into law.
I'm not so sure. Obama opposes the bill because he wants the Executive branch to carry out surveillance, imprisonment without benefit of habeas corpus, torture, assassinations, and so on. As we know, the previous president had these prerogatives and O just wants the same for himself.
If, in the unlikely event that Obama does the right thing and vetoes the bill, he will be doing it for the wrong reasons.
Rowley ends her article with: "Corrupted, compliant politicians have already allowed their fears to get the better of them by going along with pre-emptive war in violation of the Nuremberg Principles and international law and torturing in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture. So why should they also not go for detaining American citizens without constitutional rights or trial?"
Obama has been one of these politicians since he continued to vote funding for our illegal wars of aggression as a Senator. As President, he then expanded these wars into Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Uganda, and claims the authority to assassinate anyone, including U.S. citizens, anywhere on the planet. By his behavior, Obama long ago vetoed Republic in favor of Empire. Our concern now must be how to roll back Police State/Imperial Amerika while we still can.
Has anyone else been called by a pollster apparently working for Obama? I say "apparently" because several of the questions were of the form "what could Obama say [not do, say] that would make you more likely to work for his re-election?" I reckoned the "say" part was a hint.
One of the questions took me so aback that I'd to ask that it be repeated. It was (I'm paraphrasing, but closely): "Would you be more or less likely to work for Obama's re-election if in the next few weeks or months he were to articulate a legal basis for having drones kill US citizens?" No, really, that was the question.
Mairead, are you really and truly serious about that question????
If you mean the one about coming up with a legal figleaf for killing citizens with drones, yes.
I can't tell you how shocked I was. I've thought about it since then, and my thoughts haven't been pleasant. The least-worrisome thought I've had is that it might have been a GOP psyop.
the other implication is that 0 is thinking of this "figleaf" and is running it up the pole.
That's certainly what it sounded like. But it's such a monstrous idea - that all it would take to make extrajudicial killings of citizens okay with everyone would be for Obama to get some criminal-with-a-law-degree like Yoo to invent a figleaf.
Jings but it gave me the creeps!
I don't remember the name for this type of question, but it was created by Karl Rove when he helped George Bush defeat incumbent governor Ann Richards. His pollsters asked voters if they would be more or less likely to vote for Richards if they knew her entire office staff was made up of lesbians, therefore implying that it was and playing to the anti-gay prejudice of many religious fundamentalists. It's a typically sleazy Roveian dirty trick picked up and used by other Republicans ever since..
Like others, I have been long sick and tired of "Obama should ..." articles. No, the empire is already doomed to crumble and the Republic was destroyed a long time ago. This empire nation deserves to go and a rebirth of maybe a few smaller nations should emerge. From there, people such as Ralph Nader, Cynthia Mckinney, Cindy Sheehan, Elizabeth Warren, Rocky Anderson, Frida Berrigan, etc ... can do a far better job of managing whichever nations they govern.
And why can't other people running for office such as Rocky Anderson be given a fair public hearing? After I heard about his recent announcement to run for president as a JUSTICE PARTY candidate last night, I would like to know who will respect him and write articles about him and who will publish those articles for us to discuss. A former Democrat turned independent because he chose to stick to principles, he deserves to be given high respect and shown to the 99% !
Wow! There might actually be someone I can vote for next year.
I myself hope he stays and that he does not drop out despite the difficulties ahead. Some may say that he is incapable of winning his own home state of UT; however, Gore lost his own home state of TN for being a cowardly DLCer and SLC is not a generally liberal bastion.
P.S.: I really wish that all third party candidates on the left would just join up and form one big third party for now.
I don't think it matters much any more if Rocky Anderson wins or loses. It only matters that we have someone with moral principles to support. No more playing the silly game of who is more or less evil.
If Rocky Anderson has the courage to stick his neck out and speak truth to power, he's the one for whom we've been waiting. I'll support him right down the line and at the ballot box.
Lefttown, thank you for being the one to mention Rocky's announcement earlier. I apologize for not mentioning your name for credit on this thread.
ShadowDancer - I always enjoy your comments. Thanks
Hoa binh
Obama will sign it, so much for the Republic. As Tiberius once said, when asked about the Roman Senate of his time. " men fit only to be slaves." Apparently, little has changed these last 2 thousand yrs. since he uttered those contemptuous words.
Dude, you rule.
/the effects of American foreign policy: Latin America unites in new bloc, US not invited
http://rt.com/news/latin-america-celac-bloc-975/
Unfortunately, Ms Rowley and most other commentators are warning that Amerika is heading toward a totalitarian police-state, when in fact and by definition, it has already become one. The warnings that many of us issued during the past decade fell on deaf ears.
The current Bush/Obama government, that has shredded the Constitution, habeas corpus, voting rights and other fundamentals of a democracy, is the result. As evidenced by the militarized police forces across the nation, that are under direction of Homeland Security and cracking skulls in Occupy encampments, martial law is already underway in Amerika.
The former democracy once known as The United States of America has been replaced by the totalitarian government known as Amerika.
That former democracy of which you speak is the one that showed its true colors many, many times: 1968 democratic convention, WW2 internment of Japanese-American citizens, the military assault against the bonus veteran's encampment, Matewan and so many other assaults against workers... Please do not try to pretend that things are vastly different now.
Those events you cite certainly happened, but if you don't think what is happening now isn't different than anything that has happened before in this country, then you're not very observant.
I agree with you, Tom. While America's history is far from pristine--and full of atrocities, as Greg cites--things ARE different now because of an almost complete lack of balance or check against the evil. When the wealthy own all three branches of government, and the press, we're in trouble.
Greg cites the 1968 democratic convention. Great example. While Daley sicked his fascist police on peaceful demonstrators, it was covered, live, without media censorship, and was written about and editorialized copiously. It's difficult to imagine such coverage today. (I imagine today, coverage of the convention would continue unabated, with some reference to 'rioting' in the streets, maybe a cutaway or two, but then back to the news celebrities falling over one another to get an interview with the political celebrities; we'd all be turning to streaming video to watch what was really happening; Thom Hartmann would be telling us that it was all a shame but the republicans would be bashing far more heads so we need to deal with it.)
And of course the most 'liberal' news organizations today (PBS, et al.) are just as censorial as fox...they're just repulsed by the feral republicans and spin the news democratic.
Today the elite, through their near-total control of the media, promote and celebrate such things as ignorance (think science and global warming), trashing the best among us (think teachers and nurses), and lobbying. In the past, it would have been logistically impossible to have such an extremist monopoly and an embarrassment to do so.
As I write this, two obama-supporting democratic economists just got Nobeled. Those in charge never miss a trick to get their message across.