The Five Commandments of Barack Obama/The Nation

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http://www.thenation.com/article/178567/five-commandments-barack-obama?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140227&newsletter=email_nation_thursday#

Thou shalt not torture.

Thou shalt not keep Guantánamo open.

Thou shalt not keep secrets unnecessarily.

Thou shalt not wage war without limits.

Thou shalt not live above the law.

Five years later, the question is: How have he and his administration lived up to these self-proclaimed commandments?

3. Though Shalt Not Keep Secrets

Nor, of course, has secrecy been limited to the NSA. It’s been a hallmark of the Obama years and, for instance, continues to hamper the military commissions at Guantánamo. Their hands are tied (so to speak) by the CIA’s obsessive anxieties that still-classified material might come out in court—either the outdated information Al Qaeda figures detained for more than a decade once knew or evidence of how brutally they were tortured. Perhaps the most striking example of government secrecy today, however, is the drone program. There, the president continues to insist that the Justice Department documents offering “legal” authorization and justification for White House-ordered drone assassinations of suspects, including American citizens, remain classified, even as administration officials leak information on the program that they think will make them look justified.

4. Though Shalt Not Wage War Without Limits

Despite the president’s insistence on placing limits on war, however, his own brand of warfare has helped lay the basis for a permanent state of American global warfare via “low footprint” drone campaigns and special forces operations aimed at an ever morphing enemy usually identified as some form of al-Qaeda. According to Senator Lindsey Graham, the Obama administration has already killed 4,700 individuals in numerous countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It has killed four US citizens in the process and is reportedly considering killing a fifth. The president has successfully embedded the process of drone killings in the executive branch in such a way that any future president will inherit them, along with the White House “kill list” and its “terror Tuesday” meetings. Unbounded global war is now part of what it means to be president.