[Peace-discuss] Obama fires State Dept. official for condemning Manning's treatment

[C. G. Estabrook]

    Salon.com Sunday March 13, 2011
    WH forces P.J. Crowley to resign for condemning abuse of Manning
    By Glenn Greenwald

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions
of Bradley Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive and
stupid," forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press
Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley
has "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because
of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case."
In other words, he was forced to "resign" -- i.e., fired.

So, in Barack Obama's administration, it's perfectly acceptable to abuse an
American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by
consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from
exercising in his cell, punitively imposing "suicide watch" restrictions on
him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to
prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out
against that abuse is a firing offense. Good to know. As Matt Yglesias just
put it: "Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being
forced to resign over Bradley Manning." And as David Frum added: "Crowley
firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base,
Dem pols despise it."

Of course, it's also the case in Barack Obama's world that those who
instituted a worldwide torture and illegal eavesdropping regime are entitled
to full-scale presidential immunity, while powerless individuals who blow
the whistle on high-level wrongdoing and illegality are subjected to the
most aggressive campaign of prosecution and persecution the country has ever
seen. So protecting those who are abusing Manning, while firing Crowley for
condemning the abuse, is perfectly consistent with the President's sense of
justice.

Also, remember how one frequent Democratic critique made of the Right
generally and the Bush administration specifically was that they can't and
won't tolerate dissent: everyone is required to march in lockstep? I wonder
how that will be reconciled with this.

UPDATE: Remember when the Bush administration punished Gen. Eric Shinseki
for his public (and prescient) dissent on the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz plan for
Iraq, and all good Democrats thought that was so awful, such a terrible sign
of the administration's refusal to tolerate any open debate? And then there
was that time when Bush fired his White House economic adviser, Lawrence
Lindsey, for publicly suggesting that the Iraq War might cost $100 billion,
prompting similar cries of outrage from Democrats about how the GOP crushes
internal debate and dissent. Obama's conduct seems quite far from the time
during the campaign when Obama-fawning journalists like Time's Joe Klein
were hailing him for wanting a "team of rivals", and Obama was saying things
like this: "I don't want to have people who just agree with me. I want
people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone."

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