The New York Times Editorial Board:
President Obama’s speech today was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.
Without admitting any mistakes on his part or any personal overreach, the president basically rebuked twelve years of U.S. counterterrorism policy today and mapped out a road to a sane and much more sustainable future. It was what most of us hoped we would get four years ago, but some of us never wavered in our faith that this is where the president’s real sympathies lay.
It hasn’t been easy to stomach some of Obama’s counterterrorism policies over the last four and a half years, and sometimes it seemed like he was going to permanently institute some of Bush and Cheney’s worst legacies. Knowing that the alternative was immeasurably worse was often slim solace.
I weathered through it, having a firm but unprovable conviction that most of the worst that I was witnessing was seen as necessary to secure reelection and prevent a restoration of the truly insane and dangerous policies now current in the neo-fascist Republican Party.
His speech today was carefully crafted, but reading between the lines it is clear that he thinks many of the policies that he himself has pursued are misguided, dangerous, unsustainable, and need to stop. I agree. I have agreed through gritted teeth for more than four years.
Turning the ship of state around without being battered on the shoals was an incredible task to ask of anyone. We saw the resistance to the obvious move of closing Gitmo and holding civilians trials. We can only imagine the backlash that would have occurred had Obama actually tried to hold people legally accountable for what they did during the Bush years. Through it all, I had faith that I had pegged this man correctly and that he shared my values.
He has three and a half years to unravel what it took eleven years to create. I don’t know of a single individual in this country who I could better trust to execute the mission.
“It hasn’t been easy to stomach some of Obama’s counterterrorism policies over the last four and a half years … “
No it hasn’t, but they weren’t really Obama’s policies. Yes, I know, officially we have to say they were, blah blah, because otherwise it would look like the president wasn’t in charge of everything or responsible for everything. But the truth is, he’s not in charge of everything. But he does get blamed for everything, that comes with the job.
The bottom line is, I agree that this is a remarkable achievement.
I agree with you, Booman!
Obama rhetorically ends the ‘war on terror’
This is consistent with what senior Obama administration officials told Congress last week:
The phrase “Global War on Terror” was invented to blur the difference between counter-terrorism policy aimed at al Qaeda and geopolitical wars like Iraq.
It used to be mainly the right that pushed that term because they wanted to confuse the two matters. Now, it’s mainly the left.
I haven’t heard the President use this term.
He abandoned both the term and the concept (a civilizational war, an ideological confrontation like the Cold War) immediately upon taking office.
He’s always referred to the war against al Qaeda as its own thing, and categorized actions like the Iraq War and the Libya operation as distinct conflicts that were not part of some grand, overarching War on Terror.
Obama to sign Congressional Gold Medal Bill for four little girls
Beautiful. Hope there’s some good coverage of this tomorrow.
History:
Public support for the Vietnam War:
March 1966 59%
October 1968 37%
May 1971 28%
February 27, 1968 – Walter Cronkite:
Yet the war was escalated to include Laos and Cambodia in 1970.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed January 1973. Then we spent another two years propping up the S. Vietnamese government.
While LBJ decried the loss of support from Cronkite, it’s long been accepted that the beginning of the end was when US corporations saw it as hurting them more than helping.
Odd how the timeline then and now seems so similar.
The beginning of the end of Vietnam should have been in 1968. But the left shit the bed in Chicago and elsewhere and failed to elect Humphrey. So we got 6 years of high crimes and misdemeanors instead. Maybe if the left could learn to be a little bit more pragmatic – then and now – we’d have a much more effective progressive movement.
Maybe if HHH had come out against the war, there wouldn’t have been any protesters at the Chicago convention. Or if LBJ had gone public with the information that Nixon’s team was sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks.
Or maybe if all those 18-20 year olds had been enfranchised and 600,000 of them showed up to vote in selected states, Nixon might have lost. But that minimizes the fact that 13.5% of voters preferred George Wallace.
DFH bashing is such a popular sport among some Democrats that they lose sight of how it really explains nothing.
RFK would have won in a walk.
Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been “a walk.” JFK carried LA, AR, and GA and all three went for Wallace in 1968.
I’m not so sure.
He’d not have had the union support that Humphrey had, given RFK’s history as AG, and before that counsel to the Senate Rackets Committee, his position on the war, and his popularity with minorities….
The disappearing act Meaney and others pulled in ’72 when McGovern was nominated would just have happened earlier.
And it wouldn’t have been a walk. As it was, the ’68 election was only close in the popular vote. The EC was 301 Nixon, 191 Humphrey, 46 Wallace.
Kennedy would have had to hold all the states won by Humphrey (which included Texas) while taking some from Nixon. If he lost Texas, it would have been even more difficult.
(I don’t see RFK flipping any Wallace states…)
Or if LBJ had allowed his VP to put some distance between himself and Lyndon’s War w/o being treated as disloyal, and then if Gene McCarthy had put aside his personal bitterness, or whatever it was, to endorse HHH fully and enthusiastically at the time of the convention thus helping unite the party going into the fall campaign.
Lots of what ifs, many of which could have been resolved had Johnson not stubbornly adhered to his stupid hawkish war policy. But he was who he was, a highly sensitive prickly prick of a president who demanded full personal and political loyalty from his subordinates and who was always paranoid about being betrayed. He was the president after all who bugged the office of his own Vice President and who privately probably preferred Nixon over Humphrey.
As for the convention, it’s difficult not to sympathize with the many mostly peaceful protesters who showed up to voice dissent from the Johnson admin’s awful war. A few idiots however, along with who knows how many violent agents provocateurs, decided aggressive confrontation with Daley’s uniformed goons was the better approach. And shame on weak-willed Humphrey to this day for immediately applauding the police actions, and also a thumbs down to Uncle Walter for letting the mayor off the hook when he had a chance to ask tough questions of him on national tv.
You’re reminding me of Al Giordano’s writings on the differences between activism and organizing. I don’t have my link anymore but he also had some very interesting things to say about the pragmatic and incremental nature of organizing.
Yeah, something like that. There’s a lot of folks on the left who still worship the politics of protest, but don’t recognize that protest without effective organizing is useless. Worse than useless, actually, because it invites backlash as we saw over and over again in the 60’s and 70’s.
Then, instead of taking responsibility for their failures, activist types often just blame the corrupt, sellout politicians for screwing things up. And then they tune out of politics entirely and the right takes over in the vacuum. You could indict the entire Boomer generation for this.
Some of these same people also look back at moments in “protesting” history and think that they were spontaneous and don’t realize that they were years in the making.
People love to talk about Kent State as if it were just a protest that happened in the swirl of events that year but my Dad started a campus ministry group in ’66 that morphed into the anti war movement there. There were many protests and teach ins and sit ins in the intervening years–all non violent. They were disciplined-there were serious trainings. The SDS met in the basement of his church (sh don’t tell the IRS) and my Mom worked for the Kent State administration.
Then we moved and all hell broke loose and the students who were killed weren’t even involved in the protest.
Your dad must be very proud of your organizing! I lost my dad 18 years ago, but I hope yours is still with us so he can see it. Looks like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
We even organize together sometimes!!
I’m so sorry you lost your Dad.
That is so great. What fun for both of you!
Some people you never stop missing; 18 years later and a grown woman, I am still “daddy’s girl”, at heart. 🙂
Well, FWIW, I found one old Giordano article that references Booman as well. It isn’t the one that went more deeply into incremental aspects of organizing although it mentions this:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/end-activism-and-renaissance-organizing
Ah, yes, in which my friend Al smacks me around badly enough that I basically never use the word ‘activism’ again.
It was very clear he respected you and your views. That’s pretty good considering how fervent Al is on his views of organizing.
I also happen to agree with him. I’ve worked in social service agencies in Chicago where Alinsky is highly regarded. I never considered myself an organizer but I reported to a guy for a few years that quoted Alinsky weekly and had his writing always nearby.
Setting the agenda and goals for something achievable. Making face to face contact, handshakes.
Building the organization structure.
Creating paths to success.
There is a reason the Obama campaign relied heavily on organizing principles. I think a lot of people on the left never got that. Sometimes I think some of the successes we’ve had are being taken for granted. Some we’ve won might be lost in 2016 because I’m not sure if a candidate other than Obama knows well enough how to use the organizing methods.
So, after all this time do you think Al’s distinctions about organizing were important enough to draw that clear line between organizing and activism? Any other thoughts?
I give you great credit for always saying so.
I wonder what those who spent the last four years zealously defending every policy of this government as the best of all worlds are thinking now that the President just called some of his own actions as being on a path that would lead to the eventual disintegration of democracy.
Ha! Just kidding. I don’t wonder at all.
Boo, I wish I shared your optimism that – even assuming Obama keeps his word, which I expect but which is no guarantee (c.f. Guantanamo) – that one speech, or even a three-year-long pivot in policy, somehow undoes the fact that Obama has “permamently institute[d] some of Bush and Cheney’s worst legacies.” The fact that he has pursued them – in some cases expanded them – well into his second term means that they are now legitimized as policy options, supported by some Democrats and virtually all Republicans, and implemented by presidents of both parties. Even if Obama fulfills our every wish list, the next president – even if it’s Hillary “Madame Yes” Clinton (her nickname from the Senate Armed Services Committee) – won’t likely face any serious opposition if she or he wants to reinstate them. Everything that Bush and Cheney did that wasn’t prosecuted, up to and including torture – and most of which Obama continued or expanded – is now on the table for future presidents.
That might change in a generation or so; but for the pragmatic future, that ship has sailed, and Obama pushed it away from the pier.
I’m glad he’s pivoting now – providing he follow through meaningfully, and that his policies are implemented appropriately, both no lock given the enormous influence of the permanent war lobby. It’s far better than not having pivoted. But he can’t undo the bipartisan precedent the last 12 years have set, and he oversaw the last (and least necessary) third of it.
I’m a bit skeptical too, and will look for the follow through process to see whether this wasn’t just more rhetoric over substance.
I also wonder whether Obama was inspired to speak out now with the 50th anniversary of JFK’s American University “Peace Speech” almost upon us, the speech which overtly marked a major admin pivot point with Kennedy’s call for an end to the old Cold War mindset and which announced a new program, driven not by public opinion but mostly by his own principled concerns, to reduce the nuclear threat.
JFK expended some political capital getting that landmark Test Ban Treaty passed, having overcome the initial strong and widespread opposition of the JCS, Congress and the majority of the public. One excellent and bold (and underreported) speech followed by bold action to implement it. Will Obama act similarly?
Something that should encourage you is that the policies reforms he outlined do not represent a sharp change from what has come before, but the continuation of trends established in the first days of this administration, which have continued throughout.
Wow, I wondered what you’d say and I was not disappointed.
Not a bad article on it:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/obama-speech-drones-civil-liberties
Barak, walk the walk faster than anyone has: you’ve just only taken your first baby steps and your time is short. Maybe it’s too late, but I suspect that anyway you’ve finally realized that no one can be loved by everyone in this world.
you guys never fail.
spelling, how does that work?
So what’s wrong? Enlighten me.
Oh, you object to the missinc c in Barak, poor Mr. O., he’s still losing sleep. You could better keep things purring along by not being such a petty feline scols. Bah, sex!
I never fail – sclos=scold.
sclos = scolds
Great piece, Booman!
President Obama just made all of us who were called “Obamabots” for 4 years feel justified in defending him, and telling people, to ‘wait, and see.’
He just couldn’t do it until now.
I think if Congress HAD voted to close Gitmo, back in 2009 or 2010, he would have made these changes on the heels of that.
But they didn’t, there was backlash against him for wanting to close Gitmo (he was called weak on the GWOT – at least until he ordered the attack that killed bin Laden), and, of course, Obamacare, so he had to concentrate on getting reelected, and hoped for circumstances to justify the actions that he took yesterday.
I expect our Neo-Fascist to go apesh*t.
A constant state of perpetual war is necessary for creating, and maintaining, their agenda(s). And they will never back down.
We have to concentrate on the next two elections, to either make sure they don’t get more power in Congress next year, and the Executive, and Congress, in three years, or to minimize the damage if they do.
We need to mobilize, and keep mobilized for the rest of our lives. The Neo-Fascists will NOT back down, and neither can we!
Also too – I forgot to add, that I really appreciate President Obama’s timing in giving this speech right before the MEMORIAL Day weekend.
Let our Neo-Fascists criticize him, and clamor for continuing their moronic war on a tactic, right before, and over, the day we honor the people who served this nation in the military – and especially, those who died, defending this nation.
‘Please proceed, Neo-Fascists…’
Second the motion. Great piece. I hoped Obama would end Bush’s wars, but I never expected him to commit political suicide to do it. I’d have been comforted by some rhetoric and posturing along the way, but slow, steady, quiet, and pragmatic seems to work better.
Though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were stupid from the beginning, his counter-terrorism policies have been fine, including the drone war in Yemen and including the intentional (once) and unintended killings of Americans.
I really don’t see this as a change of course, but as the continuation. He’s been “turning the ship of state” around since he came into office, while continuing to go after al Qaeda.
Four years ago, he banned torture and began to leave Iraq. Four years ago, he implemented stricter rules for air strikes (even as he expanded them in number), resulting in lower rates of collateral damage.
The only policy he really repudiated with keeping Gitmo open, and he tried to close it four years ago.
I’m not seeing the about face.
I’m with you on this. He’s been very consistent.
agree with both of you. Also, note re: AP telephone logs, now Congress is talking about legislation to limit/ transparentize practices set up by Bush. I never tire of [just kidding, I do tire of it] left blogospherites claiming that Obama is naive, just learning something, as if he’s been stumbling through his presidency
Obama is right in all of this. Change is the key 🙂 http://linkapp.me/RyQbb