It has always been frequently accepted in a political forum that disrespectful statements directed at the the 44th President of the United States are par for the course and part of the terrain of being a public figure.
Still, for many who not only respect Barack Obama, but have benefited from his many efforts in office thus far -- one in particular coming after almost a century of presidents -- a vast amount of the language used in criticizing and vilifying this President, from both the Right and the "Left", has gone way beyond the boundaries of being offensive.
The President is now euphemistically being asked, within this community, to eat someone's "shorts", which based upon the definition of Urban Dictionary is outrageous and beyond despicable, especially on a Democratic blog site.
This disrespectful address directed at the President is due to a ginned up outrage over his use of the term “folk” in his statement which admitted that the U.S. government tortured individuals during its pursuit of terrorists, following a terrorist attack upon U.S. soil on September 11, 2001. The going argument seem to hold that by using the term “folk” Obama was not direct enough in declaring that the U.S. tortured individuals.
Still, as Vox.com has illustrated, the President has directly addressed the U.S. involvement in torture before:
President Obama surprised many Americans on Friday when he said at a news conference that, in the wake of September 11, 2001, "We tortured some folks, we did some things that were contrary to our values."
Obama was discussing the CIA's admission that it had snooped on Senate aid computers, which he connected to the US national security community's overreaches after September 11. His comment took many by surprise because he used the T-word — torture — to describe Bush administration practices that for years were described with softened phrases like "enhanced interrogation methods."
The article went on to note the many times this President has explicitly spoken of the Bush administration’s use of torture:
Except that this is nothing new for Obama. In April 2009, just a few months into his presidency, he rebuked former Vice President Dick Cheney's defenses of waterboarding and other Bush interrogation methods by stating outright, "I believe that waterboarding was torture and, whatever legal rationals were used, it was a mistake."
Mention is made of the 2011 Republican Primary when candidates attempted to jockey for the position of being tougher than Bush in terms of their efforts to fight terrorism:
Again, Obama did not equivocate on calling it torture. "They're wrong. Waterboarding is torture," he said at the time. "Anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do -- period."
Barack Obama inherited a hell storm of trouble from his predecessor and he has done a great deal to repair what was handed to him in tatters. He did not run as Prosecutor in Chief, and I for one, judging from the benefit of hindsight, am glad he focused on pressing life and death issues such as healthcare.
For the record, as it relates to the President’s statements concerning the CIA and intelligence, according to Vox.com:
Obama has been pushing, for months, for the Senate Intelligence Committee to release its classified 6,300-page report on Bush-era interrogation programs. Intelligence agencies and some lawmakers have opposed releasing the document, which is known colloquially as the "torture report." But Obama has said that opening it up to the public would be crucial for understanding post-9/11 abuses.
After a few months of fighting, Obama got his way: the report could be released to the public as soon as next week. The report is the result of an extensive investigation of rendition, detention, and interrogation programs (sometimes called RDI) and people who have seen it describe it to reporters as showing "horrific, systemic, and widespread" abuses, according to the Daily Beast. It does not use the word torture — a word that can have enormous legal implications if used in such an official document. But Obama does.
We live in a time where the Democratic President of the United States has saved the U.S. economy from a second Great Depression, saved the U.S. car industry, and made it possible for tens of millions of people to gain access to healthcare, yet individuals who are supposedly on the “Left” are disrespectfully telling him what to eat. What is even worse is the hundreds of people in this community who recommended that diary. Unbelievable.
Yes, such is the nature of things.