From the Washington Post:
President Obama took dramatic steps yesterday to reverse Bush administration policies on the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists, ordering the closure of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and banning the use of controversial CIA interrogation techniques. But he left open the question of how his administration will deal with any detainees it concludes are too dangerous to be released.
The Press is doing a pretty good job of presenting just the story that the Obama Administration wants presented. Even Fox is in on it. Right now, Obama wants to be seen as radically transforming the way we do business in Washington, while being very careful about what he actually does. The well-established pattern of big pronouncements unaccompanied by revealing details continues. This is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that we eventually do get details.
The New York Times, busy selling itself to Mexican telecommunications billionaire and apparent loan shark Carlos Slim, vents in the way that suggests a declining digestive system on the Guantanamo story.
Long before President Obama took office, pretty much everyone, even President George Bush, said the prison at Guantánamo Bay needed to be closed. In June 2007, the White House claimed it was working on a "number of steps" that had to happen first — but getting started was really hard.
Well, maybe not so hard. It took President Obama less than 12 hours. Before midnight of his first day in office, he took the obvious and vital step of halting the military tribunals at the prison camp. And he reportedly is considering a draft executive order that would direct that the prison be closed entirely within a year.
That first paragraph acknowledges, without any risk of honesty, that Obama's executive order was no reversal of policy. It was in fact a change of policy toward the same end. Maybe it will be a more effective policy. But if Bush announced a year and a half ago that Gitmo needed to be closed, and didn't manage it, Obama intends to take another year.
So the bit about doing it all in 12 hours is a transparent lie. What Obama did do is to shut down the military tribunals, which brings to a halt the only real mechanism in place for clearing out the facility. What he didn't do is say how he intends to solve the problems with which the Bush Administration wrestled. From the Wall Street Journal:
In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Bush Administration and Congress painstakingly set thresholds for who can be detained and under what rules. Mr. Obama argues that work was flawed and that the trials should not continue in their present form. But he also said in his ABC sitdown that he wants to create "a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, but doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."
Sounds great. But this "balance" is difficult to strike because many of the Guantanamo prisoners haven't committed crimes per se but are dedicated American enemies and too dangerous to let go. Other cases involve evidence that is insufficient for trial but still sufficient to determine that release is an unacceptable security risk.
The problem is simple: the prisoners in Gitmo were captured as a result of military actions. The U.S. military does not ordinarily read Miranda rules to people who are trying to kill them. Our soldiers are trained in war and trained in the rules that are supposed to make war a little less brutal. But they are not trained to collect evidence for criminal trials. So we have a lot of folks in Guantanamo who were are pretty sure are too dangerous to release, but whom we cannot convict in an ordinary court of law.
So what do we do with them? Turning them over to civilian courts will likely result in their release. But where? A lot of civilized nations have criticized the Guantanamo regime, but none has been willing to accept any of the detainees. Sending them back to their country of origin might or might not be possible, but it will surely result in some cases in a worse fate than any incarceration by Americans. It's possible that they might be transferred to other American facilities, but folks living around these facilities are going to be any more eager to get these new neighbors than are the British. But surely if President Obama wants to avoid "releasing people who are intent on blowing us up," he is going to have to come up with some as yet unmentioned strategy.
Maybe the President can find a way to cut this Gordian knot, but as yet we have no clue as to what it might be. So it's silly to say that Obama has "reversed" Bush policy until we have some idea what his policy will be.
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