Earlier this morning I said that whenever I settle down and take a serious look at the policies Barack Obama has pursued so far, “nine times out of ten” it’s pretty much what I expected. Among big-ticket items, the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he’s not doing what I expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues. Glenn Greenwald wonders if this is what led to the abrupt resignation of Phil Carter the other day:
I have no idea what actually motivated Carter’s abrupt resignation, but here’s what I do know: so many of the detention and other “War on Terror” policies Obama has explicitly adopted were the very same ones which Carter (as well as Obama) repeatedly railed against during the Bush years, in Carter’s case primarily in blogs he maintained both at The Washington Post and at Slate. Whatever else is true, the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter’s responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.
Last week, the Obama DOJ announced that it would deny trials to several Guantanamo detainees and instead send them to military commissions….announced two weeks ago that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose case originated as a criminal investigation with the FBI, would now be turned over to a military commission for prosecution….use of the “state secrets” privilege as a means of evading vital constitutional and other legal questions.
….Following Greg Craig, this is now the second high-profile resignation of a relatively devoted civil libertarian in a short period of time. Combine that with the still-missing-and-unconfirmed Dawn Johnsen, and all of this leaves those who are indifferent or hostile to civil liberties values — people like John Brennan and Rahm Emanuel — with even fewer counter-weights than before.
I don’t have any special insights here either. Maybe Phil was disappointed in Obama, or maybe he really did resign for personal reasons. There’s no telling. But it’s a disappointment either way, as is Obama’s unwillingness to fight harder for civil liberties. The shoals of reality have just proven a little too rocky.
