At a lecture Wednesday night, Salon.com columnist and civil liberties activist Glenn Greenwald condemned the Obama administration for continuing to violate citizens' constitutional rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
Greenwald said despite Obama's campaign promises to put an end to the Iraq War, the president has embraced and even expanded upon former President George W. Bush's policies for the War on Terror.
Greenwald said there is a lack of clarity in the definitions of civil liberties and terrorism, both of which are key terms used in the context of the Iraq War.
""What strikes me as both interesting and important is that we use these terms all the time,"" Greenwald said. ""And yet I don't think they really do have very clear or specific meaning, at least in terms of how they're used.""
Civil liberties are constraints that we have placed on the government, and we do not need to define the term because we have the Constitution. Greenwald said the term terrorism is not easy to define and the manipulation of the word for political gains has caused it to lose its meaning.
Greenwald gave the example of a package containing bombs intercepted from Yemen to the U.S. was declared a terrorist attack. Yet when Obama ordered air strikes in Yemen in 2009 killing 49 civilians, the U.S did not consider it an act of terrorism.
Greenwald said U.S. officials' justification to the public that the attack was targeting an al-Qaeda suspect was an abuse of political power.
Greenwald said both Republican and Democratic policymakers violate the public's civil liberties, but many citizens overlook these violations as long as the perpetrators belong to their own political party.
Student Progressive Dane and the Middle Eastern Law Student Association organized the presentation.
