Goin’ Fishing? Not quite, but things here at Deliberately Considered are slowing down for the summer, as I go to teach in the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, and then to take part in a research project on Regime and Society in Eastern Europe (1956 – 1989) in Sofia, Bulgaria. After three years of regular, often daily, publishing, posts will be less frequent until September. At that time, we will be presenting Deliberately Considered in a new form.

Here some quick thoughts on topics I would like to write about now, but don’t have the time or energy to do so thoroughly.

On Egypt: I am fascinated by the grayness of it all: the unbearable grayness of being? I don’t see heroic figures or villains. Rather I see mortals, tragic figures, facing huge challenges, beyond their capacity to address.

Most objective observers are labeling the latest turn of events as a coup, but that seems to me to be too simple. Equally simplistic is the view of those who see the events as a clear political advance. A democratically elected leader, President Morsi, was overthrown by the military, not a good thing. But there was a significant popular movement, perhaps representing more than fifty per cent of the public, demanding the resignation of Morsi and new elections, and a resetting of the political order, which didn’t include them and their opinions, and didn’t provide the mechanisms for recalling the President. Yet, a legitimate President, from the point of view of many of the over fifty percent that voted for him, has been removed by the military. While I am no fan of military interventions in politics, I know that there is a real danger when a party confuses its particular interests with the common good. Yet, while lack of inclusion was a key problem in the Muslim Brotherhood led regime, it continues to be a problem as reports today indicate a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Obama, the NSA and Snowden: I am disappointed, dismayed and irritated. National security is the one arena in which I have been least satisfied with Obama’s Presidency. I had wanted a clear line to be drawn between the policies of Bush and Cheney, and Obama’s. The compromised civil liberties and the continued escalation of surveillance revealed by Snowden’s leaks, alas, indicate continuity rather than change. I think the leaks serve good purpose. I also think the arguments Obama presented in his national security speech provide reasonable grounds for the criticism of the administrations surveillance policies. There is, indeed, a need for a consequential national conversation on the continued ways the war on terror has compromised civil liberties in the United States and beyond. Obama seems to recognize this, but he has not facilitated the discussion, to say the least. On the other hand, I can’t stand the self-righteous, self-serving arguments of Snowden and his chief supporters, Glenn Greenwald and WikiLeaks. The demonization of the U.S. and Obama, the absolute certainty that all surveillance is about the projection of oppressive power – is not serious. As I felt after the attacks of 9/11, I find the critics of official policy as dismaying as the official policy itself. And the melodrama of Snowden’s search for asylum makes matters worse. Why didn’t he stand his ground on principle in the U.S.? Seeking asylum in countries with regimes with questionable human rights records is irritating and confuses important issues, as does the 24/7 news treatment of Snowden’s latest whereabouts and likely endpoint.

Politics and the social condition: I think the NSA revelations and the events in Egypt underscore the reasons for studying social dilemmas as they are knitted into the fabric of social and political life. Iddo Tavory and I are working hard on this over the “summer vacation.” I am leaning heavily on Hannah Arendt, he on Jean Paul Sartre. We believe that there is something missing in social science. It oversimplifies. Today I am thinking about the political significance of our project. If Obama and his critics would recognize, discuss and act upon complexity, perhaps the line between then and now, between Bush and Obama, would be drawn. Perhaps, if all parties recognized the problems of inclusion, democracy and social justice could be constituted in Egypt. I know this may sound naïve, another example of my easy hopefulness. But consider the alternative: without the recognition and understanding of dilemmas, the political challenges in Egypt and between Obama and his critics can’t be resolved.

The Ironies of Consequence: Daniel Dayan and I are talking about analyzing the interaction of what I call “the politics of small things” and what he calls “monstration.” We have had many discussions on this, public and private, in classrooms, at conferences, and in very pleasant meetings in our favorite cafes, and at our homes in New York and Paris. In our last meeting, in the spring, we agreed that our focus would be on what we are calling “the ironies of consequence.” Apparently trivial things sometimes have major consequences, while what appears to be of major significance, has little consequence. And there is also much in between. Take the recent surveillance revelations: it is striking how popular and elite European responses were strong, while the American public and political leadership responded quite weakly. The Americans responded as cynical world-weary cosmopolitans, apparently understanding the ways of the world and power, while the Europeans at least feigned outrage, appalled that a security apparatus uses state of the art methods to gather information on foreign and domestic citizens, and other states, both friend and foe. Media reporting, I believe, shapes this. I wish I had time to show it. I think as I did, I would also be showing how unstable these responses are.

This will have to wait for a couple of months. We will continue to publish pieces occasionally, deliberately, but less frequently, responding to the events of the day. In the pipeline: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer’s “Reflections on Al Qaeda in Mali and Other Radicals at the Gates,” and Susan Pearce’s update on the cultural shutdown in Bosnia and Herzegovina and her report on the LGBT pride parade in Istanbul.

Today I explore the relationship between Obama’s national security address with his surveillance policies. Many see the distance between his speech and action as proof of their cynicism about Obama and more generally about American politicians. I note that the distance can provide the grounds for the opposite of cynicism, i.e. consequential criticism. But for this to be the case, there has to be public concern, something I fear is lacking.

I am an Obama partisan, as any occasional reader of this blog surely knows. One such reader, in a response to my last post on Obama’s national security address, on Facebook declared: “your endless contortions in support of this non-entity make you look increasingly ridiculous.” He wondered: “Is this really what a ‘public intellectual’ looks like today?” I am not profoundly hurt by this. I am enjoying the one time in my life that I actually support an American political leader in power. I was an early supporter of the State Senator from the south side of Chicago and find good reasons to appreciate his leadership to this day. Through his person and his words, he has changed American identity, to the pleasure of the majority and the great displeasure to a significant minority. Obamacare is his singular accomplishment. He rationally responded to the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, despite sustained opposition. Perhaps he could have done more, but powerful forces were aligned against him. He has carefully redirected American foreign policy, cooperating with allies and the international organizations, engaging enemies, working to shift the balance between diplomacy and armed force. Obama has worked to move the center left, as I analyze carefully in Reinventing Political Culture,  and I applaud his efforts even when he has not succeeded.

That said I have been disappointed on some matters, and I want to be clear about them here. In my judgment, the surge in Afghanistan didn’t make much sense. The escalating use of drones, without clear and public guidelines, has concerned me: the killing of innocents was not recognized, as drone warfare contributed to the long history of placing civilians and non combatants at increasing risk. (In this sense, drone warfare and terrorism are two sides of the same coin.) And now this week, there is the news about “Obama’s dragnet” (as The New York Times put it), Obama’s continued and even escalating mass surveillance. Although this was very much implied in news reports before the revelations (they are not really shocking to the informed), reading the details, particularly as reported by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian,  underscores fundamental problems.

I wanted to see a “strong black line” drawn between the war on terrorism and the rule of fear after “9/11,” and the Obama era. I wanted to see national hysteria replaced by sensible policy, to bracket the governance of Bush-Cheney in the same way that McCarthyism was bracketed and criticized. The latest news underscores that in significant ways this has not happened. The line has been thinly sketched rather than clearly drawn. Some things have changed, much hasn’t.

This is why I thought Obama’s national security speech was so important. He was announcing a change in policy, moving from a “war on terror” to a struggle against terrorists, using normal law enforcement methods. This was a change I had been waiting for. But what then to make of the latest revelations?

Many have expressed outrage, with the editorial writers of The New York Times leading the way. Others see confirmation of their strong civil liberty criticisms of the President on national security, with Greenwald leading here, and a broad swath of media commentators following. I find myself in between these positions, not persuaded by either, but also crucially not convinced by those who suggest that the surveillance is no big deal and argue that it is legal and necessary. That is the reasoning which must be put to rest.

Although clearly Obama’s speech and action conflict, drawing the conclusion that he is just a hypocrite, another cynical politician administering American hegemonic power, I believe, is mistaken. This is how Greenwald responded to Obama’s national security speech, as I analyzed in my last post written before the publication of the Snowden revelations. We now know what Greenwald knew, but we didn’t. He had inside knowledge of Snowden’s leaks. Yet, as Greenwald explains his position now, I am uncomfortable. He is too sure that the only reason for secrets is to protect the prerogatives of the powerful: too fast to dismiss threats to national security.

On the other hand, I find Obama puzzling, even schizophrenic in his response to the Snowden leaks. He welcomes the debate we must have (especially now) about the need to balance security and civil liberties concerns, while he also denounces leaks and leakers who instigate discussion. He is obviously caught between his desire as a principled centrist to have all with opposing views discuss a pressing problem, and his belief that national security requires official secrets. He wants to have a full public debate, taking into account all reasonable points of view, but he worries that this may lead to giving “aid and comfort to the enemy.” Disciplined governance is pitted against democratic deliberations. And there is a clear political calculation. Public opinion is more moved by security than by civil liberty concerns.

Here is the significance of his speech at the National Defense University, remembering that the speech preceded the revelation for the public, but for Obama it was the other way around. The speech was a response to the overt and covert policies that together have made “the war on terror.”

Perhaps, if we are still in a post 9/11 “war,” the argument for official secrets and escalating compromises in civil liberties is justified. But, if in fact, the war is over, as Obama announced in his speech, the continuation of war policies has to be critically appraised. Obama suggested in his speech a logical conclusion: “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” In these terms: how can the broad, not just targeted, surveillance by the National Security Agency be justified? Obama’s speech strongly suggests that it can’t. Obama’s words provide solid grounds for opposition to his administration’s policies, including those revealed about the NSA.

I still support Obama. I hope that under public pressure he follows the logic of the position he outlined in his national security speech. But I am concerned that the pressure may not be there.