Sixty-one former detainees of Guantanamo Bay are active as terrorists again, or so the military believes. Given that President-elect Obama has already backpedaled on his promise to close the war prisoner facility, I expect this news to make it all the more likely that he’ll never close it.
I also expect that this issue will all but disappear from the national and international RADAR once Obama actually takes office. Why? Because of my long-held belief that the only reason, the issue was ever a big deal in national or international politics was that it was a handy way to bash President Bush and/or the United States generally. The vast majority of people who complained about Guantanamo Bay really never gave a good God damn about those detainees or any of the supposed abuses there or any of the supposed violations of international law. Now that they like the new President, they’ll cease to care about the issue.
Am I cynical? Not really. I’m just philosophical; my experience is that this is how these things work. We’ll see if I’m right.
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Well, I believe you left enough room to support whatever happens — to fall within the parameter — of supporting your arguments either way. Not that that is of necessity a poorly thought out position.
Definitely, the Pentagon has their supportive stances regarding the matter of Gitmo and one that needs be recognized.
President-elect Obama is by nature a "legal" guy that recognizes it is strongly not mainstream Constitutional thinking that habeus corpus can be suspend indefinitely.
Obama hasn’t yet back-pedaled — does he not seek a way to legally dispense these cases — without jeopardizing national security ? On the other hand,
some of those detainees cases are so complex that juridical prosecution is prohibitive. War seems to do that kind of stuff.
President Obama will close Gitmo, (it may take time) and he will score well earned political advantage — perhaps for the sole reason that it was a huge error to bring those terrorists into this hemisphere notwithstanding the apparent goal of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to bring them into Virginia or Maryland.
One might think that is a very huge important national principle that President Obama should initiate.
He said he would close Gitmo within 100 days of taking office. He’s already backpedaled on that. Now that he’s actually won, he has to look at what the actual results of his promises would be, and apparently is mature enough to know he SHOULD backpedal. My predictions have less to do with him than his fervent supporters who made such an issue of this.
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