[Peace-discuss] Taming and training

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Mon 01 Jun 2009
	Death of the Republic
	Written by Chris Floyd

Glenn Greenwald, among others, is enraged at Barack Obama's eager embrace of the 
latest disgorgement of third-rate juntaism to belch forth from the hallowed 
halls of the U.S. Congress: the "Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 
2009," sponsored by those ever-stalwart champions of liberty, Senators Lindsey 
Graham and Joe Lieberman. As Greenwald describes it:

     "[The bill] literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to 
suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 
relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after 
September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations 
outside of the United States."  As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- 
with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or 
our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if [the Freedom of 
Information Act] requires disclosure...What kind of a country passes a law that 
has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the 
torture it inflicted on people?  Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even 
hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal 
evidence of war crimes."

What kind of country passes such a law? Why, a cheap, corrupt, third-rate junta 
state, which has elevated war and militarism into its supreme value, its 
"ultimate concern," its divinity -- that's what kind of country. What other kind 
of country did you think was skulking there between Mexico and Canada these days?

But the perniciousness of the act doesn't lie merely in its immediate goal -- 
suppressing war crimes evidence to protect the Terror War machinery that Obama 
has inherited and is expanding. After all, Obama has been working overtime from 
the beginning to suppress war crimes evidence against his predecessor, whom he 
treats more and more as a revered elder, not the despised leader of a 
discredited faction. No, it is, as they say, the principle of the thing: the 
enshrinement in law of the notion that anything that could be construed as 
"harmful" to American troops and operatives abroad -- or even the sad sacks back 
home -- can be suppressed by the government.

Adopting the principle of potential "endangerment" as a justification for 
government repression is not just an open door to tyranny -- it kicks the door 
down and brings the rest of the front wall crashing with it. But of course, that 
edifice crumbled a long time ago. The only thing remotely surprising about this 
latest Banana Republic Act is that is so blatant in its gutless abandonment of 
even the slightest pretense that the United States is anything other than a 
militarist empire. And yet so many people -- including Greenwald at times -- 
continue to praise the new imperial manager whenever he makes a "good decision" 
or implements a "good policy" -- presumably with the idea that you can tame or 
train the president by rewarding him for good deeds and sternly admonishing him 
when he does wrong...

Full article at <http://www.chris-floyd.com/>.