Bush and Obama hold hands

9/11 was a shock to the country. It was a surprise attack that the people did not see coming. It shattered a false sense of security, the US viewed terrorism and the Middle East conflict as being detached from their personal lives. After a shock like this, any shock like this, it is customary in US history for there to be an overreaction. It is normal for the government to go too far in response. Think of the Japanese internment camp after Pearl Harbor, think of the the actions taken during the Red Scare. Overreaction is expected and normal. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, Iraq had no WMD's, Iraq was simply a target chosen for retribution. The Patriot Act was signed a month after 9/11 and gave the President unprecedented powers to spy on citizens. These were overreactions by the Bush administration.

President Obama ran on a campaign of change. He ran to correct the oversteps made by the Bush Administration. He campaigned on transparency, he campaigned to close Guantanamo Bay (which had become a symbolism of US hypocrisy), he campaigned as a Constitutional Professor. He campaigned to reset the path of the Country. He was elected into office with thunderous cheers of "Change!"

President Obama prolonged the war in Iraq. He did not close Guantanamo Bay and has no future plans to do so. President Obama re-passed the Patriot Act largely unchanged. He did not hold public hearing to prosecute or investigate the wrongs committed under the Bush Administration, akin to the hearing held for the Iran-Contra scandal. President Obama did not make government more transparent. President Obama did make unprecedented use of drone attacks along the Pakistan border. And in a beautiful culmination of not only prolonging Bush Administration policy but stepping it up, President Obama signed the NDAA allowing for the indefinite detentions of US citizens, on US grounds, without trial, in Guantanamo Bay or anywhere else in the world, for "belligerent" acts against the government.

If President Bush had done the above, if Bush had assassinated three American citizens as Obama did, if Bush had passed the NDAA, there would be an uproar. There would be a pushback. With President Obama, the liberal media ignores it and the conservative media supports it. It is bullshit. It is a tacit acceptance of the policy. If this is accepted, what happens when the next administration uses these powers, or the administration after that. What happens when a person like Santorum is elected President in a decade and he has the established executive branch powers of the NDAA. Think on it.

President Obama represented the opportunity for the overreactions of the Bush administration to be a blip of American history disdainfully read about in history class by our grandchildren along with the Japanese internment. President Obama is making the necessary steps for the Bush history to be our American future.

& I say fuck that.