Lucia

de Vernai

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May 20, 2009

Guantanamo Needs to Close, But It’s Hardly Priority One

Closing Guantanamo detention facilities is overdue. It was one of President Obama’s promises of sweeping change and real liberal reform. But given other pressures facing the Obama Administration in the present moment, the Democratic cry of “but the president won’t tell us what to do!” brings back bad memories of over-reliance on executive power.

When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates proposed that 50 to 100 detainees are going to be transferred to facilities on American soil, all hell broke loose in Congress. And why not? No one wants to go home and explain to constituents in the supermarket why you’re A-OK with bringing terrorists to your state.

It’s not that Obama’s strength is waning or that Democrats are teetering on the party line. They have asked for an alternative plan from the administration, and the Democrat-led Senate denied the $80 million requested by the Pentagon and Justice Department to transfer detainees. 

Simple enough, it seems. But taken into account with the torture buck passing, not entirely factual CIA memos and top Democrats struggling to keep up appearances of forced compliance, what to do with Guantanamo detainees is only one piece in the puzzle of taking responsibility. What was once a singular push with patriotism and puffed-up rhetoric has strangely dissipated. 

There for the glory, gone for the reckoning, we can only wish for our fearless leaders who knew how to deal with every terrorist threat to appear again on the horizon. Let’s remember that so many of the politicians unsure of the right course of action in Iraq, in Cuba and in the records of CIA were in office five or eight years ago, cooking all of this up. Democrats are not exempt.

If you voted to start a war, if you saw no problem with the indefinite retention of foreign nationals still waiting to be charged, I’m sure you had your reasons. But it is time to move past the “hindsight is 20/20” and “had I known then what I know now” excuses. You can start by wiping that deer-in-the-headlights look off your face and making the administration the only ones responsible for dealing with Gitmo.

Given how much whining Democrats have done about the abuse of executive power in the past eight years, you would think they’d take the opportunity. To be fair, the Democrats have been forced to defend the unknown, with few details about the closing of the detention center released by the Obama Administration. But a little input and a little initiative could get the ball rolling.

For practical reasons, the president and his posse have a busy few months ahead of them, and if I’m anything like other Americans, I’m okay with 250 detainees staying in Guantanamo as the president tries to get the economy back on track, rein in credit cards and cut my student loans.

Guantanamo Bay is symbolic of American war-on-terror efforts, and hopefully the time will come – sooner rather than later – that the Obama Administration can devote due attention to it. For now, a detailed plan to close Guantanamo is a lot to expect from the administration trying to juggle priorities. Fellow Democrats could help by cutting back on the “we didn’t know what to do” mentality that got us here in the first place.

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