US PRESIDENCY AS ACCUMULATIVE ERROR

David Swanson, author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union has written a chilling piece of commentary on the state of the American presidency.

Below is an excerpt:

SECOND, I LOOKED AT THE POWER OF WAR. Our Constitution wisely placed it in Congress. It is now in the White House and growing ever stronger. President Obama has demanded and received a larger military budget than Bush ever had, plus a larger war budget on top of that, not to mention the secret budget for some of the spy agencies that engage in war. President Obama continues to insist on funding the wars off the books with so-called emergency supplementals. He's put bases into more nations. He's put more troops in the field. He's expanded the use of mercenaries and contractors. He's dramatically expanded the illegal use of drones to bomb Pakistan and other nations, resulting—among other forms of blowback—a man trying to set off a bomb in Times Square, a man whose father's job used to be guarding nuclear weapons. Obama's Pentagon is pushing hard to use drones in U.S. skies as well. Meanwhile, Obama has—in another badder than Bush innovation—formally authorized secret military action in dozens of nations. He's formally done away with habeas corpus and established the power to imprison people at Bagram and other sites completely outside any legal process. He's kept our death camp at Guantanamo open. President Obama has continued to assert the power to torture, and torture has continued. He's also continued to assert the power to kidnap or "rendition" people and send them to nations that torture. But, most disturbingly, Obama has largely replaced torture with murder. People we would have sought to capture two years ago, we now seek to murder instead. And Obama has claimed the power to assassinate anyone, including American citizens. And, needless to say, the warrantless spying programs and other violations of civil liberties roll on unquestioned, and Miranda rights may be at risk now too. And one reason to think things may be even worse than we know is that Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors.

Read it all at Corrente: Obama Was Created By Our Failure to Impeach Bush

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, STILL SENSIBLE

Hugh Fitzgerald again sums up the situation rather tightly...

A Jihad Watch reader recently wrote: “You don't want them in the UK. And they don't want you in Iraq, Afghanistan. They don't want your diplomatic double standards over Palestine, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, et cetera. If you want to be left alone, leave others alone.”

Yes, one can partly agree with this. The West should remove itself from Iraq and from Afghanistan, and never try to engage in such a baseless "bringing freedom to ordinary moms and dads" bit of nonsense again. And it should cease the transfer, from Infidels to Believers, of all that wealth, including more than $60 billion to Egypt from the United States alone, and $27.5 billion, if one includes debt relief, to Pakistan by the United States since 2001 alone. The disguised Jizyah of foreign aid to Muslim states that do not have oil does not change the attitudes and atmospherics of Muslim states, attitudes and atmospherics that flow naturally from the tenets, that are derived naturally from the immutable canonical texts of Islam—Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. The fiasco of Tarbaby Iraq, which has cost the United States $880 billion, more than the total cost of all the wars, save World War II, ever fought by the United States, should be clear.

And it should be clear that the large-scale presence of Muslims in the Bilad al-Kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, has created a situation which, both for the indigenous Infidels, and for non-Muslim immigrants as well, is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale presence. Once that is clearly understood, sensible measures—beginning with a halt to Muslim migration, and intelligent ways to reverse current trends, can be undertaken. One has only to look around—for Americans, say, to see what has happened in England or France, or the British to see what has happened in the Netherlands, or the Italians to look at Malmo or Rotterdam, or the Americans, who have the advantage of seeing what has happened and is happening in Western Europe—to understand this problem.

Finally, there is no way to "reform" Islam through the efforts of Infidels, and possibly not through the efforts of those who are now aware of the problem, but out of filial piety or embarrassment continue to Defend the Faith, and do not join the impressive and articulate defectors from it, such as Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others. For not only is their the fear of what true Believers will do (death for such defectors can and has been the result in some cases) inhibiting, but complete social ostracism is a powerful inhibitor as well. And it is difficult to see steadily and whole a Total System, that regulates all areas of life, and—at no extra cost—explains the universe.

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