Well, it proves the hypocrisy of every liberal in the world when a politically risk-averse center right Democratic Congress works against a plank in the campaign platform of their newly elected moderate Democratic President.
Simple.
I"m going to go out on a limb here, and suggest what many on the right would like Obama to do:
Fail.
More to the point, I would say it proves their fear that they will be painted (come next election time) as a bunch of terrorist releasing, soft on crime, dangerous loonies.
The attack ads would write themselves.
Perhaps I could review what I thought happened (from the article in the OP link):
“President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security…
The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay’s continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy…
(But) activists on either end of the debate over closing the prison cast the announcement as a reversal.
‘It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of this executive order,’ said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. ‘In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about-face’…
The administration argues that it has the legal authority to continue to hold all of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay under the laws of war.”
John Mace and others want to know what Mr Obama should have done, particularly given the recalcitrance of the current congress to close Gitmo. Umm…first of all, I thought those bozos just showed up 1 January of this year, so it’s not clear to me that using the current Republican House as an excuse is anything other than a totally lame attempt to give Mr Obama a bye on this issue. Second, is it the case that if he waited too long his only option is to sign an Executive Order perpetuating something he once maintained was immoral and inappropriate? I guess that had not occurred to me. I sorta thought when he said he’d close Gitmo he meant he’d close Gitmo. If it takes an Executive Order to perpetuate it, wouldn’t that mean without said Order it would not get perpetuated?
I get it that there’s a little outrage from the most extreme left, but I’m more than a little surprised at the pitiful defenses of Mr Obama presented here and elsewhere. Perhaps I’ve mis-remembered how hot an issue it was, and how soundly Mr Obama thumped opponents who thought his thinking was a titchy-bit simplistic and pansy-assed-ly naive.
I get it that candidates cater to the naive and dull as well as the starry-eyed. No matter how often it happens I’m still amused (and bemused) there isn’t a more strident complaint from the gullible when it turns out to be bs.
Not just the current Congress.
He has to keep it open because he has no other choice. He can’t even just let these guys go, as there are some that no country will grant entry to.
Whatever “the Democrat Party” is, it isn’t represented in the US Congress.
The only defenses I see are from right wingers like yourself, who are looking for an excuse to keep these people imprisoned forever. What I see from the Left is anger and disgust.
You are engaging in psychological projection; in this case, projecting the President-worship and utter moral bankruptcy of the Right onto the Left.
A lot of conservatives, I’d say most conservatives can tell you a lot they didn’t like about the Bush administration. Look at the Pat Buchanan type paleocons for instance-they have opposed free trade and the Iraq War tooth and nail. And how are we morally bankrupt? Being wrong is different from being morally bankrupt-I would say Democrats are wrong on a lot of issues but they are not morally bankrupt.
Well sure he can let them go. He can even pardon them all, for goodness’ sake.
I’d bet everyone could be released into Pakhtunkwa or, for that matter, into the United States.
He could also prosecute each and every one of them inside our legal system, realizing that some would get off despite being very bad people.
The problem is that they are naughty people who cannot be prosecuted to successful conclusions the way we’d like, and we don’t have a reasonable option other than permanent–or indefinite–incarceration. That’s why it was naive and silly–ignorant, maybe?-- for Mr Obama to promise to close Gitmo, and why it’s naive and silly to have believed him, but…
I’m surprised at the lack of outrage. (And no; for those of you anxious to project upon me a position I do not take–I’m not outraged. I’m just surprised.)
My impression at the time was that this was a litmus test for the decency of Obama and the evidence that Change from the Evil Empire was coming.
Let them go where? Dump them into the ocean?
Where the hell is that? And cite?
Oh, please.
Hard to do if Congress withholds the $$ to do so.
No, many are not. Many were just turned in for ransom.
Politician promised to do something he can’t. News at 11.
Seems to me you are reveling in the lack of outrage. But whatever. Most of us realize that politics is the art of the possible. Obama can’t undo all the shit that Bush did.
He can’t. Putting aside Coolhandcox’s theory of how the President can get around it, which I don’t think will work, the law doesn’t allow him to try them in our legal system, or release them into the US. This is putting aside the fact, that, for a lot of them, it would be remarkably stupid to release them in the United States.
Gitmo is a big disappointment. It does not piss me off enough to reach outrage. He needs to prosecute some bankers . Then I would feel a lot better.
Note of course the liberals indicate they are unhappy with Obama sometimes. Many have different things that they are unhappy with.
But when the Shrub was pres. the rightys were all in line backing him up and making excuses.
Yes! Let’s not prosecute terrorists who have killed America citizens and plotted mass terrorist attacks but prosecute a bunch of bankers! Class warfare, baby!
Would this include Abdul Razakah, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur, Saidullah Khalik and Ahmed Mohamed?
Are they bad men? Did they kill American citizens?
Except that by and large Gitmo means a lack of such prosecutions, also. It’s a holdup for such prosecutions; if your desire is to see justice done against those who have harmed or planned to harm American citizens, if you want prosecutions, then your goal should be to shut it down, too.
And how do you know they are “bad people”?
Yes we do; we can let them go. But of course, that would admit that we were in the wrong from the beginning, and we can’t have that. Who cares if a bunch of people spend the rest of their lives in a cell, as long as it protects our collective ego to keep them there.
This country needs some class warfare that’s from the bottom up, instead of just the constant class warfare from the top down.
And we aren’t prosecuting any “terrorists” in the first place, assuming these people are guilty of anything at all, much less terrorism. We are just keeping them imprisoned without recourse, probably for the rest of their lives unless we decide to just quietly murder them.
So, what then? Do you want us to keep them there for the rest of their lives?
You do know the majority of the people in Gitmo were turned in by neighbors for reward money. These were not battlefield fighters. However if you believe they are then I am sure you would not object to a full trial in an American court.
The bankers brought the world economy to its knees. what they did was greedy and disastrous. They deserve to have a day in court.
He would if he’d bothered to read post #47. Maybe he’ll get it the second time around?
I’m all in favor of prosecuting terrorists. It’s been ten years. Let the trials begin.
How long do you think we should keep somebody in prison if we don’t have enough evidence to convict them of any crime?
Pakhtunkwa is the former Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. I’m almost positive Mullah Omar or his friends have rooms for Gitmo rejects. Essentially my way of saying that if you are outraged enough at indefinitely holding people you can’t take to trial, you send 'em back to the woods. It’s a total strawman to pretend the problem is “no one will take them.” BS. But if you decide that’s also not do-able, so to speak, well that’s the point of not scamming the masses in the first place that you are going to close Gitmo, right?
I agree Mr Obama can’t undo what his predecessor did. Nor will his successor be able to undo Mr Obama’s failures. I was surprised at the lack of outrage on the part of the pansy side; not at his inability to do what he pretended–or thought-- he could do. The shoot-'em-up side was kind of vilified for detaining these guys without due process, and Mr Obama made a fair amount of hay out of promising change for that sort of rights deprivation.
My OP is not about the reality of politics. I just thought there’d be a larger sense of betrayal by those cheering on the notion of closing Gitmo a couple of years back. That’s all.