June 22, 2011

Quick— everybody look the other way!

In a move that’s distinctly similar to one that had liberals from you and me to Keith Olbermann calling for George W. Bush’s removal from office several years ago, Barack Obama has decreed that the U.S. will continue to wage war in Libya without the approval of Congress, a little technicality that happens to be required by the War Powers Act of 1973.

I know it’s not Anthony Wiener’s penis, but this fully qualifies as a significant thing, and, in the process, Obama is ignoring decision-making guidelines that have constrained the executive branch from blithely skirting the rule of law for over 70 years…or at least they did do that, until Bush and Dick Cheney, ever the pioneers, set about systematically degrading the infrastructure of congressional checks and balances.

The War Powers Act requires the President to notify Congress of his intention to take military action against another country within 48 hours of making his decision, and Obama did exactly that before shipping arms and attack drones to Libyan rebels who are in the process of trying to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. This move provided the president with a 60 day period in which he had to obtain Congressional approval to continue operations. Since he didn’t quite get around to doing that, he was then given a 30 day withdrawal period, in accordance with the law.

In case you haven’t been counting, we started dealing with the rebels over 90 days ago, and now time is up. But Obama is simply continuing to feed supplies to the rebels without Congress’ go-ahead, and rest assured that he and his staff know all about the War Powers Act of 1973. You might remember how many times Obama stressed that he’s a constitutional scholar back when he was running for office and selling himself as the dawn of a new day in America.

You know— back before he betrayed us.

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Ooooh. I just said Barack Obama betrayed us. But Obama doesn’t do that, right? He just gets elected and finds that hands-on political reality is a far different thing than mere campaign idealism. Republicans are the ones who stage-manage underhanded dealings, and force us to reject the moral standards that supposedly lift this country above all others.

Make no mistake, though, even if you happily and hopefully voted for him, like I did— Obama is intentionally circumventing the rule of law so he can attack the country of his choosing on his own, with no legal support from our government.

The way the president is supposed to do business, at least since the 1930s, is that the he consults with the Office of Legal Council (OLC), which is part of the Justice Department, when he plans to take some sort of action; it doesn’t have to be war-related. Then the 25 or so lawyers in the OLC deliver a legal interpretation of his intentions. These opinions are delivered after discussing the matter with the White House and other executive branch departments.

The President isn’t required to accept the OLC’s decision about a matter, but, if he doesn’t, he better have a strong legal argument to support his own conclusions. Members of the OLC (and this is pivotal) are not appointed by the White House, to avoid any conflict of interest and the specter of mere yes-men who would rubber stamp every cockamamie idea the President cooks up.

A Justice Department memo from just last year stresses that the OLC is designed so it won’t become a forum “merely to advance the policy preferences of the president or other officials.” That’s its entire reason for being— non-partisan legal counsel. The vast majority of the time, the OLC’s findings are quickly accepted by the White House. But it’s become sort of the in-thing in D.C. to figure out how to circumvent the OLC, which for two straight presidencies now has been turned into a sideshow, legalities be damned.

When Bush and Cheney wanted to tap dance the legal definition of torture on the heels of their equally shady reasoning behind attacking Iraq in the wake of 9-11, they found lonesome John Yoo within the walls of the OLC. And, lo and behold, Yoo sided with the White House right down the line, through a nonsensical memo that would have gotten his sorry, boot-licking ass kicked out of any self-respecting law school in this country. Yoo was less a lawyer than a waiter who took the White House’s order and delivered exactly what Bush and Cheney wanted, with a free order of fries and a refillable Coke.

Oppressive laws were never on the Bush team’s front burner when there was enough room for a steaming pot of overt, self-justifying horseshit, so Woo was patted on the head and off we skipped to Abu Ghraib and beyond, with our blindfolds and our waterboards, ready to squeeze exactly what we wanted to hear out of any poor son-of-a-bitch we managed to round up. Many of the these people have been proven innocent, and are still sitting in cells, on Obama’s watch, with no outside contact and little hope of ever being released from their living hell.

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God bless America, as they used to say.

As calculating as Bush’s intrigues were, though, what Obama has done in order to proceed unhindered in Libya is even worse. At least Bush and Cheney located a willing collaborator within the OLC. Technically speaking, they followed the rules, even though Yoo’s argument was so patently absurd and made-to-order it hardly resembled an argument at all. Obama, on the other hand, listened to the Libyan warnings delivered by the OLC and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder…then just ignored them.

Instead, the president huddled with Harold Koh, the State Department’s chief legal advisor, who conveniently determined that Obama didn’t need Congress’ approval to continue operations in Libya because what we’re doing doesn’t amount to “sustained fighting,” and we haven’t sent in ground troops, so it’s not really a combat operation! Sure, there are “hostilities” involved, which would land our operations squarely within the confines of the War Powers Act, and we’re the key source of the deadly tools being used to wage the battle. But that doesn’t mean we’re participating in combat.

Legal scholars, many of whom are stunned over how the White House has handled this, say there’s no recent precedent for the route Obama took in reaching this conclusion, and some believe there’s no precedent at all. Even Dawn Johnson, a former Obama advisor, calls it “disturbing.”

So— Harold Koh, meet John Yoo. Barack Obama, meet George W. Bush. I’m sure you guys have a lot of funny stories to tell each other.

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The White House is obviously betting we’ll simply accept that the War Powers Act doesn’t apply in Libya because Obama managed to locate an administration flunky who’s willing to perform back-flips through the legalize. And he just might get away with it.

Bush - who, along with Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and a parade of others should be in prison right now rather than shilling an evasive memoir - certainly escaped with only minor bruises. But such manipulations should never, ever happen, regardless of your political leanings. We let them become a presidential standard at our own deep peril.

This looks suspiciously like a dose of unnerving criminality on the part of our president, and you need to strongly consider its ramifications, even if you think Obama, for all his little faults, is certifiably Better Than Bush and therefore not worthy of undue handwringing over what his actions mean for the future of our country. Letting this one slide because Obama is a Democrat, or a theoretical liberal, is hypocrisy of the highest order, and this administration’s shadow games need to make their way into our day-to-day conversations, just as they did when Bush was in office.

Does any of this sound familiar? Right on cue, White House press spokesperson Eric Schultz marched out this observation when confronted with Obama’s Libyan subterfuge: “What’s beyond dispute is the fact that we have averted a massacre, saved thousands of lives, and reversed the advance of Gaddafi’s forces, giving the Libyan people a chance to determine their future.”

Well, I happen to agree with that, as far as it goes. That’s pretty much what we’ve done. But, and I can’t stress this enough— that’s not the point! And Schultz knows it goddamned well. Once again, the White House doesn’t want to argue about troublesome legalities. Let’s discuss all the wonderful, America-affirming things our president has illegally accomplished.

The real story here is the precedent, people— the precedent that’s set by this type of executive behavior. Maybe you feel comfortable enough with Obama to think he wouldn’t randomly start waging war whenever he wants to, in whatever country he pleases. Fine. But if he gets away with this, he and every president who follows him will be able to do exactly that, and we’ll have absolutely no recourse in stopping them.

Imagine if one of the blinders-wearing, foaming-mouth nincompoops who are now jostling for the Republican nomination - and I’m not saying this about every possible Republican candidate, so calm down if that’s the trigger you’re looking for - were to somehow make it into the White House. You think you might get a little antsy when an anti-Muslim, anti-everything but what America wants conservative has the ability to start wailing away on any country he or she thinks deserves a beating? For any reason he or she can concoct? Is that an America you want to live in?

No. It’s not America at all. It’s an ugly, violent mutation that would be detrimental to whatever well-being we can currently maintain on this planet. And we’re already struggling mightily in that department.

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What happens to Obama from here should reveal, once again and quite loudly, just how jaded our political process has become. Yes, Obama’s actions are so outrageous he’s managed to unite such disparate governmental entities as Dennis Kucinich and John Boehner in a chorus of disapproval, but don’t bank on this as a much-needed Kumbaya moment.

The majority of Democrats will surely have better things to do now that their own guy is yanking the country’s chain, and watch how quickly Fox News and other Republican torch-bearers start calling for the president’s impeachment, although all they did was clap while Bush launched an unnecessary war for a rotating assortment of trumped-up reasons that even he couldn’t keep straight. Americans are still dying because of his hubris, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans who have been transformed into a series of mangled body parts.

Bush broke down the doors, baby, and few presidents yet have found the wherewithal to dump powers that already existed at the point they took office. I honestly can’t sit here and say I don’t think Obama deserves to at least have impeachment hearings waved in his face for a week or two. If it goes further than that, then we have to see what happens.

But I’ll tell you what, I didn’t vote for this shit. Not with this guy. This is precisely what I felt he could correct. I thought he stood at least a fighting chance of helping us re-enter the light from deep within an exceptionally dark era in American politics. Between side-stepping the OLC, his surveillance state maneuverings, and ongoing human rights violations, I refuse to vote for Obama again. Let him find another patsy to take my place, and I’m sure he will. Maybe it’ll even be you.

I don’t know. I’ve tried repeatedly to embrace this man, but I don’t feel him hugging me back very hard. I’m sure the guiding concepts of democracy feel even lonelier.

Paul Tatara