Conservatives claiming "vindication" for Bush on Gitmo are wrong

[ProSense]

Conservatives claiming "vindication" for Bush on Gitmo are wrong

By Adam Serwer

<...>

The president and the secretary of defense also reiterated the importance of trying terrorists in federal courts, but they might as well be shouting into the wind. The ban on funds for transfers of Gitmo detainees to federal court won't be going away any time soon, but it's worth remembering that ban actually ensures that fewer terrorists would be brought to justice than would be otherwise. Only six terrorists have ever been convicted in military commissions, compared to hundreds in federal court.

Failing to close Gitmo remains the most visible symbol of the president's failure to reverse the trajectory of Bush-era national security policy, but the reality, as Glenn Greenwald notes this morning, is that most of the substantive decisions adopting Bush policies were made long ago. The new policies don't amount to a "reversal" on the issue of whether Gitmo should be closed. Republicans are eager to portray Gitmo staying open as a "vindication" of the prison's usefulness, but the fact that the indefinite detention order is limited to detainees currently at Gitmo means that the administration won't be reopening the facility to new detainees, as Bush apologists have suggested doing.

Gitmo isn't open because the administration doesn't want to close it, although its efforts in this area are ripe for criticism. It's still open because Republicans in Congress successfully frightened Democrats in Congress out of giving the administration the necessary funds to close it when they had control of Congress. In the process, they've managed to obscure the original reason detainees were brought to Gitmo -- to keep them away from the scrutiny of the federal courts. Once the Supreme Court held that federal courts had jurisdiction and even habeas rights, the facility was useless for that purpose. Republicans are determined to keep it open not because we can't safely imprison terrorists in the U.S., but because they feel its ongoing presence vindicates Bush in the eyes of history.

It doesn't of course -- Republicans arguing that Gitmo is open because Obama has recognized the wisdom of using the facility is like a bully stealing a kid's lunch money and then telling everyone he merely decided to make a shrewd investment. Gitmo is open only partially because of administration fecklessness; most of the fault lies with the cowardice of congressional Democrats and the cynicism -- and political strength -- of Republicans.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. K & R for the full story

If Congress had allowed the funds to be used to transfer prisoners out of Gitmo, it would be closed by now. President Obama has taken this course of action out of necessity NOT because he wants to "vindicate" Bush/Cheney. Hopefully, he can figure out a way to get around Congress on this at some point. The doors at Gitmo need to be slammed shut for good.

[ClarkUSA]

2. How nice it is to see the facts for a CHANGE.

Bookmarked and will use immediately.

:kick:

[chill_wind]

3. I love it that he links to Greenwald for validation of his point

that "this is not a reversal", which Greenwald also makes perfectly clear that it's not (as long as we're not talking about his campaign rhetoric).

And then goes on to completely miss the point of Greenwald's whole piece: That it's not a reversal,
but a preservation that began early on (albeit with a few tweaks) and that's the point all right.

From Serwer's Greenwald link (maybe he should have read it):

The preservation of the crux of the Bush detention scheme was advocated by Obama long before Congress' ban on transferring detainees to the U.S. It was in May, 2009 -- a mere five months after his inauguration -- that Obama stood up in front of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives and demanded a new law of "preventive detention" to empower him to imprison people without charges: a plan the New York Times said "would be a departure from the way this country sees itself." It was the same month that the administration announced it intended to continue to deny many detainees trials, instead preserving the military commissions scheme, albeit with modifications. And the first -- and only -- Obama plan for "closing Guantanamo" came in December, 2009, and it entailed nothing more than transferring the camp to a supermax prison in Thompson, Illinois, while preserving its key ingredients, prompting the name "Gitmo North."

None of this was even arguably necessitated by Congressional action. To the contrary, almost all of it took place before Congress did anything. It was Barack Obama's position -- not that of Congress -- that detainees could and should be denied trials, that our court system was inadequate and inappropriate to try them, and that he possessed the unilateral, unrestrained power under the "laws of war" to order them imprisoned for years, even indefinitely, without bothering to charge them with a crime and without any review by the judiciary, in some cases without even the right of habeas review (to see why claims of such "law of war" detention power are so baseless, see the points here, especially point 5).

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/08/guantanamo/index.html

Greenwald has more for Serwer:
http://twitter.com/ggreenwald


The longest telegraphed EO fix in history.

White House Is Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention; Move Would Bypass Congress

by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica, and Peter Finn, Washington Post June 26, 2009, 4:25 p.m.

Obama abandoned that campaign promise or any desire to fight Congress on it a LONG time ago.

Spring of 2009.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1940537-3,00.htm