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18 June 2010updated 04 Oct 2023 11:58am

Obama, Bush, Frodo, Jon Stewart and me

Others now realise how Barack has let us down -- especially on freedom and security.

By Mehdi Hasan

Sorry to harp on about this, but regular visitors to the blog will know that I took a lot of heat for writing a long piece in the New Statesman, back in October 2009, in which I argued that Barack Obama, across an array of issues, but in particular on national security and civil liberties, seemed “to have stepped into the shoes of his disgraced predecessor”. On the cover, we had a picture of Obama morphing into Bush, under the headline “Barack W Bush”.

It was provocative, contrary and, of course, unfashionable. It upset lots of people on the liberal left and, I believe, we even had one or two people cancel their NS subscriptions “in protest”. Obama, it seemed, was untouchable.

Not that long ago, two prominent left-liberal bloggers here in the UK buttonholed me at a conference to complain about my Obama/Bush piece and claim I was ploughing a lone (and unpopular) furrow. That seems to have changed. In the intervening months, many more people on the left and centre left, liberals and social democrats, Yanks and non-Yanks, seem to have noticed what I noticed, and wrote about, nine months ago.

Here’s Michael Hirsch in Newsweek in May:

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
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Obama’s national security strategy: not so different from Bush’s

Here’s Max Fisher in the Atlantic Monthly in April:

On national security, is Obama just like Bush?

Here’s Peter Feaver, writing on the Foreign Policy website in May:

Obama’s national security strategy: real change or just “Bush Lite”?

Here’s Josh Rogin, also writing on the Foreign Policy website in May:

Obama’s new national security strategy: Bush 2.0?

Here’s the former Bush speechwriter David Frum in April:

Continuity you can believe in

Here’s Eli Lake, writing in Reason in April:

The 9/14 presidency: Barack Obama is operating with the war powers granted George W Bush three days after the 9/11 attacks.

But forget all these wonks, pundits and commentators. Perhaps the most devastating comparison between Obama and Bush, and the failure of the former to reverse the illiberal, authoritarian and unconstutional policies of the latter as he’d promised he would, came from the peerless Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this week.

The video seems to be unavailable, so I have reproduced the full (and funny) details via the Raw Story website below:

Stewart took a step back from the current BP oil spill catastrophe to look at the bigger picture of Obama’s presidency. “The Gulf crisis was an unforeseen catastrophe. Barack Obama’s real mission when running for president was to restore some of America’s moral high standing that we had lost in the turmoil of the war on terror,” said Stewart.

Obama made the case for himself while running for president in November of 2007. “Guantanamo, that’s easy. Close down Guantanamo. Restore habeas corpus. Say no to renditions. Say no to wireless wiretaps,” said Obama. “Part of my job as the next president is to break the fever of fear that has been exploited by [the Bush] administration.”

“Obama’s rein would bring back the rule of law. If the Supreme court said even terrorists at Guantanamo Bay deserved their day in court through the writ of habeas corpus, as they did in the Hamdan case, Barack Obama would honor that, not try to pull the old Bush flim-flammery,” announced Stewart.

But as president, Obama did appear to find a way around habeas corpus by maintaining the Bush practice of keeping detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration pushed for and won the right to deny those Bagram prisoners a right to a hearing, McClatchy reported.

“Today President Obama won a victory to keep those detainees locked up indefinitely without getting even one chance to prove their innocence in court,” the Nation’s Chris Hayes announced in May.

Stewart seemed willing to let the president off if that was the only violation. “That’s only habeas corpus. That’s the only thing that was thrown out there, one small tiny fundamental tenet of law,” said Stewart. “He also said he was going to end rendition.”

“We also learned that the Obama administration will continue the Bush policy of extraordinary rendition, the practice of sending terror suspects to prisons in third-party countries for interrogation,” MSNBC’s Alison Stewart reported last August.

Stewart then played clips of then-candidate Obama calling for the “highest standards of civil liberties and human rights”.

“No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. We’re going to again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers and that justice is not arbitrary,” Obama said in August of 2007.

Stewart appeared perplexed. “Your campaign was premised on reining in presidential power. What happened?” he wondered.

“Oh, I see,” said Stewart. Apparently things had changed when Obama took the oath of office.

“And now you have your own secret military programmes that go beyond even what Bush was doing,” Stewart noted.

The president has gone so far to authorise the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric and American citizen, without trial.

“Wow. He’s a bad guy, runs an al-Qaeda website from Yemen but you complained when Bush wanted to read Americans’ emails without a warrant,” said Stewart.

“Wait a second, all that power you didn’t like when someone else had it. You decided to keep it. Oh my God, you are Frodo,” exclaimed Stewart.

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