President Barack Obama, former constitutional law professor, has compiled quite the track record on issues of national security. He would point to the killing of Osama bin Laden and several other high-ranking members of al-Qaeda as proof that he has been a successful commander in chief. And he does deserve credit for getting us out of Iraq.
But the rest of his record makes it clear that his approach to national security has been to steer the course originally set out by President George W. Bush. The changes have mostly been rhetorical — he no longer uses the phrase “War on Terror” — but much of the content has remained in place.
Here is the Obama record on national security and civil liberties issues:
- He has approved targeted killings using unmanned drones, including the killing of American citizens. And he attempted to keep the program secret, not just from Americans but Congress, as well.
- He has begun more prosecutions of alleged leakers than all previous presidents combined.
- He subpoenaed the phone records of reporters at the Associated Press to chase a whistleblower.
- His Justice Department designated a reporter as a potential co-conspirator in a leak investigation.
- He has approved domestic surveillance and signed an extension of some of the more far-reaching and civil-rights-encroaching provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
- He has claimed a right of extra-judicial executions.
This is the context in which we need to judge the revelations, published by the Guardian (UK) yesterday, that
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
Does this make Obama worse than Bush, as some are claiming? Probably not. His administration has gotten court approval for its assault on civil liberties, something that the Bush administration saw as unnecessary. The upshot, however, is the same — an erosion of civil liberties that has the imprimatur of both parties and a presidency carrying far more power than is healthy for the kind of democratic republic under which we claim to live.
Obama, to paraphrase Billy Joel, didn’t start the fire. He didn’t, however, try to fight it — and we are going to pay for it in spades in the not-too-distant future.
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Hank Kalet 