Guantanamo is STILL open. Why isn't the left bitching about it?

Great Debates
1

Is it because Bush isn’t President any more?

All the left did was bitch, and BITCH, and **BITCH **about Gitmo when W. was POTUS.
It’s been over 3 years and it’s still open.

But, overall, not a peep from the left. Obama has less than a year to go on something he claimed he would deal with early. Why is his feet not being held to the fire?

Have some honor. If your answer is “because Bush isn’t President any more and I used it as something to hold against him”, as disgusting as it is, I will accept your honesty.
“Because Obama found out how hard it is to get things done” does not excuse your silence on an issue you claimed to care so deeply about not so long ago.

2

Who said they aren’t? What happened is that the issue stalemated, and for a lot of people, other topics (especially the economy) became more important. Plenty of people are still upset about it; they just recognize that nothing is likely to happen any time soon. I think the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people only opposed Guantanamo when it was fashionable to do so and cynical Congresspeople found it easy to scare them back into inaction with NIMBYism. There are already terrorists in U.S. jails, but somehow the idea of putting these ones into jails in the U.S. was super-horrible. Anyway, without broad popular support, the status quo didn’t change no matter how much the left bitched about it.

By the way, in case this subject sounds familiar, here are some other threads on about it, several of which ask flat-out “Why isn’t the left complaining?” as a series of liberal posters complain. :stuck_out_tongue:

Gitmo will never be shut down now? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board (note post 3)

Obama extends Gitmo - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board (note post 10_

Why are people not up in arms over Guantanamo Bay? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board (note post 28)

3

BZZZD! Unacceptable! People can complain about as many issues as they want. On the news, in the media, and on these boards Gitmo has not been an issue since Bush left office.

Thank you. Intentional or not, you’ve probably given the only real honest answer I expect to receive here. To add to it, “fashionable to do so” ended at 12:01pm, EST, January 20th, 2009.

4

They can in theory, yes. In reality, people focus.

Right, you can see from the linked threads about Gitmo that nobody talks about Gitmo anymore…

Wait. I have a feeling that didn’t make sense somehow.

It was intentional, just as your misreading of what I wrote is intentional. :wink: Not surprising, since you’ve been banging this drum for about two years now. I don’t think the left are hypocrites on this issue: they’re against indefinite detentions at Gitmo. A larger chunk of the public, however, decided they thought Gitmo was bad until their Congressmen started scaring them by talking about the detainees as if no prison could hold them. Keeping them in Cuba is fine, but if you put them in jails on the continent, who knows - all hell could break loose somehow. Without broader support, there was no way to get Congress to vote to shut the place down.

In any case your own posts indicate you just want to call people hypocrites on this issue and are struggling to find a reason:

So that makes it hard to take this seriously.

5

This isn’t about me. I absolutely want the place kept open. I always have.
This is about liberals who bitched about the place while a Republican was President, and now, overall, are silent about it while a Democrat is President.

I want to hear honest debate about what has changed in the last 3 + years to change their minds over it, or at least I want to hear some honesty over the issue.
I haven’t changed my stance over it. Gitmo is still open, I’ve had no reason to bitch about it.

Gitmo is still open, those who bitched and wanted it closed are now silent. I want to hear honest answers and debate as to why.

6

Because nobody ever figured that so many um… “Patriots” would cause such a stink if we tried to dump these detainees in their local prisons.

Apparently, some poeple think terrorists have super powers as well.

7

Then, if you are honestly seeking debate and not just manufacturing a gotcha, you should address those liberals. To do that, you will first have to identify them.

So go on. We’ll wait.

(oh and ps, ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ are not synonyms, though there is often some overlap)

8

What a novel way to debate. “Here is my question. Here’s the answer I want. Any other answer will be disregarded”. Lean and efficient, I like it.

9

They do. You just don’t listen much to actual left wing people. I hear plenty of hatred for Obama about this and other related issues from the left. “Bush in Blackface”, to repeat one less than complementary term.

10

Why weren’t they transferred to some stateside military prison, then?

11

I’m not sure you want to listen to actual facts rather than just criticize liberals, but here are three demonstrable facts:

  1. Protests over Guantanamo when Bush was in office did not last a continuous seven years at the same intensity. Like the news cycle, sometimes Guantanamo was a hot issue, sometimes it wasn’t. It is pretty much the same for Obama. Guantanamo was a hotter issue in 2010 when the plan to close it was falling apart, there was criticism early this year when Obama signed the NDAA which formalized some detention authorities. Complaining that the left isn’t up in arms RIGHT NOW over the issue is not a valid criticism, because every public policy issue waxes and wanes in the spotlight over time.

  2. Congress has passed laws, which Obama has signed, which effectively makes it impossible to transfer the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo to Federal prisons. See link below: It's Congress' Fault That Guantánamo Is Still Open - NYTimes.com

  3. You need to examine your own argument a bit. Because you are coming at this with anger toward one side of the issue, your argument is rife with confirmation bias. You are quite literally seeing what you want to see.

12

I can’t imagine this dearth of Guantamo-themed thread had President McCain done exactly the same things President Obama has done.

Te problem also arises from the fact that in many of those old threads about it and Obama was gonna close the shit out of it, many posters mentioned the problems Obama would have and they were discarded, Gitmo was closing full-stop.

13

Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that the vast, overwhelming majority of Guantanamo detainees have been released already. Is this not the case?

14

Ravenman makes some good points. Here’s a couple more to consider:

(1) One of Obama’s first acts in office was to issue an executive order setting forth the procedures for closing the prison. This was met with fierce opposition. You can argue he didn’t try hard enough, which may well be true, but that’s quite a different level of responsibility from having set the thing up and vociferously defended it. Hence the differing levels of outrage.

(2) Guantanamo, like Citizens United, is a symbol for a whole bunch of objectionable things related to it. Foremost among these for liberals was objections to torture, a practice which Obama did end. But it also included things like military trials at Gitmo using secret evidence and other Kafkaesque nonsense, which have been improved. So it is a mistake to see this as a binary issue, turning on whether the facility is still open.

I think both of those factors, in addition to the simple partisan bias you assign 100% causal force to, explain the arguably more muted reaction.

15

…there is something incredibly frustrating and annoying with your OP. For starters I have to ask you: do you know what many of the protests regarding Guantanamo Bay were? Feel free to search for any of my old post regarding the detention centre: I’ve held a consistent position since Guantanamo Bay was opened. Your OP is one big huge strawman.

Guantanamo Bay was a dragnet: innocent people were shipped over from Afghanistan and Pakistan and Ghana and Eastern Europe. Bakers and foot soldiers and taxi drivers were labeled the “worst of the worst” by the previous administration and the real masterminds of Al Qaeda were locked up in secret prisons scattered around the world. They were shipped there because of administration errors, or due to bounty payments, or straight out incompetence. And once they were locked up the administration didn’t have a plan on what to do with them. The innocent were locked up with the guilty, then they were assumed to be guilty and pressed for intelligence on Al Qaeda that they obviously didn’t have.

What has changed since Guantanamo opened? Well it took several years but eventually most of the obviously innocent got released. of course, some of them cannot walk any more, another one is nearly blind, some others had all of their possessions taken away and all of them lost years of their lives because America fucked up.

And as the years have gone on more of the less-obviously innocent have been released. And the prisoners previously held captive at the secret prisons around the world ( you know about those, right? Its where the “worst of the worst” actually got sent.) have been flown to Guantanamo.

So right up until about 2007 Guantanamo had a population that was probably 10% very bad people and 90% who had nothing to do with the war on terror. Right now? I’d venture to say that this figure is probably reversed.

Do I still want Guantanamo Bay closed? Absolutely. And Obama tried to close it: but his own party and the American people were too cowardly to do it.

But most of the innocent are now free. So please stop pretending that the Guantanamo Bay we were protesting about ten years ago is the same Guantanamo Bay as it is now. The camp as it stands is still a travesty, a disgraceful incitement on the American people who collectively lost their minds in the aftermath of 9/11.

At its peak Guantanamo had nearly 800 detainees. Right now, inflated by the prisoners flown in from the secret detention camps, Guantanamo has 171 detainees. The situation at Guantanamo now is not the same as it was when it opened and it is not even the same as it was back in 2009. And if you don’t understand those differences you need to do more research.

So I need to put the question to you pkbites: you’ve stated you have supported Guantanamo from the beginning. Over six hundred prisoners have been released from Guantanamo: what do you know about any of them? Why were they detained? What threat did they pose? What evidence did you see that convinced you that these people needed to be detained? How many of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal reports have you read?

You should start with the Denbeaux report. That should give you a good primer on exactly who the people were that used to populate Guantanamo Bay.
http://law.shu.edu/publications/guantanamoReports/guantanamo_report_final_2_08_06.pdf

Then maybe you could come back and explain to us all why you supported a fucked up idea for the last ten years which has no doubt inspired more terrorists, directly ruined hundreds of peoples lives, fucked up Americas reputation internationally, caused a big huge fucked up legal mess that after ten years still hasn’t been sorted, has been a fucking drain on the US economy, resulted in a huge amount of intelligence “noise” which probably contributed to the delay in capturing Bin Laden: and was generally one big huge fuck up.

Lets be honest here for a minute: Guantanamo was a fuck up of epic proportions: it was a fuck up due to the actions of the Bush administration and it was a fuck up because the American people, like you pkbites, allowed it to be.

16

Over a year and a half ago, I posted this:

"Lest we hear another “now all libs are quiet about Guantanamo”, I wish to express my severe condemnation in very loud terms, of how Obama has handled the Guantanamo issue. There is a place in the constitution and, to my mind, justice and fairness, for indefinite detention, but there needs to be due process given. So far, I am not convinced Obama has done so. For that, I condemn him and his policies."

I didn’t figure I’d have to repeat it every few months for every whiny right winger who thinks he’s clever avoiding debating an actual issue and instead pointing out perceived hypocrisy, but here it is again:

"Lest we hear another “now all libs are quiet about Guantanamo”, I wish to express my severe condemnation in very loud terms, of how Obama has handled the Guantanamo issue. There is a place in the constitution and, to my mind, justice and fairness, for indefinite detention, but there needs to be due process given. So far, I am not convinced Obama has done so. For that, I condemn him and his policies."

And again, just to drive the point home:

"Lest we hear another “now all libs are quiet about Guantanamo”, I wish to express my severe condemnation in very loud terms, of how Obama has handled the Guantanamo issue. There is a place in the constitution and, to my mind, justice and fairness, for indefinite detention, but there needs to be due process given. So far, I am not convinced Obama has done so. For that, I condemn him and his policies."

And again, for any future threads:

"Lest we hear another “now all libs are quiet about Guantanamo”, I wish to express my severe condemnation in very loud terms, of how Obama has handled the Guantanamo issue. There is a place in the constitution and, to my mind, justice and fairness, for indefinite detention, but there needs to be due process given. So far, I am not convinced Obama has done so. For that, I condemn him and his policies."

And for good measure for the reading comprehension challenged:

"Lest we hear another “now all libs are quiet about Guantanamo”, I wish to express my severe condemnation in very loud terms, of how Obama has handled the Guantanamo issue. There is a place in the constitution and, to my mind, justice and fairness, for indefinite detention, but there needs to be due process given. So far, I am not convinced Obama has done so. For that, I condemn him and his policies."

Is it enough yet, or must I drive to pk’s house and do it in person for it to count?

Aside: I thought call out threads went in the Pit.

17

Seems to me that we can’t try them, and we can’t let them go. I’m betting, but cannot prove, that this was a nasty surprise for Obama, when he became President and was in a position to get the whole set of facts.

Can’t try them, even with the “relaxed” standards of admitting “evidence” that are unacceptable in a normal American courtroom. Not saying that all of the detainees are innocent, I doubt that very much. Only that the standards for proving guilt that we apply to our own, if applied here, would mean they might very well walk.

And how many of them weren’t sworn enemies of America before they arrived, but are now? Can’even guess at that one.

Release them? To whom? Buy them a plane ticket to where? Saudi? Pakistan? Afghanistan?

Some problems don’t have solutions, at least not tidy ones. This is one of them.

Your correspondent freely admits that this is speculative, in the absence of reliable fact. We don’t have those facts, and nobody is likely to give them to us.

18

So, what ?

"Hey, guys, as you all know we kinda fucked up when we picked y’all up, black bagged you, flew you over to our secret prison, kept you away from any human contact and tortured you for a while ; but we don’t see a way to make it all right now soooo… well, I guess what I’m saying is that we’re all going to have to make ourselves comfortable here, because we’re going to be writing you off as an unsolvable problem going forward. Sorry about, y’know, keeping you here forever on trumped up evidence. That’s our bad. We own that. Cpl. Punishment will be here in a minute with complimentary Jell-O while you wait for… while you just wait, OK ?

Oh crap, that’s not halal, is it ? Our bad again."

19

Oh, OK. You’re President. What do you do?

20

Executive order them into civilian prisons stateside, pending speedy civilian trials. Damn the assholes who soil their undies at the thought a terrist could be in a cage somewhere in their own State OMG!!1.

And if they walk, they fucking walk. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.