This essay looks at the manner in which President
Obama has handled two issues mostly affecting women -- abortion rights and
sexual assaults in the military – raising questions about the disparity between
his earnest rhetoric and the effects of his policies.
The essay begins with a damaging development which appears to
threaten prosecutions of sexual assault in the military.
The essay concludes with brief remarks about the
implications of White House policy on wider national and international matters.
***
The issue of sexual assaults in the military rose to
media prominence in the spring of 2013 largely due to news of a Pentagon study that estimated that 26,000
men and women in the military were sexually assaulted in 2012 up from 19,000 in
2011. In May, NY Senator Kirsten Gillebrand stirred debate when she grilled military
brass in a Senate hearing and pressed for removing sexual assault prosecutions
out of the military chain of command.
President Obama,
in turn, made a strong public statement supporting the victims of sexual abuse at
a press conference. Weeks later a front page story in the New York Times informed readers that “Remark
by Obama Complicates Military Sexual Assault Trials.” The
word “complicates” actually seemed to downplay the effect of the president’s
remark since the Times’ story indicated
that it could mean an end to “almost all” prosecutions for sexual
assault in the military.
What
did the president say?
Answering a reporter’s question, Mr. Obama said that
those who
commit sexual assault in the military should be “prosecuted, stripped of their
positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged.” While these
directions may have seemed appropriate to a general audience, the Times explained that Obama’s remark “mudd[ied] legal
cases across the country” because “Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief
amounted to ‘unlawful command influence,’ tainting trials as a result.” The Times
report explained that the bulk if not all prosecutions for sexual assault in
the military are now under question because “defense lawyers will seize on the
president’s call for an automatic dishonorable discharge…arguing that his words
will affect their cases.”
The
Times cited five cases where the
president’s remark has already had the effect of “complicating” matters,
including one at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where “a judge
dismissed charges of sexual assault against an Army officer, noting the command
influence issue.”
The
president’s statement raises the question of his intentions. Did he
purposefully enumerate the various penalties in order to squelch such military
prosecutions? The main piece of evidence is the unusual
specificity of his instructions.
President
Obama said offenders should be:
prosecuted,
stripped of their positions,
court-martialed,
fired,
dishonorably
discharged.
The
Times article cites a precedent could
have provided him with a suggestion on how to proceed if he wished to block
these cases.
The
president’s comments have not been the only ones cited as influencing sexual
assault cases. Last year, lawyers in more than 60 Marine Corps sexual assault
cases filed motions claiming “unlawful command influence” because of a series
of remarks made by Gen. James F. Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps,
according to a McClatchy-Tribune news report.
If
the president really intended to block military prosecutions in these cases, he
would be reinforcing his first term policy when there was no detectable White
House action to address the problem.
In
any event, the President’s unguarded
statement is one of a number of examples where, largely
under the radar, he seems to be
pursuing Republican rather than
Democrat objectives on issues of particular interest to women, especially with regard to abortion rights and reproductive services.
Ronald Reagan and Abortion Rights,
Ronald Reagan’s high profile support of the anti-abortion
movement was arguably the key turning point on the road to the evisceration of
abortion rights in the U.S. President Reagan’s
consistent championship of the movement gave the somewhat disreputable anti-abortion
forces a new legitimacy. Since then they have moved from strength to strength.
A
generation and a half later, when Republicans took lop-sided control of many
governorships and statehouses in the 2010 election, another a decisive nail was driven into the
coffin of personal freedom. Although women in the U.S. are nominally free to
obtain abortions, their practical access has been narrowing decade by decade. According
to a mid 2012 report, a third of women of reproductive age resided in one of
the 87 percent of U.S. counties without an abortion provider. And only seven states
have abortion providers in more than 50 percent of their counties. (Search: lack
of abortion providers in U.S.)
A
self- proclaimed fan of Ronald Reagan, President
Obama, over the years has largely refrained from any practical steps in support
women’s concerns, and he has also presided
over what has amounted to the greatest threat to their rights: the Republican
takeover of state legislative seats in the 2010 election. In addition to gaining
63 House seats, and taking control of the House, Republicans in 2010 seized a
total of 680 legislative seats, breaking the previous record when Democrats added
628 such seats in 1974 in the aftermath of Watergate. Five states, Minnesota,
Maine, North Carolina and Alabama saw both state legislative chambers switch
from Democrat to Republican. (United
States elections, 2010)
Once
again the question of Obama’s motivations arises. President Obama came into
office at one of those unique moments of history when he had a powerful reformist
wind at his back. Had he so chosen, he could have marshaled his political capital
and put into effect much of the change and hope for which America and the world
was so desperate. In the event, however, the 44th president turned
his back on such Democratic priorities as: accountability for the crimes of the previous
administration, Medicare for all, diplomatic rather than military solutions in
foreign hot spots; putting a brake on Big Brother snooping, accountability for
bankster crimes and reform of Wall
Street; aid to millions of underwater homeowners and those in danger of foreclosure;
real movement on climate change, etc., etc.
Had
he gone in the direction many of his supporters hoped and expected it’s likely
that, as FDR before him, he would have bolstered his Democratic majorities
instead of presiding over the calamitous Party reversals that eventuated. The
question is not so much whether President Obama deliberately intended a
Republican takeover of the House and perhaps also the Senate, but rather one of
responsibility. Was it not predictable
that if Obama had the opportunity to institute a reformist agenda and chose not
to, then his supporters would be confused and his opponents energized?
The Abortion Propaganda war
Those
fighting to maintain abortion rights in the U.S. have largely lost the
propaganda war from the moment when anti-abortion forces successfully made the
issue the life of the unborn child. Focusing
on the unborn effectively marginalizes the rights of women, making it far more
difficult for many to compete socially, economically and politically. The
larger society is also negatively impacted since the exclusion of women from so
many productive spheres restricts their opportunity to contribute.
Pro-abortion
forces have had difficulty pushing back against the totalitarian impulse to
repress women, to lock them in their poverty and to handcuff them politically.
Understanding the authoritarian anti-abortion movement for what it is, would also
help shine a light on the Catholic Church’s exactly similar motives in
prohibiting most forms of contraception and abortion services. The Church has a
financial and political stake in limiting the options of their constituency,
believing that repression and lack of education and opportunity helps to maintain
its power.
Many
of those fighting against the abortion rights of women will protest that their
motives are sincere and deeply felt. Is
it fair to charge many of the grassroots right to life supporters with same
authoritarian motivations of many politicians, Church leaders and other
stakeholders? The answer may be to note the disparity between their declared devotion
to the human rights of the unborn with their tendency to oppose government assistance
for pregnant women and their
children once they are born.
There
are always reasons that people choose one side or another, one political party
or another, one policy or another. The key is to look not at what people profess,
but at the effects of the policies they advocate.
President Obama and Abortion
Is there a connection between President’s Obama’s
gaffe with regard to sexual assault in the military and his position on
abortion? As a Democrat, President Obama
is at least nominally 100% supportive of
a woman’s right to choose. But on the margins he has preferred, on more than
one occasion, to snip away at abortion rights. The first such noticeable
occasion was on the occasion of the “compromise” he struck with Republicans in
the spring of 2011 over the remainder of the 2011 budget.
One wonders, first of all, why such legislation
couldn’t have been passed routinely in 2010 when Democrats controlled both
Houses of Congress instead of waiting until Obama would be forced to bargain
with the House Majority Leader and other Republicans. A similar point was made
by none other than Bill Clinton in his 2011 book, Back to Work, where he asked why the country had to go through four
months of angst over the issue of
raising the federal debt ceiling when appropriate legislation could have been
passed when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress in 2010.
The
“compromise” that President Obama struck on the remainder of the 2011 budget included
agreeing to $38 billion in cuts to Democratic priorities like nutrition for
poor women and children. In addition, to the apparent surprise and delight of
Republicans, he allowed language barring the District of Columbia
from using its own tax dollars to finance abortions.
Democratic
outrage at the details of President Obama’s compromise and the way it was
reached behind closed doors with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House
Speaker, John Boehner, seemed to reach a peak in the spring of 2011.
Democratic
House members' fury at the debt ceiling deal Obama “negotiated” with the House Republicans was reflected in a tweet by
Eldridge Cleaver a mild mannered Democrat from Missouri who fretted about the
way in which the $38 billion in cutbacks would hurt the most vulnerable
Americans.” We don’t have enough time to talk about the ways it violates our
values,” he told The Daily Beast.
The
Daily Beast quoted
a senior Democratic lawmaker who seemed to sum up the outrage of many of his
colleagues. “I have been very disappointed in the administration to the point
where I’m embarrassed that I endorsed him”…“It’s so bad that some of us are
thinking, is there some way we can replace him? How do you get rid of this
guy?”
The morning after pill
Had Obama been a Republican president his opposition to
allowing unrestricted sales of the morning after pill would not have been notable.
As it is, his opposition to such sales
dismayed many for whom the controversy was more than a passing headline. In
December 2011, just
as the Food And Drug Agency (FDA) was about to approve over-the-counter
availability without restriction, Health
and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA,
preventing young girls from purchasing
the pill on their own. President Obama stated that he agreed with Secretary
Sebelius’s decision.
After
federal judge Edward Korman (appointed by Ronald Reagan), in blunt language , overruled the administration,
writing that it had behaved ”in bad faith,”
the Obama administration backed down and
allowed over the counter sales for one type of morning after pill, known as Plan
B One Step. Nevertheless the administration continues to use its remaining
power to oppose the cheaper two-pill version, preferring to restrict sales to
young girls. The administration says they are concerned that they might not
understand how to take two pills.
Whose side is he on?
The policies that discourage, even outrage many of President
Obama’s current and former supporters are not limited to the relatively narrow
issues of sexual assault in the military and abortion rights. The Snowden/NSA surveillance
revelations along with the Obama administration’s bitter, even ferocious
attacks on whistleblowers have helped unmask some of the president’s positions
on freedom of the press, civil liberties, and fourth amendment protections
against unreasonable search and seizure.
Such policies also call to mind the administration’s operation
in a zone free of laws, such as his escalation of the Bush-Cheney drone attack
program, the reported 75-85 special operations squads (including the Joint
Special Operations Command –JSOC) engaged in assassination and destabilization around
the world (including the reintroduction of such special forces assassination teams
into Iraq); the administration’s apparent determination to indefinitely
maintain a core group of prisoners at Guantanamo prison, and more such hard
line positions on “terror “and imperial reach. President Obama’s policies on women and the
poor are only somewhat more subtle and less high profile examples of the
right-wing, authoritarian orientation of his regime.
Paraphrasing an anonymous senior Democrat at the
height of Party revulsion with his tactics: “Who is this guy?”
***
Update
A New York Times July 2013 front page story on the Republican’s upcoming “offensive
on Obama’s goals” outlined deep cuts that Republicans say they plan to
make to administration priorities. The Times
cited such cuts as 34%
to the Environmental Protection Agency’s
budget; 50% cut to the National Endowment
for the Arts and humanities, 27%
reduction to the Fish and Wildlife Service. The House bill also zeroes
out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, cuts education grants
for poor students by 16% and the Labor Department by 13%.
Many Democrats in
Congress will certainly fight to
maintain their budget priorities. The question is how sincerely and actively
will they be supported by the White House? And to what extent will the
president “submit” to compromises? Past
practice suggests that President Obama will not merely preside over allowing an
agenda weighted toward Republican desiderata, but that is actually the
direction he prefers.
Similarly, in foreign affairs, the subject for a
separate investigation, President Obama’s policy has largely been rhetoric for
peace and stability while the facts it supports on the ground undermine his professed
goals.
The
End
