With the 2012 presidential election before us, the country is again caught up
in debating national security issues, our ongoing wars and the threat of
terrorism. There is one related subject, however, that is rarely mentioned:
civil liberties.
Protecting individual rights and liberties — apart from the right to be
tax-free — seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily
responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate,
and he is Barack
Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not
just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United
States.
Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic
Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn
in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for
Obama. After the George
W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept.
11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened
police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many
were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration,
especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama
capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil
liberties.
However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he
expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon
after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama
reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated
or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise,
announcing that no CIA
employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to
prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the
program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other
officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg
trials after World
War II.
Obama failed to close Guantanamo
Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military
tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill
U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block
dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and
presidential abuses.
But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the
movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's
personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as
the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the
Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel
Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond
being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.
It's almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage bonds
with his captor despite the obvious threat to his existence. Even though many
Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil
liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply
motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot
explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or
organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during
his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become
secondary to his persona.
Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for
civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government's
burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of
Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe
that "the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals'
rights and freedoms." Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical
calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right
on this issue to show Obama was not "soft" on terror. He assumed that,
yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day,
they would not dare stay home.
This calculation may be wrong. Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line,
especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will
be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the
Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture
and has been long defined as such by both international and U.S. courts. It is
not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution
of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and
reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war
crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other
countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process,
his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government
officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the
credibility of the U.S. in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.
In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most
devastating events in our history for civil liberties. Now the president has
begun campaigning for a second term. He will again be selling himself more than
his policies, but he is likely to find many civil libertarians who simply are
not buying.