OBAMA SECURITY SPEECH: A SNOW JOB

OBAMA TALKS THE TALK BUT DOES NOT WALK THE WALK...ON SECURITY/GITMO/DRONES.

President Obama in his speech today (May 23, 2013) ladled out some pablum for domestic consumption. His soft rhetorical gruel was designed by his script writers to slow the rising anger and anti-Obama sentiment awash in these first several months of Obama’s second term, events which are screwing up his chances to establish his “legacy”. Perhaps he fears he will go own in the history books as the first black president and the first to kill Americans abroad with no trial or independent oversight and little more. The slop was designed to quell the outrage on the left (and in the world) over torture, (which he finally openly admitted), over the shame of Gitmo, where the nation which calls itself the “bastion of freedom” is now force-feeding, 150 shackled, orange-clothed inmates, most of whom, in an eleven year limbo, are known to be innocent. The speech seems an attempt to tamp down national objections to Obama’s illegal, counterproductive drone operation which may perhaps eventually bring our first Black President a conviction in the World Court, and act nicely as a mantlepiece counter-poise to his Nobel Peace prize. These reputation and legacy-staining events (Gitmo, torture, drones) are raising their ugly heads at a the very same time that the American Right is having a field day counting and recounting the juicy Obama “letter and location” scandals: IRA, AP, BENGHAZI.

The “security” speech was apparently designed to help Obama’s personal-security, rather than expiate and further the nation’s security. It clearly attempts to generate the impression of policy revision, but the speech gives no indication of actual changes to be put into action by the Obama Administration. This President seems unable, even now when he will never face another election, to act forcefully and with determination. Though his rhetoric gives the impression of action, it is a illusion, and none should be expected. The pattern of Obama's speechifying has remained consistent through his first term and this one was no different. After digesting the content and reading the transcript, to be sure, I was reminded of the “troop surge embarrassment” in the early months of his first term when the President was talking the talk (of closing down the Iraq war) but could not or would not “walk the walk”. President Obama has a slick ability to rhetorically dress up the store front window, while he continues in his bad old ways in the back room

The President’s wavering is unfortunately something we have become used to here in the US. Perhaps we have accepted his faltering and cautiousness as a happy alternative to the last occupant's foolhardy blundering. But the most offensive lines of his speech are those where he tries to justify the process of illegal assassination and especially of killing our US citizens (now confirmed at four) abroad, Americans, some as young as 16 years of age, who were blown to bits thousand’s of miles from any recognized battlefield. In addition, his killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghanistanis, children, women, and elderly as unfortunate “collateral damage” can not be legally or morally justified. The drone policies and kill lists are illegal and a regression into our long-ago unsophisticated past when so called “justice” was meted out in secret meetings, with no independent oversight, at the end of a rope, or gun barrel.

In legal terms, Obama’s (and his predecessor’s) policies have taken us back into the colorful but awful “old west”, when characters such as Judge Roy Bean, known as: “the only law west of the Pecos”, used the butt-end of his six-gun as a gavel to call his West Texas kangaroo court to order. In summer session Bean conducted his court under a great live-oak known as the “hangin’ tree”, claiming the cool dappled shade and the thick, horizontal oak-tree limbs (from which a noose could be easily hung), were an ideal venue for carrying out the brief court procedures and the inevitable sentence. At other times he rapped his gavel in his own saloon, convenient for other purposes. But wherever the court met, it was almost axiomatic that any allegation against the accused (horse thief, hornswoggler, cold blooded murderer, etc., etc.) was immediately accepted as a “fact" (apparently, as is the case in Obama’s inner circle). Roy Bean and our legal-scholar president apparently made no distinction between an “allegation” and a confirmed fact. All of the President’s claims listed in his speech, accusations against purported wrongdoers and "terrorists" and all those he has put to death by drone strikes are all simply unsubstantiated allegations, sincce they were never put to the test of independent, unbiased scrutiny. In those past days of our tumultuous west, allegations were often derived and supported based on circumstances such as proximity to a crime scene, or on the “culprit's” sweaty palms, bulging eyes, nervousness, or “swarthy complexion”. For Judge Bean and his jurymen the latter was a sure sign of guilt and it worked for almost any crime, domestic violence, sex offender, rapist, horse thief, arsonist, you name it. It sure made things simple for the posse and the jury. Sadly, beginning under President Bush and now Obama, we have regressed back to the Judge Bean days of justice.

It should be noted here that the West Texas posse, and jury, were one in the same. This body was generally rounded up from the two most popular saloons in town to ride down and capture the alleged perpetrator. Today, we have no mounted posses. In our day a drone “pilot” sits at a console in an air conditioned trailer on the outskirts of an isolated air base in Arizona or New Mexico to chase down modern day US culprits on the far side of the world. No need to saddle up for the modern posse rider. Judge Bean himself rode at the head of many West Texas posse. Bean also took upon himself the responsibility for tying and snugging up a good tight hangman’s knot around the felon's neck. In Washington today, Obama is said to go over his “kill lists” as scrupulously (by himself--with no independent oversight). Once convinced he is right, with no outside independent input on the matter, our President coldly rains down death on people only “suspected” of criminal intent (and any by-standers or relatives which happen to be near). He has also given his imprimatur to other "kills" in what are called by the CIA, “signature strikes”. One such signature strike resulted in the deaths of eight, 10-15 year old Afghan kids who were innocently scavenging wood early in the morning on a hill-top for their parent’s breakfast fire when someone on President Obama’s orders pulled the trigger on a predator drone overhead.

In similar manner, often only minutes after the start of a West Texas trial, Judge Bean would smartly slap the dusty rump of a jumpy cow-pony upon which the “convicted” party sat, his hands tied securely behind his back and his sweaty neck,collared with a rough hemp rope. Bean always referred to the Mexican-style high-rise pommel and cantle on this cow pony as the "witness box”. Of course Bean swore (just like the President) that he was “doin’ justice” too, and there were “no other options”. But at least Bean went through with the formality of a trail..none of that for us today.

Bean's court in the 1880s had no truck with niceties like the accused being able to examine or confront witnesses arrayed against him or her, or the value of a confrontational setting in which both sides, like prosecution and defense, examine evidence to arrive at a more exact approximation of the truth. They never considered to insure the impartiality of witnesses. No one complained about the validity of statements taken from the accused after he or she was threatened with a hot branding iron, punched and kicked around by the jury, or hog-tied and dragged some miles behind a broom-tail pony. One thing the accused in Bean’s day could expect that the individuals on Mr. Obama’s kill lists could not, was a “timely trial”. But both could expect a ghoulish consistent outcome--death by hanging or being blown to bits. But at least the Texans of that era had some semblance of a “trial” and their relatives had a body to put into a pine box for burial.

Again in this case, our President is attempting to snow us by talking the talk, but don't expect him to walk the walk. Gitmo will not close, nor will drone strikes abate. Obama simply has no real desire to invest his political capital-the little he has--. It's too bad, he had great potential to be a transformational president. But it seems, unlike the nation, his best days are past. His big accomplishment, sad to state, may be that he was the first black man elected to the office and the first to bring us back to Judge Roy Bean style western justice.

Get the picture?

rjk