So
far, the Obama administration has offered little in the way of evidence
that it represents a significant “change” from the previous
administration.
Jeremy R. Hammond -- World News Trust
Feb. 9, 2009 -- U.S.
Vice President Joseph Biden Saturday outlined the Obama
administration’s continuation of the Bush administration’s foreign
policy towards Iran.
Reiterating the Bush policy of loosely defined “preventive” warfare outlined in Bush’s National Security Strategy, he said that the “United States will strive to act preventively to avoid having to choose between the risks of war and the dangers of inaction.”
Echoing
the previous administration’s policy, Biden offered an ultimatum,
saying the U.S. would be “willing to talk to Iran” but only if Iran
acquiesces to the Obama administration’s demands to abandon its nuclear
program.
Translated
into meaningful terms, this effectively means the United States will continue to
refuse to talk to Iran, since its nuclear program would be one of the
major points Iran would like to negotiate.
The
United States has accused Iran of having a nuclear weapons program, despite the
fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is
actively monitoring and verifying Iran’s program and its commitment to
the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), has repeatedly noted that
there is no evidence that this is so, and despite the U.S. intelligence
community’s own assessment that Iran today has no nuclear weapons
program.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.
,Bden
incongruously declared that his reiteration of the Bush policy was “a
new tone in Washington,” and the Western media parroted the claim,
offering no explanation for how the Obama policy Biden outlined was
substantially different from that of the previous administration.
The New York Times called Biden’s remarks “a departure from the Bush administration,” failing to explain in what way it represented a “departure.”
The Associated Press reported
in an analysis that “Biden promises foreign policy shifts,” while
failing to observe that his “promises” of “pressure and isolation” if
Iran does not submit to U.S. demands were exactly those of the Bush
administration.
Even
before the November elections that resulted in a victory for Barack
Obama and his vice-presidential running mate Joseph Biden, Biden had
strongly expressed that he favored the use of military force against
Iran. When Israeli Army Radio reported that Biden firmly opposed the
use of force against Iran’s nuclear facilities, his office strongly objected,
with his press secretary David Wade calling it “a lie,” adding that “we
will not tolerate anyone questioning Senator Biden’s 35-year record of
standing up for the security of Israel” by suggesting he wouldn't
attack Iran.
The
news coverage of the continuation of the foreign policy of the Bush
administration has been expressed in similar terms on other issues. The
move towards drawing down forces in Iraq, established under the Bush
administration well prior to the inauguration of Barack Obama, has
continuously been referred to as representative of a “shift” by Obama’s
administration. The same holds true of the move to increase the number
of military forces in Afghanistan, which was also a course firmly
established during Bush’s final term.
When Obama issued a series of Executive Orders during the first days of his presidency, the Los Angeles Times declared:
“Obama overturns Bush tactics in war on terrorism.” But the orders did
little more than reiterate existing U.S. law, recognize court decisions
that were made during the Bush administration, and respond minimally to
enormous public pressure both at home and internationally.
In June 2008, the Supreme Court restored habeas corpus, ruling
that prisoners held in the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
were entitled to challenge their detention in a court of law.
In July, a U.S. Court of Appeals decided
that the courts must be able to assess the reliability of the evidence
before determining the status of prisoners, a shift from the Bush
policy of simply declaring detainees “unlawful enemy combatants”
without evidence.
While
such court decisions did not call for the closure of the facility at
Guantanamo, they eroded the shaky legal framework that defined the
facility’s purpose, which was to provide a legal black hole where the
rule of law did not apply.
Where
Obama is able to continue Bush policies under color of law, he has
already made it clear that he will do so. So, for instance, in
solidarity with the Bush administration, Obama advisers told the Associated Press
shortly after the November election that the new president would most
likely prevent charges from being brought against CIA interrogators for
having tortured prisoners.
The L.A. Times
article noted above reported that Obama ordered to “permanently shut
the CIA’s network of secret overseas prisons,” which had already come
under intense international scrutiny. Pressure to close the not-so-secret CIA centers was growing with both the American public and with
the public and governments of the countries where the centers are
located. The Supreme Court in 2006 had ordered prisoners held by the CIA in such facilities to be transferred to Guantanamo.
At the same time, as another L.A. Times
headline less than a week later observed, “Obama preserves renditions
as counter-terrorism tool.” Reporting on a fact it had omitted in its
earlier article, the Times noted “Under executive orders issued
by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are
known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to
countries that cooperate with the United States.”
One
solution for dealing with Guantanamo detainees upon its closure, as
ordered by President Obama to occur within a year, would be to render
them to foreign governments to be held in prisons there, or possibly
transfer to other U.S. military detention centers, such as at Bagram
Air Force base in Afghanistan, where court rulings such as the Supreme
Court’s restoration of habeas corpus do not apply.
So
far, the Obama administration has offered little in the way of evidence
that it represents a significant “change” from the previous
administration. Headlines proclaiming a “shift” and statements
declaring a “departure” and “a new tone,” however, serve as useful
propaganda to lull the public into a sense of accomplishment and
optimism in order to ease public pressure on the government to press
for substantial and measurable changes in policy.
The
fact that Obama’s stated policies match almost exactly those of his
predecessor are inconvenient to that end, however, and therefore must
be rendered down George Orwell’s newspeak memory hole.
Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal,
a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion
commentary on U.S. foreign policy from outside of the standard
framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate
media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and events in
the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online
publications. You can contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..