I think the President is trying like mad to do this. This is the “out” in all this, but it’s difficult.
Like the OP said, there’s a list of requirements that must be met. I don’t think they are unnecessarily stringent though. I mean, you don’t want to be shipping guys off to Yemen and Somalia. However, even if the Sec. of Defense selects a country, that country still has to be willing to accept a Guantanamo detainee. This is were you throw money at that country hand over fist. I wonder if this bill limits the ability to do that (the article just mentions limits funds to transfer into the US).
My point is, I think there are plenty of countries that meet the “stringent” requirements of where the detainees can be released. I don’t think those countries want the detainees. Obama should be good at getting countries to accept them, and placing Chinese detainees in Bermuda and Albania seems proof of that.
However, take KLM, say he’s tried and not guilty. It’s perfectly acceptable for immigration to not allow him to stay in the US. Who’s going to take him then? Nobody.
Does it have to be just Republicans? If the members of the House and the Senate unilaterally support renegeing on the government’s obligation to not hold people indefinitely without trial, they all deserve to be in there.
I love how, while Bush was in office Democrats were saying how evil Guantanamo Bay is, how it needs to be shut down, and question the guilt of a lot of the inmates. Then Obama gets in office and tries to make good on his promise to shut it down, and all of a sudden, these are the worst of the worst and you won’t release them in our back yard!
I don’t think his promise is naive, but it’s much more difficult to actually close it than it appears. And I’m one who thinks it should be closed.
But the point of this thread is that there is a reason why it cannot be closed: Congress has proposed a law that prohibits its closure. Like it or not, that’s what’s on the President’s desk.
The question now is, should the President obey the law, or assert some Constitutional authority that this law doesn’t actually bind his hands?
The article you quoted was from last year. I can understand Democrats blocking funds the closure of Guantanamo until they know what the plan would be. In fact, that’s fairly reasonable, in one sense.
I do not think that a blanket prohibition on transferring detainees, even for trial, is a good idea. It seems that this provision was pushed by Republicans during the closing days of Congress in order to get a temporary funding measure completed so the government wouldn’t shut down.
If you support this proposed law to keep Guantanamo open (perhaps forever), why do you not support putting terrorists on trial for their actions so they can face real justice? I would probably pop a bottle of bubbly if KSM is ever convicted and subject to the death penalty. But nooooo, some soft-on-crime conservatives never want that day to come.
Before I do that, did you follow US media during the time Bush was in office?
If not, I can understand how you wouldn’t know that the majority of Democrats were against Guantanamo and wanted it shut down, and then, as the link shows, changed their tune when it actually came to closing it.
But if you have been following the news, then I find it very hard to believe that you were unaware of all this.
When Democrats were in full control and could have worked on a plan to close it.
Did they have a plan? All I saw out of them were harsh criticisms of Bush and Guantanamo, and I don’t necessarily disagree with all of them, but their attitudes seemed to change when Obama got in office and actually wanted to close it down. And personally, I’m OK with closing it down.
In my personal opinion a lot of Democratic opposition was mostly political as it allowed them to score easy points by bashing Bush.
I follow the US media and there were Democrats for and against closing Guantanamo and some on the left for and against closing Guantanamo. But, if, say Dennis Kucinich was and is against keeping it open but, say, Max Baucus was and is for keeping it open, it seems unfair to say that while Bush was in office “Democrats” were saying how evil it is, but now that Obama is president “Democrats” want to keep it open, if those are different Democrats. What you said may be technically true, but pretty disingenuous.
However, if some Democrats really did take the stances you seem to claim, I think that’s pretty terrible and will vote against that kind of transparent partisanship whenever I can.
I’m saying that when he made the promise there was no reason to think Gitmo couldn’t be closed. Surely he could not have foreseen that legislators would start behaving like Gitmo detainees were nuclear waste.
Congress (including many Democrats) were telling Obama, “First come up with the plan, then show it to us, then if it is a good plan, you will get your money.” Your question seems to reflect a mistaken notion that congressional Democrats and the White House are the same person, and “they” are not.
As I’ve said many times before, I think Bush screwed this up so much that he made it ridiculously hard to close the prison. Bush deserves all the criticism he can get, because his mistakes have a way of taking on a life of their own (see: Guantanamo, the budget deficit, the economy, Iraq, etc.).
Good on you for calling him out like the right-winger he is, then (at least in comparison with you). My apologies for not remembering just how far out in left field you play.
I formally retract the “Der Trihs” qualifiers in my earlier post and replace it with “starry-eyed liberal.”
Again, I am sorry. You are absolutely correct in protesting one poster painting the position of another.