Dear Friends,
In the last few days, I have been very encouraged by the new President Obama as he has taken on the Republicans, answered the public's questions and told the Democratic Senators to get moving on health care. The difference between the questions asked by the public of President Obama and those asked by the Senate Democrats points out the huge problem that we have with elected Democrats. But I digress.
Unfortunately, the disclosure today that we have troops in Pakistan notwithstanding the constant denials from the Obama Administration reminds me of why I am depressed about President Obama bringing meaningful change to the way Washington works. I learned about this from Rachel Maddow tonight. Here is the clip of the segment from her show:
If you want more information, here is the link to the reporting she cites.
It does not seem to be asking too much that our government be honest with us. Ideally, we would be told anywhere that US personnel (military, CIA or others) are being sent into harms way. Less than ideal would be that if asked if there are troops in Pakistan, the response would be that we cannot comment about the whereabouts of our troops. But to outright lie in response to that question is unforgivable. I expected that kind of behavior from President Bush, but I expected better from President Obama.
I am reminded of President Obama's very lame excuse for breaking his campaign promise about holding all the health care discussions on CSPAN. It was a stupid campaign promise. His stock response to a question about why he broke his campaign promise is that his administration is the only administration to list all visitors to the White House on the internet for all to see and that most everything was on CSPAN. What a terrible answer. The truthful answer would be that he should admit that he never should have made that promise and that there are some discussions that have to be behind closed doors if any progress is to be made. At least that would be an honest answer.
We need to hold President Obama accountable to the American people and make him tell us the truth.
Thank you for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
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I don't know. This kind of stuff never bothered me so much - even with W. I think this is a good example of why it is so critically important that we choose leaders that we can trust to make the right decisions even when they can't tell us about them. I trust Obama's motives and judgment (less so than before the election, but still). I also think that this is probably what we should have been doing all along rather than starting a pointless war in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteI guess I think we need to give some leeway to our leaders to make decisions and keep some things secret - and having special forces in a country they are not supposed to be certainly qualifies as a legitimate secret (provided, of course, that the President is a trustworthy person and made a justifiable choice to send the troops there in the first place).
For some reason, I am reminded of this classic SNL skit during Desert Storm (can't find the video, just the transcript - but it's short): http://snltranscripts.jt.org/90/90lgulfwarbriefing.phtml