It is time for a new public outcry — based on civil liberties and collective rights, beyond left and right, beyond ideology. It is time for all Obama supporters who once passionately stood up against the abuses of the Bush II administration to stand up once again. It is time for those who are afraid to speak out against an overzealous national security apparatus to begin to raise our voices together. In the face of the naked persecution of two prominent whistleblowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks activist Julian Assange, as well as dozens of other people trying to shine a light on the wrongdoing of unaccountable government forces, it is time to take the security establishment up on its suggestion to SAY SOMETHING upon seeing something.
I believe that President Obama crossed a line on his recent appearance on Charlie Rose, spewing outright lies in an effort to protect his administration from growing criticism:
What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails… they cannot and have not, by law and by rule, unless, they… go to a court and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it’s always been.
As Glenn Greenwald, the single-most consistent journalist reporting on civil liberties abuses by our own government, pointed out, Obama’s claim is plainly false. As he put it to Amy Goodman, “It’s actually worse than just misleading and deceitful; it’s just outright false.”
I believe that George W. Bush lying us into war with Iraq was an impeachable offense. And I believe that Obama’s lies on the Charlie Rose show, in order to deflect from the abuse and overreach of domestic spying on the American public, is similarly impeachable. It is important to get to the bottom of whether Obama’s statements are intentionally obtuse and misleading, or just an outright lie. When the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s lies to Congress this March were exposed recently by Snowden’s NSA leak, he issued this tortured admission of his truthiness: “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.” Put to the same truth test, I am convinced that President Obama would be forced to divulge far more truth than he wants to. Outright lies to the American public and to the world are indefensible, but issuing them in order to bolster an illegal spying apparatus are shameful, dangerous, and, in my opinion, impeachable.
Obama’s aggressive tactics to rein in whistleblowers should worry the public, and we are clearly at a critical juncture in which the administration is trying to make an example out of the Assanges, Mannings, and Snowdens of this world. According to the New York Times, the administration has prosecuted twice as many leak cases “than all previous presidential administrations combined.” From seizing phone records of Associated Press journalists to instituting a sweeping “Insider Threat Program” asking government employees to rat each other out, to charging Snowden with espionage for exposing US espionage-on-steroids, the chilling Orwellian environment being carved out by the current powers-that-be is simply not tolerable. Now is the time to stand up against these abuses, and to stand up on behalf of the brave whistleblowers and journalists who are risking their personal well-being to get at the truth, for the sake of justice and democracy.
“A time comes when silence is betrayal.”
–Riverside Church executive committee, reiterated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you see something, #NSAsomething.