Obama and military tribunals

President Obama is continuing to dance the “reversal cha-cha,” said Truthdig. Obama has reportedly decided to “take up the very military tribunals he’d sharply criticized before taking office.” The spectacle of Obama military tribunals will serve as a reminder of how easily politicians can forget their campaign promises.

Obama has made many moves that “have disappointed his administration's liberal allies but heartened Bush supporters,” said Julian E. Barnes in the Los Angeles Times, including this week‘s decision “to withhold photos depicting alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers.” But the White House says Obama never promised to abolish military tribunals, only to change them.

So, we're stuck with the Obama military tribunals, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon. I suppose that if we're going to have military commissions, it’s better to have “more safeguards rather than fewer, ” but Obama himself has argued that U.S. civilian courts are perfectly capable of delivering swift justice in these cases. Even “kinder, gentler military commissions” tell the world our government is willing to bend the rules when it thinks it can’t convict someone “under our normal system of justice.”

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