Obama is expected the deliver a plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo in the next several days. This was promised to be one of the first things he would do upon entering the White House in 2009, but sometimes… life gets in the way of doing things that you really want to do. I have not yet cleaned my gutters this year, for example.
There are about 107 detainees remaining at Guantanamo. (This detention centers there cost approximately $450 million a year to operate, by the way.) In all likelihood, about a third of the remaining detainees will be transferred to other countries, and it will be proposed that the rest are moved to some type of prison in the US – possibly in Colorado, Kansas, or South Carolina.
But there’s a couple sticking points. The law clearly says that detainees cannot be moved to the United States. One Republican congressman, who is probably most known for asking stupid questions of Hillary Clinton about Benghazi, has suggested that military officers consult their lawyers before carrying out an order from the President to move the detainees.
A few lawyers have taken the exact opposite opinion: that the Constitution gives the President the exclusive power to determine where prisoners should be held. Link.
Here’s my take: the law preventing the closure of Guantanamo is unquestioningly valid. Obama should give it one last run to negotiate with a Republican Congress for some way to put an end to this horrible stain on the escutcheon of the United States.
But if that doesn’t work: just do it, Mr. President. You’ll be taken to court, and you may even be impeached. But you will win. And history will vindicate you for ending a 21st century gulag.
The idea of releasing literally everyone who remains there is a left-wing pipe dream fantasy. It isn’t going to happen.
In any case, the law also requires that detainees who are slated for release must be assessed as not being a significant threat. There are at least a dozen, and more likely a few dozen, who you’d have to simply lie about in order to come to that judgment. What American official is going to risk prison on behalf of someone who is quite likely going to leave Guantanamo to continue terrorist attacks against civilians?
Indeed, this has been a priority for Obama for seven years and more, obsessing his every waking moment to fulfil his oath: were he able to run for a third term I have no doubt he would play this trump card once again to get elected.
Or he could gift it to the Democratic candidate he loves the best.
Fun Fact: the oldest prisoner in Guantánamo was 89.
Fun Fact 02: Obama released one quarter of the number released under Bush.
Obama doesn’t want to end it, just move it. Merely moving your oubliette from Cuba to the continental United States does not undo everything that is terrible about Guantanamo Bay.
I’m not even saying that these people should not be in prison, but they should only be imprisoned if we could first prove their guilt in a fair and open manner. America did not do this, so their right to hold these people captive is forfeit.
I was not considering that. We have a perfectly good regular federal prison/jail system on the mainland; the detainees should have gone there in the first place. Then there would be no legal question that the BoR applies in their cases.
I would prefer that Obama just wait until next year to avoid any claims of an end run around the NDAA.
Well, if it’s not in Cuba it kind of stops being an oubliette. And it will be easier for lawyers to get access to the prisoners, and easier for the prisoners to speak to the media, and so on. It’s hardly a complete fix, but it’s an improvement.
If transferred to the US, it will be a military prison, not a civilian one, right? Not seeing how that will change things much, but sometimes an image is important, and Gitmo is a very, very bad image.
I agree with the OP. Just do it. If the Republicans try to impeach, let 'em.
Do you believe it is a Federal crime for a combatant – whether priviledged or unpriviledged – to attack a member of the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan? For example, let’s say a random bad guy plants bombs to blow up American military vehicles. He is later captured. Do you view him as more or less a kind of prisoner of war, or as a criminal?
[QUOTE=Claverhouse]
Fun Fact 02: Obama released one quarter of the number released under Bush.
[/QUOTE]
Of course, the reason for this is all the low hanging fruit (i.e. those who were just some mopes picked up by accident or picked up by our wonderful Afghani allies who were probably just foot soldiers or just in the wrong place at the wrong time) were gone by the time Obama came in, so your ‘Fun Fact 02’ is really only meaningful to someone completely ignorant of the situation and who is just looking at a stat taken out of context. Hopefully you got at least one such person who vacuously looked at your Fun Fact without understanding how deceptive you were being with it.
It’s not at all clear that he would be contravening the law. In fact, as long as Congress maintains the fiction that the Gitmo detainees are “enemy combatants” they are essentially conceding that they fall under the CinC powers.
I’d go with “criminal” if he’s not a soldier serving a recognized state – but, the important thing is, let him be one or the other, and not wedged into some third “enemy combatant” classification where he has neither the legal protections of a POW nor the legal protections of a criminal suspect.
So when U.S. forces in, say, Iraq captured an IED maker, there should have been FBI special agents (or someone representing another law enforcement agency) to investigate, collect evidence, prepare him for extradition, and then prepare a case for the U.S. Attorney for Tikrit to bring to the Federal court in Alexandria, Virginia?
