In this writing “I” will be used with greater frequency than any of my previous pieces. Across the world-wide web I’ve seen many comments in regard to my criticisms of some of President Obama’s policies by, shall I say, ardently conservative individuals.
Rarely do they address what the actual point of the piece, but instead pivot to some pre-determined view of some supposed scandal. They, erroneously, assume that any disparagement of any Obama policy means a wholesale rejection of everything this president does.
Domestic spying hypocrisy
About four years ago, during the Bush administration, certain FBI personnel used misleading emergency letters to acquire thousands of Americans’ phone records. At the time this led to an unprecedented criminal probe, revealed at an outreach meeting led by FBI director Robert Mueller and general counsel Valerie Caproni at FBI headquarters, were looking at the actions of an antiterrorism team known as the Communications Analysis Unit.
The privately disclosed investigation marked the first time government officials faced possible prosecution for misuse of Patriot Act investigative tools, and highlighted the seriousness of reports about the FBI’s misuse of a powerful self-issued subpoena known as a National Security Letter.
Unit employees, who were not authorized to request records in investigations, sent form letters to telephone companies to acquire detailed billing information on specific phone numbers by falsely promising that subpoenas were already in the works.
National Security Letters are self-issued subpoenas that allow investigators in terrorism and espionage cases to require phone companies, banks, credit reporting agencies and internet service providers to turn over records on Americans considered “relevant” to an investigation. Those records are then fed into three computer systems, including a shared data-mining tool known as the Investigative Data Warehouse.
Though warned in 2001 to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47 thousand National Security Letters in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans. And yet my conservative brothers and sisters were either indifferent or supportive of this state of affairs under Bush.
Yes, it is equally abhorrent that the National Security Agency, under Obama, has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies — including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. And yes, it is similarly objectionable that, according to the Washington Post and The Guardian, this data-mining – through the top-secret program codenamed PRISM – has taken place. The report explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs.
Nevertheless, the right wing echo-chamber has ascribed much more sinister motives to Obama than they ever did to Bush – as a matter a fact, very little was said in the conservative media about this program when the Bush White House was the culprit.
Conservative talking-head Michelle Malkin went as far as to say that domestic spying was perfectly fine under Bush because he supported the war on terror and president Obama does not – yeah, I don’t get it either.
And although I don’t agree with Obama’s stance when it comes to the invasion of privacy of American citizens, I am not aligned with those who were voiceless during the two terms of George W. Bush.
It’s still the economy, stupid
During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, Republican-leaning media couldn’t even render an insinuation that Bush requested, and was given, 19 debt limit increases to the tune of $4 trillion.
The Bush administration also refused to crack down on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, capitulating to pressure from some of the same banks that eventually failed. It ignored spectacularly spot-on warnings that predicted the financial meltdown.
“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job. Now let’s be clear: Before Bush, former President Clinton and former Senator Phil Gramm did a masterful job at gutting Glass-Steagall – one administration, invariably, builds on the indiscretions of the previous one.
This is an area where I believe Obama deserves less criticism than he has received. True, when President Obama had both houses of Congress he could have been more aggressive in addressing the economy; he bowed to political pressure and took an extremely conservative approach in regard to the stimulus.
The president consistently gave (and gives) far more than he received in negotiating with congressional Republicans – his starting points were usually more favorable than their suggested first offers. In other words, even when Obama was taking the conservative or Republican economic position, he was accused of being a socialist or big-government liberal.
What is consistently missing from the anti-Obama fiscal narrative is that his predecessor inherited a $300 billion dollar surplus that turned into $1.2 trillion deficit, cut taxes during two wars, created the revenue-sucking Medicare Part D program and began the largely carte-blanche process of bailing out Wall Street financial institutions.
No, I’m not thrilled with every move that the current president has made when it comes to the economy, but it does not in any way whatsoever make me blind to the previous president’s failed policies.
Spurious national security and foreign policy
I have written, at great length, about the flawed national security policies of the Obama White House: the drone policy, the failure to close Guantanamo as promised, the war on whistleblowers, etc., but let’s not get confused about the foundational edifice upon which most of his policies are built. His policies are a continuation and an escalation of those put in place by the Bush administration.
The same conservative voices that give me an “atta boy” whenever I critique the president are usually the same ones that cheered on the Iraq War, were silent about torture and seem to have absolutely no problem with the deaths of civilians, including children, by drone strikes on distant shores.
Not only are these right-wing cheerleaders in full support of the failed “war on terror,” they have been pushing (or attempting to push) the U.S. into other conflicts in Libya, Iran and Syria as well. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe you should lose credibility on a subject when (a) your point of view has been repeatedly proven to be erroneous or a failure and (b) you engage in personal attacks on the individual forwarding the same policy you supported under a different president.
Conclusion
Maybe I would have greater sympathy for those on the right if they didn’t, in order to make their point, sink to the lowest common denominator. When accusations of laziness get casually thrown around; when the current president is called the welfare president or when the conservative fear-and-smear machine goes into full throttle to make the occupier of the White House appear foreign and un-American, it is no longer political dissent, it is racism pure and simple.
The problem is that the things I disagree with Obama on are the very things that the right either supports or supported when Bush did them. There are so many real issues to oppose the president on, but Republicans seem content chasing their own faux scandal-tails.
I believe that Obamacare should be more expansive; I don’t believe in perpetual war and I don’t believe demonizing American Muslims and Muslims around the world is just or a sound national security strategy.
So, my dear right wing, this isn’t a case of the enemy of my enemy being my friend, because I am not an enemy or the left or right – my only desire is to advocate for what is right over what is wrong.
When and where your pronouncements are absent of bigotry and racism, when your arguments are based on reason and not fear and when strongly held principles are discovered even when the “other guy” is in office, you and I might finally agree.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy.