A Perspective on Obama signing the NDAA

[sarahbeez]

People are freaking the fuck out and attributing this to some desire on Obama's part to create an Orwellian police state.  I found this Tumblr post to be helpful for understanding how Congress backed the Pres into a corner:

More behind the cut

Comments

[the_gabih]

...Christ, that's clever. And evil.

[sesmo]

Except that it takes the Democratic Senate to agree to this bullshit, so claiming it's all those evil Republicans is simply false. Obama needs to work much more closely with Democratic senators & House members to make sure that this type of game doesn't work.

[romp]

It was said months ago that putting the detainment change in the Defense App Bill was crafty since all these vital things, like paying soldiers, was linked to it. If that wasn't widely known, it should be.

[winniechili]

I used to think that the American public was much smarter than politicians gave them credit for, but sadly these last few months I've been proven wrong over and over again. This is basic political strategy, and people buy into it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

[baked_goldfish]

I'm not convinced it's smart vs. not smart - a lot of it just goes back to media sources not really covering things well, and few people have the time or the resources to research this kind of stuff on their own. There's not much to be done if you rely crappy news sources for information, and the fact is most major news sources in the US are crappy.

[sarahbeez]

Yeah, that's the thing. People aren't "stupid" for not understanding how this all works - it's fairly complex. The best understand of it I've gotten are from really wordy law-wonk blogs, which is not something the average American is going to read.

[maladaptive]

This. I didn't start seeing much about NDAA being part of the defense bill until recently and I like to think I'm fairly well-informed-- though to be fair, I wasn't following it as heavily as other bills, like SOPA.

People can't correct their ignorance involving things they don't know they don't know unless they're just browsing around in general.

[maynardsong]

This is on point. Fucking GOP.

[baked_goldfish]

and ensure that he could never close Guantanamo

And the thing about this is Obama even stepped in and finagled a lesser restriction on closing Guantanamo. The original bill permanently restricted funding, and the administration worked it down to a temporary 1-year restriction.

Defense spending bills are the go-to for two things: huge amounts of spending (a lot of it quite valid and I'm not saying that it's automatically awful, but some of it is ridiculous), and shit like this.

[sarahbeez]

Yep. It's a fucked up system, and one that creates a no-win situation for whoever has to be faced with sign/veto.

[baked_goldfish]

It's true. I'll admit that a part of me that wishes he had just vetoed it anyway, but that's the same part that really likes The West Wing, you know? In my fantasy world, there's no negative reaction to it, but in reality, where the right owns so much of the press and the rest of the press is too weak to combat lies, he gets strung up as the guy who hates troops while everyone forgets about NDAA entirely.

[sarahbeez]

Yep, exactly. I think there's a good case that he could have refused to sign (as opposed to veto) and I wish he had. But I don't think he killed the bill of rights or whatever the internet children are peddling right now.