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Dear Mr. President,
Back on November 4, around 11 pm Eastern, a collective cheer went up across the country and around the globe. The long, dark nightmare that had been the last eight years was over, we thought. The promises that we had heard during the campaign and in your victory speech that night had us thrilled at the prospect that the United States would abandon the lawless ways of George W. Bush and rejoin the civilized nations that do not torture prisoners or spy on its citizens illegally. There was hope that rational, fair action would be taken to repair a broken economy.
What happened?
You said that you rejected torture, and you promised to close Guantanamo within a year. Yet, we are hearing reports that abuse at Guantanamo has gone up since you took office. What happened? Time is running out. Will you stop torture at Guantanamo and all facilities under US control around the globe, or is closing Guantanamo just a token action behind which abuses will continue?
You promised the most transparent government our country has seen. Now your Attorney General tells us that he agrees, with possibly only one exception, with the Bush Administration’s invocation of state secrets in all of the currently ongoing lawsuits. What happened? When does transparency come? Will you eventually reject state secrets claims in lawsuits, or do you now reject that promise of openness?
As part of your transparency promises, you said that you would release the Office of Legal Counsel memos behind which the Bush Administration hid while committing many of its crimes. Yet, when the worst memo from 2002 and three of the worst memos from 2005 are nearing release, you choose to delay. What happened? Will you release these memos with little to no redaction, are will you hide the substantive portions of them?
You made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor in 2006 in support of habeas corpus rights for prisoners captured away from an active battlefield. Your Department of Justice has now filed a brief that continues the Bush Administration claims that habeas rights do not apply to such prisoners. What happened? Why do you now reject your previous position on this important issue?
You promised new approaches to the financial crisis that would focus on the average citizen and help those struggling with mortgages that have become unaffordable. What happened? You have continued the Bush Administration approach of giving staggeringly large sums of money to the very Wall Street executives who created the problems while not requiring even modest accountability from them for their previous actions or for how they will use the new funds. When will you take action on behalf of the average citizen?
Many of us in the progressive community worked hard for your election once our preferred candidates dropped out of the race. Simple math should tell you that you were not the first choice for most of the people who voted for you or worked on the late stages of your campaign, since you started well back in the pack of candidates before the primaries began.
It was very easy for progressives to join in your campaign for two reasons. First, your candidacy was an affirmation of the American ideal that all people have equal rights and neither race nor family financial status should be barriers to holding the highest office in the land. Second, you had a finely tuned ear and quickly seized on the higher ideals of other candidates who dropped by the wayside in the long primary process. You gained the support of progressives by saying all of the right things on civil liberties and social justice.
Please do not make the mistake of believing that our commitment to you is stronger than our commitment to our values. We were for civil liberties and social justice before we were for you. Do not make us choose between our ideals or you, because, in your most recent actions we do not see the ideals you told us that you would champion.
What happened? Will you return to the ideals that won you the nomination and provided you with the team to achieve your election?
So far, I see only one promise fulfilled completely. Bo is a delightful choice for Sasha and Malia, and I have no doubt that they will enjoy his company for many years to come. Will progressives enjoy your company for the next four (or eight) years, or will you continue on your current path toward becoming just another of the many opponents to civil liberties and social justice against whom we must continue our struggle?
Our ideals are calling. Will you regain that finely tuned ear, or will we now have to struggle against you?
26 Comments
DIGG IS OPEN - and recommended
You speak so eloquently for us, Gentleman Jim. This is one of your finest, if not the finest.
It seems to me that Obama is making that mistake nearly every day, and every day I ask myself, “Is he all words and no substance, just promises to be chipped away leaving only broken hopes?”
The issues which you address, Jim, are not just my ideals; they are the pillars upon which my very being is founded. If choose I must, then choose I will.
Thank you for your support. Our ideals seem to hover just beyond our reach yet again, don’t they?
Jim, I think I heard Obama say that he has his staff select 10 of the e-mails out of the thousands received each day, and each night he reads those 10.
Key here is who is/are the selector(s), who in effect insulate Obama from knowing the true opinions of the people? Those who select would choose e-mails that promote their agenda – just human nature to use power given.
Your diary should be read by Obama, but IMHO it would never get past Rahm.
How can we break through that wall of insulation?
We each have to continue speaking up as best we can. Check out Glenn Greenwald’s post today. It’s on very much the same topic and he provides evidence that a lot of influential people share many of the sentiments expressed here.
Glen Greenwald’s article today is one of his best.
Jim, please consider sending your diary to Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman, Jim Leher (sp), Dan Froomkin at WAPO, Charlie Rose (I’m losing faith in him, but he will discuss controversial issues)….and anyone or any place where it might get promoted.
Each issue you present should be plainly asked of Obama at a news conference. (fat chance! /s)
JW thanks for “What Happened”
As Roosevelt said “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”
The Obama PR team drew us in (what other choice did we have) based on Accountability and change. There is no way absolutely no way to truly move forward without accountability.
Obama, Holder, Leahy, Whitehouse, Conyers, Pelosi “no one is above the law”. Well except for Cheney, Feith, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Rove etc.
The whole world is watching. So are the ghost of those who unnecessarily died in a war based on a “pack of lies”
news is that Gonzalez. Feith, Yoo, Addison and two more involved in the “legimization” of torture are being indicted by the Spanish prosecutors
Thanks be to God for the Spanish. Wish the Obamaites had the guts and integrity to do the same and go for Bush, Cheney and all the rest of BushCo folks.
Thanks for the essay; it really is marvelous
Blessings to all,
Great diary.
Thanks.
Hi and welcome back to simple answers to simple questions.
Today, in the face of several flip-flops and backtracks, Jim White asks President Obama “what happened?”
Answer: the president, like all politicians, is a liar, a hypocrite, and less respectable than a common prostitute.
thanks for playing, and we’ll see you next week on “Simple Answers to Simple Questions.”
adding:
“Second, you had a finely tuned ear and quickly seized on the higher ideals of other candidates who dropped by the wayside in the long primary process.”
Seizing on ideals is not the same as believing those ideals.
“You gained the support of progressives by saying all of the right things on civil liberties and social justice.”
“saying all of the right things” is very different from “doing all of the right things”.
i hope you’re right.
great diary, jim. thank you.
Very true:
Many of us in the progressive community worked hard for your election once our preferred candidates dropped out of the race. Simple math should tell you that you were not the first choice for most of the people who voted for you or worked on the late stages of your campaign, since you started well back in the pack of candidates before the primaries began. [emphasis added]
Obama was 4th on my list (after Dodd, Edwards, Clinton). I hadn’t drunk the “change” kool-aid.
Still, despite his very serious flaws on constitutional issues, he is an improvement over the previous occupant.
To paraphrase Rumsfeld: We must push back against the president we have, rather than the president we wish we had.
Thanks for stating the issues so concisely and eloquently. Unfortunately, it is now beginning to look as though Mr. Obama may be committing some of the same impeachable offenses found in Rep. Kucinich’s June 2008 articles of impeachment against Mr. Bush, specifically, articles 17 and 19.
I write this over and over. The Democrats never fundamentally disagreed with George Bush. This is why they never raised any serious opposition to him and aided the passage of his agenda right up to the very end of his term. They only thought that he had executed his policies badly and that he had gone too far in some of them. But as for the fundamental principles, they were right there with him.
What I see in Obama is a direct extension of this. He does not represent a break with Bush. He simply wants to do the Bush Administration better.
I think it is a mistake to look at Obama or the Democrats as liberals and progressives. They are conservatives with the occasional liberal catchphrase. The important criterion here is not that they are less crazy than the Republicans. It is their current and past record judged on its own terms. If you look at that, then you will see that our political Establishment is made up of the far right (Republicans) and the right (Democrats) even though on many issues most Americans are considerably to the left of both.
Could not agree more.
I’m done with Act Blue donations, done with voting for major-party candidates, done with a whole bunch of stuff (not least of which is credit card spending).
Jim,
Thanks for putting in words how I and many others feel right now. Dugg and recommended.
Recommended; Jim. the answer to ‘will we now have to struggle against you?’ is yes. And we must focus on Rahm Emmanuel as the ‘gatekeeper’.
As others here know, I’m of the opinion there is but one political party and that is the Corporate Party which has ‘blue’ and ‘red’ leagues.
Until the money is taken out of the campaign logistics, the ‘record’ will keep on keepin on.
From the harvard Business School
Why don’t you all join the tea party.
We are having a great time.
Noticing all of the broken campaign promises.
If I go to the local tea party it only will be to laugh at the fools there. So now you guys finally build some outrage over a financial meltdown brought on courtesy of the Republican party dismantling every possible bit of market oversight they could find. This financial crisis would not have happened with proper regulations in place. Now the thieves that pulled it off are financing the organization of these protests and Fox News is joining in to fan up the hatred and racial intolerance so that you misinformed yahoos are going to go protest in the belief that loaning money to black people caused all this.
I went to one of the A New Way Forward protests on Saturday and enjoyed getting more real information on how we got into this mess and how Obama can’t get us out of it by continuing Bush’s failed response. Giving money without strings to the thieves who did this is the last thing we should do. Putting real regulation back into the market, something your “free-market” thugs would never accept, is the only way out. Sadly, you are participating in causing yourself further harm.
Teabag on, dude.
Wonderful letter, and in a very effective, personal delivery that a third-person essay would lack. It does what it’s intended to do, which is bring to the president’s attention the fact that many inclined to support him are being daily disappointed, and those disinclined are inalterably so. Not only is it shifty but it’s dumb.
What he’s now guaranteeing is that few Americans will see or experience any improvement, and the great middle he’s courting will just get more bored, while the right continues frothing no matter what.
I wish its intended recipient were reading.
“We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable…Except for the rare few, our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be “realistic.” We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.”
Howard Zinn, From “Are We Politicians or Citizens?” The Progressive (May 2007)
Thanks for the great diary, Jim. Like a lot of other people I’ve been sending regular emails to Obama through the White House contact page questioning why he’s following in Bush’s footsteps.
I think it’s time for all of us who have blogs to start posting our emails on our blogs so that people can see that there are a lot of progressives very unhappy with the job Obama is doing on these core issues. Actually I’d love to see a diary that is continuously updated with the various emails or links to the emails sent to Obama from people like us.
Only traitors torture.
It sure is easy to talk the talk ,as many who went to church on Easter were feeling. Great music ,nice scents covered the Gitmo/ Abu Ghrab stench quite nicely now didn’t it?
But to walk the walk ,do the right thing that’s a whole different animal.
I bet Pat Tillman sees the whole rotten, vile disgusting picture clearly now.
Obama will go ahead with his agenda of privatizing Social Security so that Wall Street will be able to recover using the fees provided by private retirement accounts. An article in Time on how the trust fund is going to go bankrupt so much earlier than we all thought is just another shot at the American public to get them ready for it.
Higher payroll taxes, working more years before becoming eligible to retire, and collecting less in benefits on you are allowed to retire. It’s the new American way.
Our first black president…bought and paid for by the people who brought you the S&L scandal, Enron, LCTM, the Iraq invasion and occupation, and the looting of the Treasury by AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, et al.
Absolutely perfect post.
Now if only our representatives in Washington had the courage and convictions of their Spanish couterparts, we might make some progress in restoring our nation.