Obama to order Guantanamo closed
A lot of speculation has centered around Barack Obama and how his first 100 days in office will turn out. Much has been said about how he wants to have an economic stimulus package ready to sign, soon after taking office and I am sure that is one of his priorities, but it is being reported that one of his first executive orders will be to order the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba closed. From Reuters:
President-elect Barack Obama will issue an executive order, probably within his first week in office, to close the prison at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an Obama transition adviser said on Monday.
Although this report is coming from an adviser, Obama himself made it very clear in an interview broadcast on Sunday morning that closing Guantanamo was not a negotiable item for him.
We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution. We will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.
Issuing the order to close the prison will be a mostly symbolic gesture, but a logistical nightmare, because the 255 prisoners who are now housed there have to go somewhere and most of them can not simply be turned loose. Although 50 of the prisoners have been cleared for release, they can not go to their home countries, where they would probably face worse conditions than they have at Guantanamo. So, the Obama administration will be faced with the task of deciding what to do with the inmates at the prison. One of the main themes of the Obama campaign was how his administration would be different than that of President Bush and of John McCain and it appears that Barack Obama is set to follow up on that promise within his first 100 days in the White House.
While many members of the Bush administration, especially Vice-President Dick Cheney, have made the case that the prison at Guantanamo is necessary and even legal because the inmates kept there are unlawful combatants, others have argued that it has not been ran properly and may have even hindered the effort to fight terrorism across the globe. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has even said the prison needed to be closed. Maybe that’s one reason Obama offered to let him stay at his job at the Pentagon. One thing is for sure, Guantanamo Bay has been a thorn in our country’s side and I can’t tell that it has done one iota of good. Most interrogation experts will even tell you the kind of tactics used at Guantanamo have yielded very few results.
After Guantanamo was opened up and after the atrocities were exposed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it wasn’t long before allegations of torture and abuse began to emerge. The one thing that has always set our country and our military apart from all others is how we conducted ourselves. This image has been tarnished badly by the way our country has conducted itself in recent times, with complete disregard for human rights, all in the name of preventing more terror attacks. While I wholeheartedly disagree with Barack Obama on most issues, this is one thing I can not argue with him about. It is certain our image needs a little polishing and maybe closing Guantanamo will help shine it up and restore the good faith and the good reputation the United States used to enjoy across the world.
Your post mentioned Abu Ghraib, and I’m still upset about that one. Yes, the atrocities should have been exposed, but not in front of the whole world. You just don’t air your dirty laundry for all the world to see; you handle it in a different way. I still think the paper that first printed articles exposing what went on there should be ashamed of themselves for putting our troops in harm’s way, more they already are.
If someone has information like that, take it to the authorities, and if they don’t act on it, go up the chain. IMHO, our media have caused untold damage to our reputation around the globe.
Please don’t confuse what I’m writing with the fact I don’t support what went on in that prison. Report, but report to someone who can effect a change while not making our country somewhat odious to the rest of the planet. I hope I’ve made sense today.
Ron’s last blog post..Happy Campers at the University of Florida
Larry, I have to be honest I was stunned to read this because I just finished reading FrontPage Magazine before I came here and they are saying the opposite. Here is what they said,
“In a Sunday interview with ABC News, Obama revealed that he was unlikely to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in the first 100 days of his presidency. That is a stark climb-down from promises Obama made as recently as November, when he indicated that shutting down Guantanamo would be a top priority.
Proximity to power seems to have had a sobering effect on Obama. “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize” to close Guantanamo, he explained on Sunday, pointing out, correctly, that its resident detainees are actually “very dangerous.” Obama did not miss the import of that admission, specifically that any closure of the facility would have to be so designed that it “doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.” Until such a plan exists, Guantanamo will stay open.
Left-wing blogs and anti-Guantanamo crusaders will bristle at that conclusion, but it is the only responsible one. The reality of Guantanamo – a reality that leading Democrats and self-styled human rights watchdogs have spent years obscuring – is that it is home to some of the world’s most dangerous Islamists: Chechen jihadists; Afghan mujahedeen and Taliban fighters; al-Qaeda terrorists from across the Middle East and North Africa. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the architect of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, are two of many notorious names on the Guantanamo roll call.
Bloody experience, meanwhile, has illustrated the dangers of releasing these terrorist captives. As of May 2008, the Department of Defense estimated that at least 36 former Guantanamo detainees are “confirmed or suspected” of having returned to the battlefield. One Kuwaiti detainee, freed from Guantanamo in 2005, joined the jihad against American troops shortly thereafter; he was ultimately killed carrying out a suicide bombing in Iraq last May. At long last, it seems, the president-elect has come to realize what he is really dealing with.
True, there is much Obama still doesn’t understand about Guantanamo. He is under the mistaken impression, for instance, that detainees “have not gone through some adjudication,” when in fact all have undergone at least two levels of review, an initial Combatant Status Review Tribunal to determine their status as enemy combatants and an annual review to determine their fitness for release. Likewise, Obama seems unaware that most detainees, so far from being “tortured” into a confession, have volunteered their terrorist affiliations and in some cases have even promised to kill more Americans upon release. But even with these gaps in his understanding, Obama’s newfound reluctance to shutter Guantanamo is a welcome development, suggesting as it does his growing appreciation for the central role that Guantanamo plays in the war on terror and the terribly real dangers posed by its terrorist denizens. ”
I don’t know what happen between the two days, but it looks like Obama is changing his mind on yet another issue.
Here is the link for the whole article as I am sure you will want to read it.
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=D2477F46-639B-4FC4-B8AB-8014E1E66427
Dominique’s last blog post..PETITION ALERT: Petition to the U.N.calling for an investigation of HAMAS’ treatment of CHILDREN
Ron,
You have made perfect sense. The abuses that have went on in the Iraqi prisons should have been handled entirely different, that much is certainly true. I believe this all leads back to one main theme and that is how the war in Iraq and related actions has all been so mismanaged.
Dominique,
I will be very surprised if Obama does not move swiftly to begin the process of closing Guantanamo. It was one of his major promises and I think he will do his best to keep it. Even if he signs the order on his first day in office, it will still take a long time before it is actually closed. Those inmates can not simply walk free and no one seems to want them.