If you were president, how would you have handled the NDAA?
invite response
2012 Jan 11, 12:47pm 5,790 views 12 comments
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Yeah, I'm not asking if you oppose the NDAA or anything that was wrong with it.
I'm asking what you'd actually do differently, in the face of a veto-proof majority vote from congress, like the one Obama actually had to decide on.
Vicente
2012 Jan 11, 2:17pm
Agreed. Anyone notice mobs in the streets protesting this? No? The Blogerati may be fired up over it, but beyond Beck & Paulbots the general populace couldn't care less.
I'm not saying it's not terrible, it is.
You'll probably see more real ACTION from a FEW groups over SOPA than you will NDAA.
MisdemeanorRebel
2012 Jan 11, 3:04pm
Truman vetoed the 1950 Internal Security Act that contained provisions much less obnoxious than the NDAA, aimed at Communist "subversives". His veto was overridden, as he knew it would be.
I would have called one of those prime time addresses to America, then lambasted the congress for twenty minutes on every channel. Think about the way he told off the SCOTUS for Citizens United ruling during that State of the Union Address. Take that brief comment about how bad a decision they made and multiply it by twenty minutes to Congress. Explain all the negative applications that could arise because of this law, and really explain to the American people who is to blame, their elected representatives in both houses. They don't call it the BULLY pulpit for nothing. This worry of being soft on terrorism doesn't play in the wake of Osama Bin Laden's death, unless you are a dye in the wool, conservative war-hawk, and Obama has no chance with those folks anyway.
MisdemeanorRebel
2012 Jan 11, 3:28pm
The Internal Security Act wasn't a last-minute war funding bill.
So, all Congress has to do is put offensive material in a vital spending bill, and the President gets a free ride for not vetoing it? Congress couldn't slap together an emergency funding bill? Sessions can be extended, so Recess is no excuse either.
The point is moot anyway.
Let's stop the nonsense that President is opposed to some of the most offensive language in the bill, the detention of US citizens and legal residents, as Senator Levin stated:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/SenateSession4951/start/25164/stop/25258
msilenus
2012 Jan 11, 4:30pm
Let's stop the nonsense that President is opposed to some of the most offensive language in the bill, the detention of US citizens and legal residents, as Senator Levin stated:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/SenateSession4951/start/25164/stop/25258
Detention of U.S. citizens could make a lot of sense in certain circumstances. There have been at least two cases where we captured men fighting alongside the Taliban who turned out to be American citizens. We treated one as a criminal, and sort of exiled the other one; but it wouldn't be unreasonable to hold such a captive for the duration of the war --so long as the determination of status as a combatant is fair, and as long as they're treated humanely. (They weren't, but that's a separate issue.)
The devil's in the details, and Levin doesn't give us those.
What's key is that anyone so detained (citizen or no) can challenge the basis for that detention, and have the challenge handled fairly and reasonably. We have that. NDAA doesn't threaten it. It can't. The protection was carved directly out of the constitution by the Supreme Court, and applied to all captives with little regard to their status as citizens.
On the other hand, NDAA does undermine the legal justifications for inhumane treatment of prisoners. At this point, I think that's a much more worrisome issue -from a human rights perspective- than indefinite detention of citizens. Torture is out, but not all inhumane treatment necessarily rises to the level of torture.
Â¥
2012 Jan 11, 4:33pm
Wake me up when the military under Obama abuses the power Congress went out of its way to give him.
People getting worked up over this need their head examined.
-"So now they make us wear this little star. Big deal! People getting worked up over this need their head examined."
(Uri Colwitz, current whereabouts unknown)
Bingo, we have a winner. What don't people understand about the concept.
Huntington Moneyworth III, Esq
2012 Jan 12, 4:31am
I would have made random indefinite detention of American underclass wretches MANDATORY. Screw this war time shit. Next time my manservant is late with the Cuban cigar he's getting a one way ticket to Pissville, Afghanistan.
marcus
2012 Jan 12, 1:42pm
what would you have done?
you have a good point.
if he protests the bad parts of the bill, and promises during the campaign to try to remove them from next years version, and to make other efforts to protect our rights (long term), then he could partially redeem himself.
Only partially though, until he really does it, because none of us will believe him like we once did.
I've seen a lot of people criticizing obama for not vetoing the NDAA due to the provisions "re asserting" the executive branch's authority to detain terrorism suspects without trial.
While I strong object to the provisions, the NDAA also passed with a veto-proof majority.
Lets say that you were president, what would you have done?
- You veto the bill, and it gets passed anyway. Now, in an election year, you'll be pinned as soft on terrorism and weak on national defense.
- You make empty threats threaten to veto the bill, hoping that some provisions will be modified, but sign it anyway in whatever form passes congress.
- You say / do nothing, sign the bill, and hope nobody notices.
Obama seems to have chosen somewhere between the second and third option. The only real concession that the white house got was that the authority of existing civilian law enforcement was made explicit.
So what would you have done that would have had any better of an outcome?
#politics