Obama's Sister Soulja Moment?

Obama's Sister Soulja Moment?

President Obama’s decision this week to reconsider release of inflammatory Pentagon interrogation photos may mark a shift in his administration’s handling of politically charged national security issues -- upsetting his allies on the left but making some new friends among conservatives in the military.

Obama has asked Atty. Gen. Eric Holder to review an earlier plan to release 44 Department of Defense photos showing harsh interrogation of detainees abroad, according to a senior military official who was informed about the decision. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday that Obama had “great concern” about the danger for U.S. troops in releasing the photos but didn’t explain further.

“Folks are listening,” said the senior military official, who was among those at the Pentagon who warned Obama that public dissemination of the photos could put U.S. troops in the field at greater risk because of indignation, particularly in the Muslim world, at graphic evidence of U.S. brutality. Those making this case to the White House are said to have included Bob Gates, the secretary of defense; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander; Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. commender in Iraq; and Gen. David McKiernan, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanstian.

Obama seems to have concluded that to achieve the right balance on controversial Bush-era issues such as interrogation -- summed up in the president’s frequent admonition that we need to look forward rather than backward -- he will have to disappoint some liberal supporters. Specifically, his second thoughts about releasing the detainee photos upset the American Civil Liberties Union, which thought it had an administration promise to release the pictures by May 28 in response to an ACLU lawsuit.

Obama had tried to strike that forward-not-backward balance earlier, accompanying last month’s release of CIA interrogation memos with a promise not to pursue a witch hunt against CIA officers who were following Justice Department legal advice. But that blew up in his face, triggering precisely the spasm of backward-looking recrimination and CIA angst that Obama had hoped to avoid.

In releasing the torture memos, Obama had rejected counterarguments from CIA Director Leon Panetta. But he seems to have listened to similar warnings from his military commanders who argued that flooding the Internet with a new batch of photos of Americans engaging in shocking practices would put U.S. soldiers in danger without a commensurate public benefit.

Is this a “Sister Soulja” moment on national security, like bill Clinton’s famous criticism of a controversial rap singer during the 1992 presidential campaign -- which upset some liberal supporters but polished his credentials as a centrist? We’ll have to wait and see, but certainly military officers I spoke with this week were pleased -- even as the ACLU was indignant.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/05/obamas_sister_soulja_moment.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The media can't wait for it

can't they come up with anything new?

What is Memorial Day?

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (on May 25 in 2009). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the civil war), it was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day

from both his base and the general public.

President Obama has succumbed to the whims of the wackjob 29% who will never vote for him over the general public and his base that voted him into office.

If these are the decisions we can look forward to from Obama, it's going to be an awfully long 4 years.

NO.

The general public will surely be irate that Obama has not promoted the release of these photos.

Who is "his base" anyway?

This latest "outrage" shall too pass.

There are several threads on DU from people who are losing their homes. And then they disappear, no longer having access to the Internet. Ask them what is the most important topic for them: finding a job, assuring they have health access and shelter above their heads, or publishing the photos.

I think that too many DUers live in a cocoon or in denial, with no idea what "the general public" really cares about.

Even the ones still having a job and health insurance are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

Thanks for the perspective.

It's just the 5% or so of militant ultra-lefties who have always said "Obama's losing his base," from the moment he took office. Hint: people who oppose you on everything you do are not your base.

Squeaky wheels in the echo chamber. This place and the lefty blogs are full of them.

by the Obama admin was overturned and the pictures were released, favoring the ACLU request? This is the exact same situation in every way except for the fact that the WH is using a differently phrased excuse this time around. Obama knows the appeal will not hold and that the judge will rule for the release of this batch of photos, just as was the case last go 'round.

In the meantime, the left is in a bluster of rage, Bill Kristol is agreeing with Obama, and all the while, the Constitution and rule of law are actually being abided by.

I'm optimistic.

at least, for Clinton, it was the moment when he broke from the tie, or even being third, with Perot and pops Bush.

His approval ratings will still be in the 60's by the time this story is out of the news.

But you are out of your mind if you think Americans will turn against Obama because he didn't release pictures of women and children being tortured at the hands of US servicepeople.

DUH

I never liked the phrase, "Sister Souljah moment," because liberal defenses of Sister Souljah were absolutely absurd. Her defense of racial violence was absolutely incompatible with any standard of ethics or morality, and Clinton's comparison of her tirade to those of David Duke was an accurate one. A Sister Souljah moment ought then be one in which one ignores the absolute insanity of the base to do the right thing. But anyway. Somehow it came to mean "a slap at your base to appeal to the center," so fine.

Obama's decision to not release the photos was not a calculated slap at the left. It was, rather, a response to the fact that the left is hellbent for prosecution, regardless of the practicality of actually doing so (see Plame, Valarie). If he releases the photos, he increases the volume of the left's cries for blood. However, he doesn't actually increase the validity of any legal case he might have against Bush, nor does he make it any easier for Holder to get cooperation in his investigations. Rather, he'd make it more difficult, since the military would (correctly) believe that Obama was damaging them to curry favor with the left. Obama's decided that he'd rather endure a spate of anger from the left now than deal with mounting anger among both the left and the military.

Just as we did with Clinton (as the fact that we took his condemnation of Sister Souljah as an outrage would attest), the American left is slowly teaching Obama that we will never be long satisfied with anything he does. Is it really a surprise that he isn't pinning his entire Presidency on pleasing a small group of malcontents?

So now you are a malcontent if you want to see the truth revealed?

Whatever happened to Obama's promise of transparency?

You're a malcontent if you have opposed every single thing Obama has done as being insufficiently liberal, from his stimulus package to his bank rescue package to his health care reform plan to his treatment of Bush/Cheney to his stance on labor to his cabinet choices to his stance on gay rights to his stance on women's rights etc., etc., etc.

A reasonable person could find fault with any number of those things. Certainly anyone could recognize that none of his positions are "perfect," and that there is room for improvement in all of them. However, if you act in strident opposition to everything he proposes, you should not be surprised if he does not consider you his base. Because if you act in strident opposition to everything he proposes, you are not his base. You are his opposition.

I believe he is not releasing these documents in large part because he does not feel that it is worthwhile to anger his military and his intelligence apparatus, given that all he would accomplish from a political perspective would be to make the American left even louder in its calls for prosecution regardless of feasibility. I would like to see the documents released, yes. But in our ham-handed attempts to maneuver Obama into "having to prosecute," especially in our angry calls for prosecution of low-level CIA agents (which unnerved the CIA, in turn making them angry at Obama) we've only made it politically harder for him to release the documents. It's actually much easier for him, politically, to weather a few days of outrage than to feed the fires of the PROSECUTE NOW crowd. That's why I usually don't like non-targeted pressure campaigns. There's no predicting the backlash.

You're a malcontent if you have opposed every single thing Obama has done as being insufficiently liberal, from his stimulus package to his bank rescue package to his health care reform plan to his treatment of Bush/Cheney to his stance on labor to his cabinet choices to his stance on gay rights to his stance on women's rights etc., etc., etc.

I haven't opposed every single thing Obama has done. In fact, he's done a very good job up to this point.

But if you expect us to just look the other way even as the President promised us transparency, you're kidding yourself.

The public has the right to know the truth.

nor that you were the reason Obama wasn't releasing the photos. The world don't revolve around your computer monitor.

Obama isn't releasing the photos because doing so would cause political harm internally now, and among the left in the future, whereas holding them would cause political harm among the left now--but given that the left is currently busy complaining about four or five other betrayals, this is likely to simply be another three-days outrage that nobody remembers past a few weeks. Smarter to accept that and continue working on healthcare, than to open up yet another internal battlefront while increasing the heat for prosecution.

Aside: Prosecution will occur if Obama finds enough evidence to make it absolutely assured that indictment will lead to conviction. It will not occur under any other circumstances.

Before you can find evidence you actually have to be willing to look for it.

Why would the the DOJ look for evidence if the President's plan is to win over the military and intelligence conservatives?

I don't know about you, but if it's true that some of these photos show the torture of children, it's not something I'm willing to forget, and if there are those who are willing to let it slide, then they are one step closer to being like the rank and file German civilians who did nothing while their neighbors disappeared in the night never to return.

David Ignatius, who along with Cohen, Broder and Marcus have asked President Obama not to push for any investigation on Bush-era torturers.

I wasn't sure of his orientation.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/sister-souljah.html

"David Ignatius describes the president's about-face on torture photos as a "Sister Souljah" moment. The MSM cannot see the question of torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions as a matter of right and wrong, of law and lawlessness. They see it as a matter of right and left. And so an attempt to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the war crimes they proudly admit to committing is "left-wing." And those of us who actually want to uphold the rule of law ... are now the equivalent of rappers urging the murder of white people. And the authorization of torture is reduced, in David's words, to "controversial Bush-era issues such as interrogation."

There is truth and power. In this town, you know what side the MSM is on. Just keep on walking. And let's have no more curiosity about this bizarre cover-up ... "


(emphasis mine)

He's been stellar.

:shrug:

He was demonstrating that he was willing to deliberately anger his base in order to reach out to a greater number of people. That is what a Sister Souljah moment is.

I don't think this is that precisely.

Yes Obama campaigned on transparency. Then he actually saw those photos and realized it was all a lot worse than he thought it was when he was campaigning. It happens all of the time.

of the cliches?