[Vision2020] Has Obama Taken His Eyes off the Prize?

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  I'm unhappy with Obama on a number of issues, but these two bother me the most.

The full version is attached as a PDF file.

Nick Gier

HAS OBAMA TAKEN HIS EYES OFF THE PRIZE?

Our sense of fairness and justice runs very deep. Recently Austrian scientists have discovered that dogs react to being cheated, so we may share our moral and emotional life with animals more than we ever thought.  

The idea of equality is easiest to affirm when we are among our own kind, but even then women are still slighted in much of the world today. Former President Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention, because its patriarchs still refuse to allow leadership positions to women.

The principle of equality before the law is hardest to affirm when we perceive that the person is acting immorally or charged with mass murder.  In many cases the response has been a prelegal and disastrous "let's string them up." 

Many of these people don't stop to acknowledge that heterosexuals commit far more "unnatural" sex acts, or realize that domestic terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh are not tortured and are given a fair trial.  How can it be that Muslim detainees, most of them captured by bounty hunters, have fewer rights than McVeigh?  

Candidate Barack Obama promised that he would close the prison at Guantanamo; that he would ban torture; and that he would dismiss Bush's military tribunals.  The prison is still running, mistreatment is still happening, and the tribunals continue. Reporters covering the new trials write that, because of so many legal uncertainties, there is total confusion and chaos at the proceedings.

The Geneva Conventions make no provisions for "enemy combatants" and require that all prisoners be given the right to hear charges against them and be tried fairly. On April 2 a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that three detainees held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base for six years have the right of habeas corpus, a right to appeal unlawful imprisonment that English barons won for all us in 1215. Obama's Justice Department has appealed the Bagram ruling claiming, just as the Bush administration had, that it would impede the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. 

America's gays and lesbians worked very hard for Obama's election, but on June 11 the Justice Department released a brief supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. Some have said that it is common practice for the Justice Department, regardless of the party in power, to argue in favor of existing law.  

The law, however, was not being challenged in any court, and given that fact that courts and legislatures in California, Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts have ruled that there are no exceptions to the principle of equality, it was simply not necessary for the Justice Department to poke America's gays and lesbians in the eye.

The Obama administration has also dragged its feet on abolishing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which has the forced, from 1993-2008, the resignation of 12,615 service men and women, many of them nurses, doctors, and linguists.  Defense Secretary William Gates says that more study is needed, but the logic of equality requires no research; rather, it demands immediate application.

After being stiff-armed by the Bush administration for five years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was thrilled to have President Obama speak at their July convention.  Bringing two areas of injustice together as any reasonable person should, Obama spoke out about the discrimination of "our gay brothers and sisters" who are "still taunted, still attacked, and still denied their rights."

The NAACP fought hard to eliminate the ban on interracial marriage, but still, even though some of its leaders have spoken in favor, it continues to deny marriage equality to gays and lesbians.  

Some have said that with regard to basic human rights Obama is continuing the ninth year of the Bush administration.  We cannot repair our moral image in the world unless we make progress in these crucial areas.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 
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