Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Thursday, February 4, 2010

defenddemocracy.com
Escape from Guantanamo Bay

LEE A. CASEY & DAVID B. RIVKIN JR.

In truth, it will be far more difficult for the president to accept that his decision to close Guantanamo was wrong than it will be for him to explain a reversal of the policy. Here, the spin is easy - it has the unusual virtue of being true.

Obama has consistently maintained that he would not endanger American security in implementing his policies vis-à-vis al-Qaeda and its allies - he could hardly have done otherwise. That being the case, he need only acknowledge that one of the fundamental aspects of his Guantanamo closure policy - the ability to transfer most of the detainees either to their own countries or to third countries for "rehabilitation" - has not worked out as he had hoped and expected. The only way of closing Guantanamo and ensuring U.S. security interests would be to bring the entire detainee population into the United States, which he never planned to do. Therefore, Guantanamo will have to remain open pending further review of detainee repatriation opportunities and policies.

The problem, of course, is that Mr. Obama's base spent nearly eight years claiming that Guantanamo was inherently evil and that it was a stain on the nation's reputation attributable to George W. Bush's insatiable desire to concentrate power in his own hands regardless of individual rights.

The Bush policy was, of course, neither evil nor unlawful, and any "stain" has always been more imaginary than real. But too many of Bush's critics came to believe their own propaganda, and changing these beliefs will be hard. Nevertheless, the presidency is a hard job - so Mr. Obama had best get to it.

From Thoughtbasket.com:
The Christmas Bomber and Miranda
February 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

Bad timing for David Rivkin, who used Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal for one of his monthly attacks on some Obama policy. This time it was about the Christmas Day bomber, with Rivkin saying that not immediately sending the bomber into military detention was “an intelligence failure of massive proportions.” Too bad that the very next day, today, the exact same newspaper reported that the Christmas bomber is again talking to the FBI, providing “valuable intelligence.” This also damages the arguments of this guy and this woman. Look, there are valid reasons to say that terrorists should be viewed as wartime combatants rather than criminals. But claiming that we won’t get good information from terrorists held in the civilian legal system is clearly not a valid reason. And there is at least one good reason not to throw them in military brigs: it creates an appearance of the US being at war with Islam, which appearance seems to generate more terrorists. Finally, I would like to note, again, that George W. Bush also tried terrorists in civilian courts. For Republicans to now claim that this approach is terribly weak is to be hypocrites of the worst sort. Which is, I supposed, to be expected from politicians.
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