The American Civil Liberties Union just released a report on the performance of the Obama administration on issues relating to national security, civil liberties, and human rights. While the report highlights some progress on the part of the administration, characterized early on by Obama’s quick action on “categorically [prohibiting] torture and [limiting] all interrogations, including those conducted by the CIA [and] techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual. [The administration] outlawed the CIA’s practice of secret detention and shut down the CIA’s overseas prisons. And [...] mandated the closure of the Guantánamo prison within one year.”

All during President Obama’s second full day in office on January 22nd, 2009. Not bad for a President who successfully ran on a campaign filled with pretty-formulated optimism manifested by appropriating meaningful words into an ambitious and unrealistic political agenda. He clearly was following the great American tradition of rendering the meaning of such words completely useless through repeated use, manipulation of meaning and a complete lack of  adherence.

But, as the report goes on to state early on, these practical and impressive actions fell short of providing any indication of a long-term commitment to changing eight years of unabashed assaults on American national security, civil liberties and human rights under the Bush administration. Rather, the ACLU argues, the emerging trend of the last 18 months that this administration has been in power is one that is far more dangerous than that presented by the previous administration as the Obama administration seeks ‘to normalize that which was radical under George W. Bush.’

Obama seeks to create a “new normal.”

The following is a thorough summary and paraphrasing of the major points made in the ACLU report which indict the Obama administration as, essentially, worse than that which preceded it.

Transparency: Under the Bush administration, several policies undermining civil liberties and human rights – warrantless wiretappings, the torture program and the rendition program -were conceived of and implemented in complete secrecy. Whatever information the public was able to grasp was often much after the fact and only through leaks the mainstream media was able to get a hold of. Within the first days of the new administration, efforts were made immediately to act to control the damage inflicted upon Americans and civil liberties by the predecessors, as outlined in the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. President Obama, in this memorandum, stressed the importance of transparency and openness in the government in an attempt to “strengthen…democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government” and essentially reverse the “Ashcroft rule.”

The quick changes included: creating the position of a FOIA ombudsman, changed rules governing classification and “required agencies to release some information proactively and in formats usable by the general public.” In addition to this, and perhaps most significantly, the Obama administration released important memos from the Justice Department that had been the basis for the creation of the torture program under the previous administration – the very same memos that the media and organizations such as the ACLU had sought to get a hold of under the Freedom of Information Act. In the following months, further documents were released making a purportedly an ambiguous “moral” situation – in terms of who played what role and who should e persecuted – clearer: in August 2009, a report assessing the CIA’s interrogation and detention program was released by the CIA’s Inspector General and just this past  February the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released a report discussing and analyzing the role of the lawyers who helped write the memorandums.

Yet despite these attempts to promote transparency in the government, the ACLU claims that the Obama administration has been inconsistent. For instance, going against its own initial promise that it would “comply with an appellate court decision requiring it to release abuse photographs from detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq” the administration reversed its decision on the matter and claimed “that it would seek Supreme Court review” while also supporting “an invidious amendment to the FOIA intended to retroactively exempt the photos from release under the statute [...the legislation equipped the] Secretary of Defense with sweeping authority to withhold any visual images depicting the government’s “treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” by U.S. forces—no matter how egregious the conduct depicted or how compelling the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Following the release of private memos and then the subsequent change of heart as indicated above, the administration went onto keep documents detailing secretive and violating policies regarding torture under the Bush administration from the public reach, such as “a directive in which President Bush authorized the CIA to establish secret prisons overseas [and] the Combatant Status Review Transcripts in which former CIA prisoners describe the abuse they suffered in the CIA’s secret prisons”.

Finally,two recent actions by the administration are also a further cause for concerns when it comes to freedom of speech, free flow of information and for the civil liberties of Americans: Under the purported  “targeted killing” program,which gives the administration “the authority to kill suspected terrorists anywhere in the world” came the infamous and simultaneously terrifying declaration of U.S citizen Anwar al-Awlaki as a target for the  state-led murder. And, secondly, the arrest of 22 year old Bradley Manning on alleged grounds that he was the whistleblower who leaked footage of dozens of Iraqis, including two Reuters workers, being shot to death by American apaches (and who is now also under investigation for the recent Afghan Papers leak, also courtesy WikiLeaks).

Torture and Accountability: The previously mentioned Justice Department memos showed justification of torture in the Department at the highest  oflevels, with high-ranking officials kowtowing to the desires of the Bush administration. Upon taking office, President Obama immediately denounced the actions of the previous administration and all those involved, making it also clear that the new administration would do what it could to distance itself from the “legacy” of its predecessors. He made it clear that such actions were not only morally reprehensible but also completely contrary to the goals of the United States and to the preservation of democracy. Within days, Obama issued an executive order directing all prisoners in US custody to be given the protection of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. Additionally, he also ordered, as previously mentioned, that all interrogations conform to the procedures outlined in the Army Field Manual; CIA secret prisons be shut down and that the ICRC be immediately notified of those being held by the United States.

Yet while bold statements were made and actions were undertaken to undermine and dismantle the exploitations of the previous administration and its torture program and tactics, very little was ultimately done to hold those who were involved in the justification and execution of the torture program accountable:

The truth is that the Obama administration has gradually become an obstacle to accountability for torture. It is not simply that, as discussed above, the administration has fought to keep secret some of the documents that would allow the public to better understand how the torture program was conceived, developed, and implemented. It has also sought to extinguish lawsuits brought by torture survivors—denying them recognition as victims, compensation for their injuries, and even the opportunity to present their cases.

Cases cited by the ACLU were the following: Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., Rasul v. Rumsfeld, and Arar v. Ashcroft.

The ACLU concludes that despite strong words and despite strong actions taken initially, there is very little indication to suggest that the Obama administration will be taking the investigations into the torture program any further than it already has.

Detention: Before his election, President Obama had urged his position on Guantanamo to the people: the infamous prison, under his governance, would be shut down. Holding onto his promise, he not only ordered CIA secret prisons to be shut down, just a day after taking office, but also set a year’s time as the deadline for the shutdown of Gitmo.  Yet, 18 months after the initial ‘exciting’ directive issued by the POTUS and the release of 67 prisoners, the prison remains open with 180 still being detained. The administration, assisted along the way with hurdles tossed in by Congress which successfully worked against relocating “indisputably innocent” Chinese Uighers to the United States, has taken very few steps to fulfill not only a promise but a very important step in righting the heinous wrongs of the previous administration. As the ACLU report notes, it is imperative that Gitmo be shut down – not only for the country itself but also for the world.

Of far greater significance than the administration’s failure to meet its own one-year deadline is its embrace of the theory underlying the Guantánamo detention regime: that the Executive Branch can detain militarily—without charge or trial—terrorism suspects captured far from a conventional battlefield.

And perhaps the most striking of the policies and ideas of the Bush administration that have been perpetuated under this current administration has been Obama’s defense of the “detention without judicial review of detainees in the Bagram prison in Afghanistan.” There are also current attempts to relocate Bagram prisoners to Illinois, militarily detained without charge or trial. The ACLU is strongly working against this as it sets a precedence of holding individuals suspected of terrorism on US soil – without charge and trial.

Target Killing: The ACLU outlines this as the most reprehensible of national security policies in regards to the violation of human rights. The policy allows for the targeted killing of anyone the US suspects of engaging in terrorism, including American citizens as characterized by Obama’s declaration against Anwar al-Awlaki. The ACLU states that this is not only in violation of international law but, with the case of an American citizen, completely unconstitutional. The policy makes the entire world a free-for-Americans war zone and risks the lives of innocent people – often times many have been detained and/or suspected of being terrorists only to be later exonerated of all such allegations. If not fully exonerated, then it has been proven that the allegations against them are found upon extremely weak evidence. For targeted killing to be justified on such filmsy grounds sets dangerous precedence for “unchecked authority” given to the hands of the CIA and undermines basic human rights.

Military Commissions: As senator, President Obama had proclaimed his support and faith in American courts, rejecting the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Yet, making some procedural improvements, the administration has “embraced” the commissions, despite their proven short-comings as anything resembling a judicial body. The example,  indicating the failure of the MCs, is the Omar Khadr case – the first case to go to an MC under Obama’s watch. Khadr, a Canadian, was 15 years old when he was captured and detained by the US military when he was allegedly caught throwing a grenade that had killed an American soldier. The allegations have been proven to be quite questionable.

The very first hearing at the revamped military commissions concerned whether Khadr’s statements to interrogators could be used against him, despite this torture and abuse. It was marred by the same chaotic lack of regular process that characterized other hearings in the military commissions. Proceeding with this prosecution or any other in so flawed a system would be not only unjust but unnecessary: the federal criminal courts are both fairer and more effective. It is long past time to end the failed experiment of military commission trials at Guantánamo.

Speech and Surveillance: While President Obama pledge his allegiance against Bush’s authorization of the NSA to conduct warrantless wiretappings, he voted in favour of the FISA Amendments Act,  granting “immunity to the telecommunications corporations that facilitated the NSA’s program,” limiting the “role of the court that oversees government surveillance in national security cases” and allowed for the NSA to continue its surveillance of American citizens. As the report states, it became clear that Obama was not against warrantless wiretapping – he was against warrantless surveillance without congressional approval. The administration has also “pushed for the reauthorization of some of the Patriot Act’s most problematic surveillance provisions.” This includes suspicionless searches at the border, which can result in the confiscation of your laptop and/or cellphone. Without any probable cause.

The ACLU also outlines how the Obama administration has adopted the same sort of rhetoric on free speech as employed by the Bush administration, such as prosecuting any organization that even lends “speech” support to notes terrorist organizations – meaning any organization that lends legal advice or advice relating to peaceful conflict resolution can be prosecuted as providing “material support.”

At the same time, the ACLU does point out one particular break away from the previous administration in regards to Speech and Surveillance: allowing entry visas to a number of intellectuals, writers, artists and musicians who had been denied entry into the United States under the previous administration given the political perspective that they held. This included people such as Adam Habib and Dr. Tariq Ramadan.

Watchlists: The report highlights the travesty of a mess that the watchlists are, implicating countless who are in fact completely innocent and letting through those who may actually pose a real threat of some sort. The management of the lists has been poor and slow; tens of thousands of names were put on the lists, and not removed, without any probable cause. Amazingly, following the incident of the failed Christmas Day bomber, the National Counter-Terrorism Center Deputy Director Russell Travers asserted in front of Congress that the list was “fundamentally sound” and that the government was planning on expanding it.

The inclusion of thousands of innocents on these watchlists has undermined their right to travel and to return home to the United States; their fate has been put into the hands of “unaccountable bureaucrats relying on secret evidence and using secret standards.”

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As the ACLU concludes, the Obama administration is setting up a “legal lasting architecture” which supports and expands on the policies and tactics devised under the previous administration, which violated both international law and the American constitution on various levels. As the report asserts, the greatest danger of these efforts on the part of the Obama administration is that it puts the United States and its citizens in a state of eternal emergency. In other words, the ‘post-9/11′ mentality and the ‘air of irrationality’ and the ‘paranoia politics’ are no longer just remnants of the Bush years, specifically following the 9/11 attacks. Rather, they become institutionalized and a part of the legal structure of the United States, compromising human rights, real national security and the civil liberties of all American citizens.

Related posts:

1. Obama’s War on the War on Terror; but Don’t Let Gitmo Go to Waste
2. Zionism Must be Defended (or, Barack Obama’s AIPAC speech)
3. Obama to Arab-Americans: I Want Your Vote
4. Human rights attorneys shocked as Barack Obama keeps campaign promises
5. Obama Calling The Kettle Black