Dear Friends,
Several items in the news recently reminded me why I get so cynical about politics and politicians. I have no expectations for the Republicans to be thoughtful, logical, rational, transparent, intellectually honest or any other appropriate trait. Yet, despite my cynicism, I still expect Democrats to have all of those traits. Unfortunately, I am constantly disappointed. Here are a few recent examples.
Armenian Genocide
As I wrote a few days ago here, then Senator Obama, when he was running for the Presidency, promised to officially call the Armenian Genocide, a genocide because it was. Today is the day the world marks the 100th anniversary of that genocide and President Obama has once again refused to call the Armenian Genocide a genocide. There is, of course, no question that it was a genocide. It is important to call the Armenian Genocide by its proper name because the world must acknowledge these events in order to prevent them in the future. By denying history, President Obama is enabling future generations to deny future genocides. In my view one cannot deny history and still retain credibility.
Drone Strikes
The entire world knows that the United States uses drones to spy and kill people in a wide range of countries, yet for a long time President Obama refused to officially acknowledge them. Then he did acknowledge them but stated that no drone strikes would be authorized without "near-certainty that no civilians would be killed or injured." When it became obvious that the United States was not following that standard in some locations, the Obama Administration used a technicality of international law to lower that standard. Here is the current state of affairs from The New York Times reporting (here):
Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess.An analysis in The Guardian in November 2014 (here) found that attempts to kill 41 men by drone strikes resulted in the killing of 1,147 civilians.
President Obama has promised more transparency about the drone program and the number of civilian casualties, but has failed repeatedly to actually be more transparent. Here is some more from The New York Times article cited above.
But over the Obama presidency, it has become harder for journalists to obtain information from the government on the results of particular strikes. And Mr. Obama’s Justice Department has fought in court for years to keep secret the legal opinions justifying strikes.
The killing in an American drone attack earlier this year of an American and Italian hostages held by Qaeda has brought this terrible program back into the attention of Americans. The United States did not know these two hostages were in the building at any time during the observation of the site. In fact, the United States did not know who was in the building. The order to assassinate the people in the building was given because they appeared to be terrorists based on observations of their non-terrorist activities and their phone calls.
The President's apology for killing the two hostages was, I am sure, heartfelt, but he is the one authorizing a program that kills people who are targeted even though we do not know who they are and in the process we kill many innocent civilians, including children. Why the President only apologizes when he kills innocent Americans and Europeans will be the subject of a future post.
The President has lost all credibility when it comes to being transparent and honest about how and why our government is assassinating people, including completely innocent civilians. He says trust me we are really only killing the bad guys, but we all know that is not the case. One cannot deny reality and still retain credibility.
Trans-Pacific Partnership
The President continues to insist that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be great for middle-class and working Americans. This week he tried to take Senator Warren to task for her opposition to fast track authority for TPP. He said that he welcomed a debate based on the facts. Unfortunately, he is preventing us from knowing the facts. Here are two tweets by Senator Warren that say it all:
The Obama Admin says I'm wrong - we shouldn't worry about TPP. So why can’t the American people read the deal?President Obama says trust me I wouldn't do this agreement if I didn't think it was good for Americans, but he lets big business be actively involved in the negotiations and prevents the rest of America from seeing what is being negotiated. He says he wants a debate on the facts, but then prevents the facts from being known.
When giant corporations see the TPP deal and; the American people don't, we all lose.
One cannot retain any credibility by demanding a debate on the facts and then not making the facts public.
I will not continue even though I have not touched on President Obama's lack of honesty and transparency about NSA spying or the fact that he refuses to prosecute war criminals but will prosecute the whistle blowers that disclose the war crimes. Unfortunately, President Obama gives us no reason to believe what he says as he has lost all credibility.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
