Reading List: January 11, 2017

Barack Obama has given his farewell speech, and teary-eyed liberals everywhere are forgetting his actual record. Let’s correct them.

At Foreign Policy, James Bamford reviews Obama’s expansion of the security state. The article, from September of last year, discusses how the Obama administration has expanded the surveillance powers of the government to unheard of lengths.

Over his two terms, Obama has created the most powerful surveillance state the world has ever seen. Although other leaders may have created more oppressive spying regimes, none has come close to constructing one of equivalent size, breadth, cost, and intrusiveness. From 22,300 miles in space, where seven Advanced Orion crafts now orbit; to a 1-million-square-foot building in the Utah desert that stores data intercepted from personal phones, emails, and social media accounts; to taps along the millions of miles of undersea cables that encircle the Earth like yarn, U.S. surveillance has expanded exponentially since Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009.

The effort to wire the world — or to achieve “extreme reach,” in the NRO’s parlance — has cost American taxpayers more than $100 billion. Obama has justified the gargantuan expense by arguing that “there are some trade-offs involved” in keeping the country safe. “I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said in June 2013, shortly after Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed widespread government spying on Americans’ phone calls.

At The Guardian, Cornel West lets it rip in a tour de force review of the past eight years.

The age of Barack Obama may have been our last chance to break from our neoliberal soulcraft. We are rooted in market-driven brands that shun integrity and profit-driven policies that trump public goods. Our “post-integrity” and “post-truth” world is suffocated by entertaining brands and money-making activities that have little or nothing to do with truth, integrity or the long-term survival of the planet. We are witnessing the postmodern version of the full-scale gangsterization of the world.

The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump — but it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility.

At CounterPunch, James Bouvard hopes that Trump will leak documents implicating the Obama administration in its crimes.

Trump should follow the excellent precedent set by Barack Obama. In 2009, shortly after he took office, Obama released many of the secret Bush administration legal memos that explained why the president was supposedly entitled to order torture, deploy troops in American towns and cities, and ignore the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless, unreasonable searches. Those revelations proved that the Bush administration was far more of an elective dictatorship than most people suspected. The disclosures signaled a new era and helped give Obama — at least temporarily — a reputation as a champion of civil liberties.

Turnabout is fair play. Trump should quickly reveal the secret memos underlying Obama’s “targeted killing” drone assassination program. Administration lawyers defeated lawsuits by the ACLU and New York Times seeking disclosure of key legal papers on how the president became judge, jury, and executioner. Obama sought to codify a presidential right to kill that would have mortified earlier generations of Americans. His program has been cloaked in secrecy and sanctimony from the start and most of the media have shown little curiosity and no outrage even when the feds admitted that innocent civilians were killed. A Trump administration could disclose the memos and legal rationales on the program without endangering anything other than the reputation of the soon-to-be former president and his policymakers.

And at ShadowProof, Kevin Gosztola points out that one of Obama’s great legacies will be the refusal to prosecute torturers or seek justice for the tortured, thereby tacitly codifying the practice into law.

The Obama administration had plenty of opportunity to hold officials accountable and ensure a president like Trump could not bring back torture. Instead, it actively fought in court to prevent survivors of torture from pursuing civil lawsuits for damages and some small semblance of justice. The administration also permitted cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that is supposed to be prohibited by domestic and international law.

Finally, The District Sentinel’s radio show, “Unanimous Dissent,” takes on the Sessions hearings, and more.

A pleasure as always. See you tomorrow.