Obama’s Outgoing Attitude

HONESTLY, WHO’S SURPRISED BY THIS?

 Obama’s Outgoing Attitude on War and Terrorism: Do as He Says, Not as He Did; A speech on respecting rule of law and transparency from an administration that did neither.

It looks like President Barack Obama will be leaving office the same way he arrived: overestimating his actual commitment to rule of law and government transparency.
That’s one takeaway from the president’s counterterrorism speech at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida, yesterday. As is typical of an Obama speech, particularly one coming as his administration winds down, it’s heavy on summarizing his successes and calling on actions from Congress, yet flat out either refuses to acknowledge or is quick to justify his misuses of power. . . .
Reminder: This is a president who has developed a complex system by which he executes suspected terrorists in countries where America is not legally involved in a war through the use of drone strikes in a system that is both deliberately secretive but also not subject to review by the judicial branch. The Department of Justice under Obama has, in fact, used claims of national security to try to keep judges from even being able to hear cases connected to the constitutionality of some of its practices.
Furthermore, this is a president who oversaw military intervention in Libya without authorization by Congress. And in this very speech he calls on Congress to use its authority to determine whether to allow for military force, an absurd incongruity Tim Carney makes note of in the Washington Examiner.
Obama calls for an updated Authorized Use of Force (the Congressional authorization for warmaking) but stubbornly clings to an insistence that everything he’s been doing is already authorized. It’s a muddled argument. Either the president’s military actions have been legal and a new authorization isn’t needed, or the president’s military actions have not been legal (in which case he should stop). He even recently added, via executive declaration, a terrorist group in Somalia that didn’t even exist at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks to the list of authorized targets.

Honestly, we’re just lucky he didn’t add the Tea Party to the list. But then, for them he has the IRS.

15Posted at 7:12 am by Glenn Reyno