We've been looking at the war against leakers, and finding that it's not in fact much of a war, and that Obama doesn't have very much to do with it; and at the president's participation in the drone campaign Kill List for Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, in which—grotesque as it sounds on first hearing—it turns out you can make a case that Obama is really working to minimize the number of killings, and also taking personal responsibility for them.
Incidentally, David Cole for the New York Review is also willing to give him some credit on that issue for being different from George W. Bush (though very far from letting him off the hook entirely):
Here's another one: You remember the promises Obama made in 2008 about immigration reform and the sad reality of what has happened instead, as in no reform and a doubling of the rate of deportations?
James Verini argues at length in the Washington Monthly that that's not Obama's fault either. Stupid Blue Dogs wouldn't vote for the reform before the 2010 elections, of course, and afterwards it was really too late. As for the deportations, what Obama intended was to refocus the work of ICE from anybody they could catch to those undocumented immigrants who were really criminals, the ones evereybody wanted to get rid of—a policy that would have decreased the number of deportations—
Incidentally, David Cole for the New York Review is also willing to give him some credit on that issue for being different from George W. Bush (though very far from letting him off the hook entirely):
torture and cruel treatment of detainees are absolutely prohibited during war and peace alike; indeed, they are war crimes. Killing enemy fighters in wartime is not a crime, but a necessary evil. There is no moral equivalence between what we did to KSM and to Osama bin Laden.
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| From Immigrant Lawn Work. |
James Verini argues at length in the Washington Monthly that that's not Obama's fault either. Stupid Blue Dogs wouldn't vote for the reform before the 2010 elections, of course, and afterwards it was really too late. As for the deportations, what Obama intended was to refocus the work of ICE from anybody they could catch to those undocumented immigrants who were really criminals, the ones evereybody wanted to get rid of—a policy that would have decreased the number of deportations—
But in execution, critics say, the program has become an indiscriminate dragnet, sweeping up tens of thousands of minor offenders and tearing apart communities and families in the process. The official went on, “You have a situation where arresting people is a way of triggering this elaborate and expensive and broad removal procedure. The result is unfortunate from a lot of perspectives.”OK, well; but now I'm starting to wonder about it from the other side—do we have a problem with Obama in that he's incapable of working his will?
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