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By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Barack Obama | FISA Reform | National Security — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

With his decision to support the agreed-upon FISA compromise, Barack Obama has enraged his base. Once again, it is worth quoting at length from Glenn Greenwald, who is outraged that "[w]hat had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good." Greenwald is similarly livid at the perception that "even if Obama decided to support an imperfect bill, it's our duty to refrain from voicing any criticism of him, because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything -- including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law -- because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader." Greenwald believes that the FISA compromise "was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- 'you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe' -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here." And the following passage from Greenwald's post is especially revealing of the anger the Left now feels for Obama:

. . . Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he'll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives -- and I don't know (or much care) what they are -- Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights."

Additionally,

What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He's supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the scary specter of The Terrorists can be invoked to justify it. What's more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he's supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.

The excuse that we must sit by quietly and allow him to do these things with no opposition so that he can win is itself a corrupted and self-destructive mentality. That mindset has no end. Once he's elected, it will transform into: "It's vital that Obama keeps his majority in Congress so you have to keep quiet until after the 2010 midterms," after which it will be: "It's vital that Obama is re-elected so you have to keep quiet until after 2012," at which point the process will repeat itself from the first step. Quite plainly, those are excuses to justify mindless devotion, not genuine political strategies.

It should be stressed anew that none of these criticisms will stop Obama from reaching out to people like Glenn Greenwald and asking for money. And Obama will get that money. And later on, to show his gratitude, he will give people like Glenn Greenwald yet another reason to get mad at him.