Maybe you’ve seen this graphic on Facebook?
It’s not a topic that’s getting a lot of coverage, so I wondered, “Are these assertions true? Or is it *technically* correct but missing some piece of truth that would make it less alarming?”
Well…it’s a mixed bag.
Ctrl+F on the 2012 Democratic National Platform fails to find any mention of the words “surveillance”, “warrant”, “wiretapping”, “Patriot Act”, or “habeas corpus”.
What it does include is a paragraph entitled, “Staying True to Our Values at Home,” which says, “Advancing our interests may involve new actions and policies to confront threats like terrorism, but the President and the Democratic Party believe these practices must always be in line with our Constitution, preserve our people’s privacy and civil liberties, and withstand the checks and balances that have served us so well.” This paragraph also says, “That is why we are substantially reducing the population at Guantánamo Bay without adding to it. And we remain committed to working with all branches of government to close the prison altogether because it is inconsistent with our national security interests and our values.”
Okay, great — drop the mentions of specific practices, but instead broadly state that everything needs to be in line with the Constitution. That could be justifiable.
But it kind of falls apart when you consider that we’re talking about an administration that tried to make rules that would prevent Gitmo inmates who don’t have active cases pending against them (ie, those who are being “indefinitely detained”) from meeting with their lawyers. Rules that were overturned by a judge writing, “This very notion offends the separation-of-powers principles and our constitutional scheme.” (NY Times article here, in case you don’t want to read the decision itself.) This is not an administration whose interpretation of what’s constitutional I want to trust.
This is an administration that pledged to close Guantánamo, but, as Glenn Greenwald wrote in July, really just wants to move Gitmo — with all of its secrecy and indefinite detentions — to Illinois. Greenwald points out that the idea that Congress has prevented the closure of Guantánamo is extremely misleading, as much of the Congressional opposition was not to actually closing Gitmo, but to creating precedents of indefinite detention on clearly American soil. Please read the Greenwald article. Here it is again.
What we’re seeing, basically, is that a party that was outraged over Bush’s treatment of potential terrorists and detainees is now willing to look the other way. But no matter how much any of us might like Obama, when a president claims power, that power exists for the next president, too — as pointed out by this somewhat-satirical Gawker video, “Is Romney Ready for the Kill List?”.
Which brings me to my main point — I will never try to convince you that you should not be vehemently opposed to Romney becoming president. I’m not even going to try to convince you not to vote for Obama. But I do implore you to consider that there is no reason to be supportive of everything Obama does. If even the Democrats, who were so outraged and eloquent about abuses of executive power under Bush, are willing to not just tolerate but cheer for a much greater extension of such power under Obama, then I am terrified that any national conversation we could have about the acceptability of assassinating US citizens without due process is just not going to happen. That our fear of electing Romney will allow Obama — or the next president — to perpetrate abuses of executive power that we wouldn’t have even dreamt possible eleven years ago.
It’s a sad truth that we won’t, in the next couple of months, spend any time talking about the ways in which the candidates are the same. This is one of them, and it’s not a happy point of agreement. It may be that we can’t do anything about it in this election. But we can make sure that we don’t begin down our own moral slippery slope; we can remember that even if we support Obama, we don’t have to support all of his policies; and we can make sure that whoever is the next president hears that the people want to continue the conversation about the treatment of both prisoners and our own citizens.
(Oh, and if you want to, you can read this Mother Jones article about the differences between the 2008 and 2012 platforms.)