Los Angeles Times, CA
May 22 2010
So, Mr. President, how’s that Guantanamo closing promise coming along?
May 21, 2010 |
Today is the official one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama
repeating why he signed the official closing order for the Guantanamo
Bay terrorist detention facility on his second day in office in
January of 2009. (See photo above and video below.)
No prison is supposed to look hospitable; that’s the point of prison.
Hence, the locks and guards.
But the prison facility on the island of Cuba looked particularly bad
to Democrats and looked bad internationally.
Promising to close the place — the "mess" as the president called it
— was a very useful unifying metaphor for Obama’s
change-to-believe-in from eight years of you-know-who, who started up
the place back before the global war on terrorism became a series of
attempted man-caused disasters.
And maybe you remember Obama’s re-statement of the urgent need to
close Guantanamo just happened to come at the same media time as a
speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, who was one of the main
architects of building it as a secure refuge to keep those terrorist
types away from the homeland.
Which seemed like a real good idea to many living outside prisons in
the homeland, regardless of how it was viewed in overseas countries
that weren’t exactly lining up to receive those lethal lads into their
lands.
So Cheney re-explained why the Bush administration had built the place
and Obama re-explained why Guantanamo was going to be but a bad memory
by the end of 2009.
And here we are nearly five months after the facility’s closure.
Except, wait, it hasn’t been closed. And won’t be closed for another
year at least.
And there’s no new promised date for its closure because Obama folks
have learned that when you promise something, words have meaning and
consequences and some silly people actually expect you to keep your
word. i.e. End Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, go through the budget
line-by-line, double the Peace Corps, allow five days of public
comment before signing legislation, negotiate healthcare bills on
C-SPAN, support a crewed moon mission by 2020, give an annual State of
the World address to Americans on national security, end no-bid
contracts above $25,000, double funding for after-school programs,
reduce legislative earmarks to 1994 levels, recognize the Armenian
genocide, create a public option health plan for a new National
Insurance Exchange.
And some other stuff over here.
Back to Guantanamo: The controversial alternate plan was to transfer
these bad guys onto the U.S. mainland and put them in another prison
facility that just happened to be in the president’s adopted home
state of Illinois and would cost $350 million from somewhere to fix it
up while abandoning the still functional though unpopular-abroad
Guantanamo prison.
This week the Armed Services Committee, which is controlled by
Democrats who overwhelmingly control the House of Representatives,
voted to prohibit such a detention facility within the United States.
Finally, some bipartisanship. The vote to prohibit was unanimous.
Other than that, President Obama’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay
detention facility by the end of 2009 is moving along swimmingly.
Not that it seems to matter to this Democratic administration, but
here’s what Obama explained and promised a year ago. Watch this video:
2010/05/obama-guantanamo.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/