Why does the Obama administration continue to insist that the illegal policies of the previous Bush/Cheney administration be justified and above indictment, or even simple investigation by any court of the land? And perhaps even more importantly, why do Obama's Democratic supporters--both within and outside of government--continue to defend as necessary such policies when practiced by the Obama administration when they spent years unequivacably condemning them when they were implemented by the Bush administration?
The answer is not hard to figure out. Hypocrisy for the sake of convenience is a hallmark of politics. But it also says as much about Obama's mindless supporters as it does for the Obama administration itself.
The main goal of the Obama administration is not to make major changes in society, as he promised in his campaign and as many of his loyal followers within the ranks of the Democrats assume. In actuality, Obama's goal is the same as that of nearly any other politician who enters the ranks of the big leagues, be they Democrats, Republicans, or even Independents. And that goal is to achieve as much power over society as possible, and to uphold the current capitalist system. Any degree of concern these Democrats may actually have for the general welfare when they promise "change" takes a secondary role to their subservience for the present status quo in society and their desire to increase the power of the government over the lives of the common citizens as much as possible.
With that taken into account, is it in any way surprising that the Obama administration dismantled very few of the draconian, unconstitutional policies implemented by the previous Republican administration, such as diving headlong into the "war on terror" ideology--e.g., justifying military commissions, indefinite detention with no charges, secret prisons, the underming of FISA, the whitewashing of previous administration's crimes, extraordinary rendition, etc.--for anyone simply suspected or accused of being a "terrorist," with the latter term becoming ever broader? And despite all the hope people had of a Democratic administration undoing at least some of the attacks on the very foundation of America's much stated values by the Bush administration with its Orwellian policies, this is not going to happen as long as we continue to have a Democratic president who is afraid to be called names by the Republicans and who continuously bows not only to pressure by them, but who also goes out of their way to appeal to right-wing rednecks and swing voters, and who accepts extensive campaign contributions from big business.
It would appear that the rationale for Obama's supporters within government is that they are simply happy to have the power over society that they now have. They condemned the policies of the Republicans as being unconstitutional while the latter political party was in power, because that served to invalidate their legitimacy to the American people and encouraged the citizens to put their support behind a Democratic administration when the next election came along. Now that this has happened, the Democratic politicians are reveling in the new executive powers that the Bush administration gave them, and they suddenly see the "necessity" of perpetuating the "war on terror" and rationalizing the many attacks on our civil liberties at home and for defining our destructive conduct on foreign soil due to how much this exacerbates the amount of power they have over both their own society and over the world in general.
As for Obama's mindless supporters outside of government, they simply feel that any type of "change" from a Republican administration is a better one, and they do not see any third party candidates (such as the Greens) as having any possibility of winning an election, so they throw their lot in with what they perceive as the lesser of two electable evils, and do not want to take the chance of a Republican administration being re-elected. They also fear the power of the right-wing constituancies among the general population, as well as the fidgetiness of the swing voters, so they feel it necessary to rationalize the Republican-like policies of the Obama administration--or any other Democratic administration--by saying that the Democratic administration had "no choice" but to swing to the Right with its policies. If the Democratic administration failed to do this, they will argue, the rednecks, evangelical Christians, and the swing voters will get pissed off, and if this happens, they may not support Obama's re-election campaign, as well as voting Republican rather than Democratic following the end of Obama's two terms in office. If one mentions to them that Obama didn't deliver on a single change he promised, they will simply say, "Well, I didn't expect any miracles from him, and neither should you. If you did, then you just don't understand the realities of politics. Obama didn't do these things because he wanted to, but only because he had no other choice."
All of this rationalizing overlooks the real reasons why Obama failed to roll back most of the unconstitutional and illegal policies of the Bush administration. Contrary to what the Republicans like Ann Coulter are saying, Obama is not trying to destroy capitalism, but actually trying to bolster it and shift its constituancies to his advantage. After all, if capitalism was eliminated, he would lose as much power and privilege as any other capitalist or high-ranking politician would. Obama is a card-carrying corporatist, not a socialist revolutionary.
The more we see this happening, the more one may hope that the working class will begin to realize that the Democrats are not going to make our lives as free or as comfortable as they can be due to modern industry and technology. They are not going to give power to the people, and the people need to realize that only they can do that for themselves. The change has to be a fundamental switch from the current system to a new one that modern industrial production makes possible, a new system where ownership of the means of production and distribution will be collectively owned by everyone in society rather than under the control of an elite few and used exclusively for the personal enrichment of that few at the expense of everyone else.