By Rachel Alexander
Monday, May 13, 2013
Obama has gotten a relatively free pass as president, no
doubt due to the intrigue of being the first black president. Congressional
investigations into his administration go nowhere. The liberal media minimizes
any wrongdoing by the administration and finds a way to spin it against
Republicans instead. But something unusual has started happening. Influential
figures on the left are speaking up loudly and attacking Obama over his policies
regarding the U.S. military and defense. Obama is accused of being worse than
former President George W. Bush due to the way he is continuing to detain
Guantanamo inmates.
Obama originally said when he ran for office that he
would close the Guantanamo Bay prison, and after being elected in 2009,
publicly instructed the military to shut it down within one year. It is now
over four years later, into his second term, and the prison is still open. Most
of the prisoners have been there for over 11 years without a trial. Nine have
died since it opened in 2002. The scrutiny has intensified in recent months as
a majority of the 166 inmates, down from a high of 684 in 2003, have gone on
hunger strikes, and at least 21 of the men are being force-fed twice daily. The
administration has approved 86 detainees for release, but curiously none have
been released so far this year.
Obama recently closed the office of the Special Envoy to
the Closure of Guantánamo, evidence that it is becoming even less likely that
it will be shut down. Polls reveal that a whopping 70 percent of Americans
approve of Obama keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison open, giving Obama less
incentive to shut it down. Many of the detainees are from Yemen, and cannot be
released there, because the administration imposed a ban on transfers to Yemen
in 2009 after the Underwear Bomber attack.
This has left the administration stuck in limbo, or, as
one left-wing critic describes it, “Obama's Guantanamo is never going to close,
so everyone might as well get comfortable.” Will the detainees ever receive
trials? Obama has had little success transferring the detainees to federal
court to be tried, which would pacify his critics on the left. Even his own
party, led by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democrats,
voted to block funding to close Guantanamo. On the other hand, Obamas has been
reluctant to try the detainees using military tribunals, since the outcry on
the left – and internationally – would become deafening.
The backlash from the left started building in 2009, when
Obama announced he was going to employ a policy of “prolonged detention,” that
would allow indefinite imprisonment. The imprisonment would be based on the
government finding the detainee generally dangerous, not for proven crimes or
past violations of law. Liberal commentator Rachel Maddow, usually a
cheerleader for Obama, described it as, “a radical new claim of presidential
power that is not afforded by the Constitution and that has never been attempted
in U.S. history, not even by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.” She noted that
Obama criticized George W. Bush for using an “ad hoc legal approach for
fighting terrorism,” yet Obama's approach is the same thing. She compared it to
the movie Minority Report, where people are arrested for crimes they may commit
in the future. “So you...construct a whole new system outside the courts, even
outside the military commissions, so you can indefinitely imprison people
without charges, and you'll build it all from scratch,” Maddow said on her TV
show, full of incredulity that Obama was taking this even beyond the military
commissions of President Bush.
Obama continues to claim that he intends to close
Guantanamo. At the same time, he contradicts himself by saying it is a
"lingering problem that is not going to get better," adding that it
would "get worse" and would "fester." He is covering for
himself, talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one side, he says he
intends to close it; on the other side, he makes excuses as for why it hasn't
been closed in over four years since he took office. Obama is trying to please
both the 70 percent of Americans who agree with keeping Guantanamo open and the
far left, but the far left is finally seeing through him.
The list of complaints the left has with Obama has grown
pretty long. The Obama the Conservative website lists 29 areas they accuse
Obama of capitulating on. A significant number of them relating to Guantanamo.
The liberal mainstream media is still covering for Obama.
Peter Jan Honisberg, Director of the Witness to Guantanamo project, laments
that “rarely does the U.S. media call” him. Instead, international media
contacts call him frequently. No other country, even countries like England
that have no Bill of Rights, permit indefinite detention.
George H.W. Bush ran for president on a platform that
included “Read my lips, no new taxes.” He lost reelection when he failed to
keep his promise. Obama failed on his election promise of closing Guantanamo,
yet was reelected due to the deliberate silence of the liberal mainstream media
to call him out on it. Whether Obama weathers the growing opposition coming
from the left or not may depend on whether the liberal mainstream media finally
turns on him. Journalist Noah Rothman of Mediaite thinks it's finally starting.
He wrote earlier this month, “What is clear from the last 24 hours of reporting
on left-leaning news outlets, Obama’s supporters in the media no longer trust
him.”
There may be a way out for Obama. The far left
organization Human Rights Watch has indicated they are pleased with attempts
being made to make the military tribunals more like federal courts. If Obama
can fool the right into thinking the detainees are still getting tough trials
in the military tribunals, and pacify the left that the tribunals have changed
enough, he may resolve the contentiousness over Guantanamo for awhile. But
eventually it will catch up with him; if the detainees are given the panoply of
rights that American citizens are provided in federal court, their massive
front of international lawyers may be able to plead their way out of punishment
– especially considering the detainees were never Mirandized. Then how likely
is it that one or more of the freed detainees will launch a terrorist attack on
the United States?
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