Obama's Preventive Detention (cont.......)

Charles

I'm going to respond to you here, as I'm not interested in burying my reply in the form of a private exchange in the waste basket of Integral Life.  It's much too important for that.

Those interested in our previous exchange can go here:

http://integrallife.com/member/damon/blog/detention-without-trial-obama-administration

I get your point that Obama has a huge amount on his plate and should be accorded sympathy as a master strategist with the best intentions. According to this argument criticism will only hinder his good works.

This fundamentally misunderstands the fact that politics works according to competing pressures. The seminal anecdote about this being the group who came to Roosevelt asking that he enact certain policy. Roosevelt's reply was along the lines of, ' I agree with you completely, I too wish to see this brought into policy. Now make me do it!  By which he meant,  you must be seen to apply pressure to me,  so that I can be seen to be responding to actual demands of the voting public.

Equally Obama himself requires this same pressure. He is on record saying it is healthy and necessary. Here is Greenwald, again.

"UPDATE V:  The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder -- who is as close to the Obama White House as any journalist around -- makes an important point about Obama that I really wish more of his supporters would appreciate:

    [Obama] was blunt [in his meeting with civil libertiarians]; the [military commissions] are a fait accompli, so the civil libertarians can either help Congress and the White House figure out the best way to protect the rights of the accused within the framework of that decision, or they can remain on the outside, as agitators. That's not meant to be pejorative; whereas the White House does not give a scintilla of attention to its right-wing critics, it does read, and will read, everything Glenn Greenwald writes. Obama, according to an administration official, finds this outside pressure healthy and useful.

Ambinder doesn't mean me personally or exclusively; he means people who are criticizing Obama not in order to harm him politically, but in order to pressure him to do better.  It's not just the right, but the duty, of citizens to pressure and criticize political leaders when they adopt policies that one finds objectionable or destructive.  Criticism of this sort is a vital check on political leaders -- a key way to impose accountability -- and Obama himself has said as much many times before.

It has nothing to do with personalities or allegiances.  It doesn't matter if one "likes" or "trusts" Obama or thinks he's a good or bad person.  That's all irrelevant.  The only thing that matters is whether one thinks that the actions he's undertaking are helpful or harmful.  If they're harmful, one should criticize them.  Where, as here, they're very harmful and dangerous, one should criticize them loudly.  Obama himself, according to Ambinder, "finds this outside pressure healthy and useful."  And it is.  It's not only healthy and useful but absolutely vital."

Let me urge you to read the entire post from which the above excerpt comes. It's entitled, "Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal" and includes the following sub-headings.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/22/preventive_detention/

(1) What does 'preventive detention' allow?
(2) Are defenders of Obama's proposal being consistent?
(3) Questions for defenders of Obama's proposal.
(5) Is this comparable to traditional POW detentions?
(6) Is it 'due process' when the government guarantees it can always win?
(7) Can we 'be safe' by locking up all the terrorists without charges?

You might also like to read this latest post entitled "New report contradicts central Obama claim for preventive detention"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Damon