Meet The New Boss...

I don't like to just reprint material from other blogs, but earlier this week Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic posted something I want to talk about. Here's what he said:

"On the totally surreal front, my aspiration is to live in a country where the president actually explains that no-one can or ever will win an imperial war in Afghanistan, that we cannot possibly leave Iraq in the next eight years without a bloodbath, that Iran cannot be prevented from getting a nuclear bomb in the foreseeable future, that an energy policy without nuclear power cannot do anything to stop global warming, and that Israel has lots of nukes, and will never, ever withdraw from the West Bank."

While I'm not sure I agree with him on the nuclear power question (literally - I just don't know enough about the technology), I share his sentiment about the lack of candor coming from our government.

This week Obama announced that he will reinstitute military tribunals for terror suspects, lifting the 120 day hold he had put on the practice when he took office. Apparently he intends to make some "improvements" over how these proceedings had been run, but they will not provide the protections of a court trial.

The President again failed to do all he could to expose torturers, when he "delayed" release of photos showing mistreatment of detainees in American custody. At this point it's unclear if he will ever authorize release. The release of these photos surely would have fueled cries for prosecutions.

As Sullivan pointed out this week, it's reached the point that this adminstration is essentially owning the crimes of the prior administration. For someone who ran on a platform of "Change, Change and More Change," this feels an awful lot like as case of "meet the new boss same as the old boss."

More war. More secrecy.

When do we get the "Change We can Believe In?"