Well, Has He . . . ?

Here are a set of questions Glenn Greenwald addressed to defenders of Obama who are highly upset that disgruntled people on the left (people like me) dare to criticize their hero.

 Has he appointed financial officials who have largely served the agenda of the Wall Street and industry interests that funded his campaign?  Has he embraced many of the Bush/Cheney executive power and secrecy abuses which Democrats once railed against -- from state secrets to indefinite detention to renditions and military commissions?  Has he actively sought to protect from accountability and disclosure a whole slew of Bush crimes?  Did he secretly a negotiate a deal with the pharmaceutical industry after promising repeatedly that all negotiations over health care would take place out in the open, even on C-SPAN?  Are the criticisms of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan valid, and are his arguments in its favor redolent of the ones George Bush made to "surge" in Iraq or Lyndon Johnson made to escalate in Vietnam?   Is Bob Herbert right when he condemned Obama's detention policies as un-American and tyrannical, and warned:  "Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House"?

 Greenwald makes the point that the only question that really matters is: are these criticisms of Obama valid? (Not whether he's a good guy with high intelligence and good intentions.)

Sadly, they are. The answer to every one of the questions posed above is "yes."