Obama and the Right Wing vs. the ACLU and Human Rights Groups (Again)

What does it say about Obama’s policies when he is consistently being praised by rightwingers and their newspapers, while sparking protests from civil liberties and human rights groups?

By Jeremy Scahill

The Wall Street Journal editorial page was all full of praise this weekend for Barack Obama’s decision to abandon his campaign pledges to end the Bush administration’s military tribunals system for prisoners at Guantanamo. “Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror,” the paper’s editors wrote. “He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney — and which, contrary to the narrative that Democrats promulgated for years, will be the fairest and most open war-crimes trials in U.S. history.”

The Journal smugly notes, “At least some people in the White House must now be embarrassed by their boss’s switcheroo.” I’m not so sure—I actually think a lot of these people are so hyped on their own (perceived) awesomeness that they actually believe their own BS.

Remember, as part of “the change” we were told to “believe in,” the Obama campaign characterized these tribunals as a “shadow justice system” with candidate Obama proclaiming: “Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists.”

On Friday, when Obama officially announced his reversal, many newspapers fawned over the decision on the tribunals and Obama’s blocking of the release of thousands of photos showing US abuse of prisoners. In fact, as Liliana Segura pointed out, “Over at the Wall Street Journal, editors deemed the decision more than just a decision, calling it ‘Obama’s Photo Epihany,’ and applauding the president’s refusal to capitulate to the ‘braying from his campaign allies on the left.’ (It was, as the comfort-seeking Peggy Noonan might say, ‘a pleasant reversal.’)

‘The President is learning, albeit slowly, that secrecy has its uses in wartime, and that the real goal of his allies on the left is to make it harder for the U.S. to defend itself,’ the WSJ concluded, ludicrously.”

Here’s a question: what does it say about Obama’s policies on torture, transparency, civil liberties and a host of other core issues—that Obama campaigned on as issues that separated his campaign from the Republicans—when the president’s fiercest defenders are the Wall Street Journal, the neocons and hawkish Congressional Republicans and the critics are the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights and human rights groups?

This scenario is becoming all too familiar, particularly on foreign policy. There is a similar configuration with Obama’s Iraq policy and his Afghanistan escalation. The Wall Street Journal states bluntly what many of Obama’s partisan supporters remain too blind to recognize:

“President Obama’s endorsements of Bush-Cheney antiterror policies are by now routine: for example, opposing the release of prisoner abuse photographs and support for indefinite detention for some detainees, and that’s just this week. More remarkable is White House creativity in portraying these U-turns as epic change.”