Barack Obama has only been president for about a month, and he’s already made it clear that the US military will be entrenching itself in Iraq, not withdrawing. He claimed, “By August 31, 2010, our combat mission will end.”

George W. Bush already ended “combat operations” when he declared “Mission Accomplished” exactly six years ago. Yet the deaths keep tallying up, and Iraqis keep dying. And the country isn’t any safer.

Even if Barack Obama does what he now claims he will do — which is far short of his campaign promises — it will only amount to a 63% withdrawal. Some 50,000 soldiers will still occupy the country, in 53 permanent bases and an embassy bigger than the Vatican. Iraq will complement a daisy-chain of huge airfields for bombers and fighters that rings the western border of Russia and surrounds Iran. Further details can be gleaned from this article, on a blog that was equally critical of Geroge W. Bush on the war.

Instead of removing the soldiers, they are now re-labeled as “training troops,” “counter-terrorism units,” and “protection forces for American interests.” We’re seeing exactly the same Iraq policy as we would have seen if John McCain had won the election. The only thing that has changed is the branding.

That’s right, this isn’t a withdrawal, it’s a re-branding. This is exactly what I feared would happen with an Obama presidency. Absolutely nothing has changed, but instead different policies are renamed and depoliticized. Obama is renaming the Iraq occupation and scaling up the war in Afghanistan, while both are turned into background political issues. While we’re distracted with universal health care and his escalating efforts to fart money all over the slowed economy, the foreign policy will remain exactly the same.

I’ll change the judgement if he reverses his policy, but until then, I have to call Obama a FAILURE on ending the war.

The latest shiny object currently fixing the gaze of Obama’s fans is the President-Elect’s promise to “promote universal, affordable high-speed Internet access.”

First of all, the reasons the USA might be “falling behind” other advanced nations in Internet infrastructure are not necessarily due to any stagnation on our part. The United States is a huge landmass, so the lines of connection are necessarily longer and more expensive. Being technologically advanced for a longer time than other countries means we have older infrastructure as well, which is why technologies like DSL which piggyback broadband over existing technology are so cost-effective compared to building nationwide fiber-optic broadband. Other advanced countries on the other hand, such as Japan or South Korea, are far more densely populated, much smaller territories, and did not have such entrenched preexisting infrastructure. Other countries can get a lot more Internet out of less physical infrastructure.

The other part of the ugly truth about the American Internet is that capital has been hemorrhaging out of this country and into developing ones in Asia. We’re suffering more than just a lack of FiOS. Our bridges are falling down.

The Internet is the freest market left to the American economy, and it has advanced steadily over the years ever since it was opened up to the market. The fact that broadband technology is not spreading or improving at the pace others might like is not exactly a national emergency. A lot of hatred has been thrown at every single broadband ISP, mostly because the cost of a luxury item like broadband Internet access still carries a luxury price and some wish it wasn’t so. There’s no better time for Government to ride in on a white horse and nationalize something than when the purveyors of a given industry are cast in such negative light.

But all of this talk about spurring the economy by spending tax money on Internet infrastructure is just a distraction. The President-Elect remains the same person who voted in favor of the 850 billion dollar Hank Paulson Heist Bill, FISA, and chose to compromise on the Patriot Act.

He has yet to prove that his Bill of Rights purity quotient is going to be higher than George W. Bush’s. A subsidy to broadband Internet is not going to change that.

On November 25, I found out that Obama planned on retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, and my immediate assumption was that my suspicions were true and Obama was just as much a chickenhawk as George W. Bush. Honestly, with a transition advisory team of about 50 people, nobody could think of a better Defense Secretary than the guy chosen by George W. Bush? Haven’t we all been craving a complete 180 from everything even remotely associated with that president whose name comes up when you Google “miserable failure?” The impression I’ve gotten from the people on the Left for the last 6 years is that we’re all holding our noses until January 20th, 2009, at which point we’ll breathe a sigh of relief. But there was no real uproar against this betrayal that I could detect.

There was token resistance to the idea on Daily Kos, which is by some accounts the left of the left of the left of the Internet. A look at the comment thread there shows dissatisfaction with the decision, but faith in Obama is somehow unshaken. It doesn’t even enter their minds to suspect the new president might not be the same one that was advertised to them. Politicians are not worthy of that much trust.

If keeping the Bush-era Pentagon on board wasn’t bad enough, Obama is also filling other cabinet posts with chickenhawks. According to the article, Chris Bowers of OpenLeft feels “incredibly frustrated.” He should. In fact, he should feel betrayed, and all the anti-war Americans who voted for him should feel silly for making so many assumptions about his foreign policy, sight unseen. Another OpenLeft post mentions that Obama may keep up to 70,000 troops in Iraq past 2011, which is not news, since the man never actually promised a complete withdrawal, which makes me wonder why he was such a darling of people in the anti-war movement during the campaign. The only ones promising an end to the occupation of Iraq were Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. (It occurs to me to wonder: With so many people angry about the occupation, why were only fringe candidates promising a solution?)

At any rate, Obama is shaping up to be more of the same when it comes to war. The Post-WW2 United States has been involved in tens of armed conflicts, all of them undeclared wars, and most of them damaging the US reputation abroad, stretching our resources far too thinly, and creating the very monsters the Global War on Terror is meant to fight. It would have been nice to have a president promise a change from this 50-year tradition of such flippant squandering of the military.

It’s a fine day to be an American. It looks like the President-Elect’s advisory team has some important things on their agenda too! The Huffington Post reports that Obama’s advisers are

“crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S…. Under the plan being crafted inside Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.”

Somewhat worrying, though, is something in the next paragraph:

“…the plan could require the creation of a new legal system to handle the
classified information inherent in some of the most sensitive cases.”

This blogger is a believer in complete and total openness of information when it comes to government. Secrets are inevitably used as cover for the misuse of power. But Gitmo could be closing, and that’s a huge step in the right direction. It signals that Barack Obama plans to treat people like human beings no matter what they are accused of, so this news is basis enough for optimism that he may end the other CIA secret prisons around the world, and put a stop to the use of torture.

A crack team of 48 transition advisers have come up with a list of some 200 executive orders and other Bush administration actions that Obama could reverse quickly upon entering the Oval Office, according to the Washington Post. What could those 200 items that Obama could reverse on day one include?

Might Obama set to work shutting down Guantanamo Bay, thus forcing the military to hand over the inmates of the concentration camp to civilian authorities, so that they can be vetted properly and freed if innocent?

Could he be ordering the immediate withdrawal from Iraq? Maybe he’ll be telling the CIA to quit provocateuring in Iran?

If those were your expectations, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Apparently the best things the 48 smartest guys on the Obama team could come up with are:

• Unleashing the State of California to meddle in the automotive industry.
• Uncapping and deregulating federal funding on stem cell research.
• Broadening reproductive liberties.

That’s right. Reproductive counseling facilities will be able to talk more openly about abortion, more tax money will go to certain kinds of stem cell research, and California will get to legislate fuel economy.

But the US military will still torture people, and habeas corpus will still be nothing but a memory.

Here’s hoping Mr. Obama adds a few important things to his list of changes before taking office.

The Philstar reports that A fourth grade girl from Pinay wrote our next president a letter and got a response. The girl’s letter recommended which dog the Obamas should get when they move into the White House, and it made some suggestions as to what Barack Obama should do as President. Karina said in her letter:

Would it be possible for you to make a law that requires everyone to recycle… And would it be possible to ban unnecessary wars?

I don’t know about the recycling, but the second one sounds like a fantastic idea. The good news is that unnecessary wars are already banned! Or at the very least they are severely impeded by the Constitutional barriers to starting a war. According to the Constitution, the decision of whether or not to go to war is up to Congress. The bad news, of course, is that no President since FDR has followed this Constitutional format in going to war. The last declared war the United States has participated in was World War II. All of the armed conflicts since then, all the meddling in the Middle East, all the US-sponsored terrorism in Latin America and the bombing of helpless third-world countries, have been 100% illegal and unconstitutional.

So half of Obama’s job is done already. It’s unlawful for him to throw the military around without the consent and direction of Congress. All he will have to do once he becomes President is obey the law.

As the whole world must know by now, Tuesday November 4 was the day Barack H. Obama was elected President of the United States in an electoral vote landslide. His election as President was a sound repudiation of the Bush war crimes and violations of the Constitution. To many, it feels as if the United States of America has emerged from a long, dark tunnel and at last the shine of daylight is visible again. For many Americans, this is the first time in a long time they’ve been able to feel good about their country.

People will no doubt be arguing about just what the American people wanted out of Barack Obama by voting for him, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he was elected to avoid four more years of the Bush regime, which John McCain would represent.

We are all against the use of torture. We are all against the unconstitutional expansion of executive power. We are all against letting the government pry into our lives and spy on us. This is why I saw fit to start this blog, to make sure people don’t forget what they hated so much about Bush, and to make sure they remember why they elected Obama. If he derelicts on his duty, if he ignores the will of the people, then it should be acknowledged and confronted with even more vigor than during the Bush regime. Our freedoms are too far gone to give one more politician a free pass.

This blog is intended to illustrate in simple terms just how different from Bush Obama turns out to be when it comes to the most important human rights issues of our time. Will he spend his time playing around with entitlement programs and rephrasing the War on Terror, or will he lead a true departure from the disastrously criminal ways of the Bush White House?