More on Obama's National Security Strategy

My last post pointed to some of the good and bad rhetorical devices in Obama's National Security Strategy. While rhetoric and language choice are important, I'd also like to highlight a post on the ACLU Blog of Rights about how terrible and hypocritical it is functionally, once you get past the rhetoric.

While the strategy makes some vague commitments on human rights, it contradicts its own promises. It states that "our moral leadership is grounded principally in the power of our example," but then goes on to outline a strategy involving indefinite detention without charge or trial on the very same page.
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The strategy document calls for the federal government to imprison people indefinitely without charge or trial based simply on the government's claim that someone is a "danger to the American people." It also reiterates the administration's plan to continue to use the discredited military commissions despite the fact that the commissions lack basic due process protections.
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The strategy states that, whenever possible, the administration makes "information available to the American people so that they can make informed decisions and hold their leaders accountable," and that they "will never invoke the privilege to hide a violation of law or to avoid embarrassment to the government." Yet the Obama administration continues to withhold from the public key documents relating to the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation program and has invoked the "state secrets" privilege to avoid legal scrutiny of the Bush-era torture program, even when the information they are keeping a secret is already well-known to the public — keeping victims of torture from having their day in court and shielding Bush administration officials from civil liability. These policies are in direct opposition to the administration's stated commitment to government transparency.
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The administration makes a welcome and serious observation that it believes our country is not at war with the religion of Islam but with terrorists, but doesn't address ongoing policies that lead to racial and religious profiling and actually seem to promote such policies.

So yeah, there are a LOT of problems with it, and he's still entrenching a Bushian view of national security as a bipartisan consensus - probably the most damaging aspect of his Presidency.