Confused About Obama

2009-01-23T13:35:55-08:00

You know, I was 18 when Bush came into power. I had embarrassingly weak knowledge of politics, and didn’t vote in the election despite some people getting rather annoyed with me about it. I argued at the time (and I stand by this), that people should only vote if they know enough to vote the right way. At the time, I felt like I didn’t know enough.

It’s hard to remember how things were back then. Bush was obviously an idiot, but at the same time, it wasn’t obvious how much damage he would do (or that somehow he’d last eight years). My first hint that he was terrible was his thinking on stem cells, which pretty indisputably slowed medicine research for about a decade. Once I heard about this issue, I knew I should have voted, and became fairly active reading the news and learning the issues.

In a way, I can thank the Bush administration for being one of the most corrupt, damaging, and all-around God-awful regimes in American history. If it hadn’t been so terrible, I might not have gotten so interested. I think this is true for many of my friends as well.

I just spent some time looking at a few of Obama’s executive orders and memos, and of the few I read, it’s pretty impressive. It’s been less than a week, and suddenly I’m having a lot more trouble being critical of the administration. If I’m not supposed to rag on Bush anymore, in a way, what do I do? Do I praise Obama? That’s not really my style. Maybe I should be critical of the Obama administration? But there’s not a lot to be too critical of just yet.

I’m a bit confused, in a good way. Here’s to hoping that Obama can keep it up, and to a new regime.

Guantanamo to Close, But They’re Just Moving the Prisoners

2009-01-12T23:17:53-08:00

I was happy to read the news today that Obama plans to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp. This is good news for America, and should be good news for the prisoners there.

As I read up on it though, I was saddened to hear that the prisoners are just being moved to other countries. This is rather frustrating because as Noam Chomsky puts it — and I’m paraphrasing — there’s only one reason to have off-site ~~torture~~ prison camps: to go around American law.

I’m really not sure what the point is in closing Guantanamo if it just means moving the prisoners elsewhere. Pretty stupid use of resources.

Here’s a juicy quote from the article:

People who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantanamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

In other words, we could bring the prisoners to a camp in the U.S., but that would mean we couldn’t hold them in tiny cells indefinitely, and that American law would be necessary. Wow. Can’t have that, can we?

Michael Jay Lissner

Confused About Obama

Guantanamo to Close, But They’re Just Moving the Prisoners