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Gitmo closing lacks exit strategy By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Jan. 29, 2009, in the Connersville News-Examiner. It’s been quite the first week for the new president. Along with promoting his flagship stimulus package, President Obama has put pen to paper on a variety of his supporters’ pet issues — abortion funding, increased mileage standards, even tougher ethics and lobbying rules — which he promptly broke.
Bush-haters immediately applauded this move, which is not surprising since they have been calling for Gitmo to be closed from the day it opened. Europeans also chimed in their support of the move, probably because they were still smarting from having concentration camps on their soil in the Balkans as late as the 1990s — that is, until those camps were closed by the U.S. military. In his first 48 hours as president, Obama chose to expand the rights of terror suspects — men who swore allegiance to no nation, observed no rules other than their bastardized version of Islam and, by the law of war, could have been legally lined up against a wall and shot immediately following their capture. However, no sooner than Obama finished symbolically standing on his chair and screaming “I AM NOT BUSH!”, the obvious question floated in the air: what is to be done with the 145 terror suspects in Gitmo? When asked this during his signing ceremony, Obama and his counsel gave a collective shrug, kicking the question down the road with a vague promise of creating a task force to investigate the problem. In essence, Obama has committed the United States to a course of action — without an exit strategy. This will likely end up being a no-win situation for the new president. Releasing the terrorists outright will put them right back into the fight, something that has already happened. On Tuesday, Fox News reported the story of Abdallah Ali al-Ajmi, a Guantanamo detainee who was released to his home country of Kuwait in 2005. Afterwards, al-Ajmi travelled to Iraq to meet his martyrdom, killing 12 in April 2008 by blowing himself up. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that of the 500 detainees released from Guantanamo, 62 have returned to the fight, according to Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon. Since the 145 remaining in detention are probably the worst of the worst, release is out of the question. As are civilian trials. These men were captured during military action and not in the course of police investigation. Their crime, aside from terrorist activities, was to be engaged in armed conflict without the authorization of a legitimate government. Furthermore, civilian jurisprudence operates on an entirely different standard than that dictated by the law of armed conflict, and it is this standard that made the military commissions entirely appropriate. This leaves the options of shipping the detainees to other countries willing to take them — something President Bush was harshly criticized for doing — or continuing to hold them indefinitely, but on American soil. Regardless of the solution or solutions devised for this new problem, Obama’s action on balance degraded our national security — and created what is certain to be a public relations headache for the new administration trying to win over its opponents. The least damaging option Obama could have taken was to do nothing — maintain the status quo. While this would have angered the extreme Bush foes, Obama’s supporters and the media would have tripped over each other coming up with explanations to excuse the president. This then raises the question as to why Obama took this hasty course of action. Was he truly acting in the best interest of this country, or was he placating his more extreme supporters? Is he playing political games with our safety to fulfill a campaign promise? Of all his fulfilled promises, this one is potentially the most dangerous — not only to the American people, but also to Obama’s credibility and popularity. If the forthcoming solutions result in embarrassing consequences or, God forbid, another attack, the voters will make the president answer for his mistake. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2009, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
It was his actions in the early hours of his presidency that really raised a few eyebrows. On Jan. 22, Obama signed an executive order calling for the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to be closed in a year. In the same sweeping gesture, he also halted terror trials already underway — trials aimed at bringing the architects of the worst attack in American history to justice.
