With this week’s announcement that suspected terrorists would be tried in military tribunals he once opposed at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp he had vowed to close, President Obama again embraced a counterterrorism policy of former President George W. Bush against which he had campaigned in 2008. The White House dismisses any suggestion that Obama is continuing the national security policies of the Bush White House that Obama, as a senator and then as a presidential candidate, derided as draconian, ineffective and counter to the values of the United States. But when Obama runs for re-election next year, he’ll be defending a national security record very similar to one he ran against in 2008.
When the Obama administration on Monday reversed itself and announced that it would prosecute the plotters behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in military tribunals rather than in civilian courts as Obama promised during the 2008 campaign, it was the latest episode of President Obama embracing policies that candidate Obama had vowed to overturn.
After taking office in 2009, Obama extended domestic wiretapping by U.S. spy agencies, a Bush-era program that civil libertarians warned was unconstitutional. Obama also backed the Bush policy that protected telecommunications companies from being sued for assisting with the wiretaps, using the State Secrets Act to have lawsuits over the wiretaps dismissed in court.
Obama also renewed the Bush policy of turning suspected terrorists over to U.S. allies, some of which were known to use torture. Obama pledged to monitor the rendition program to guard against the use of torture, but continued its use. Obama also declared that the U.S. would not torture terror suspects, though he carved out an exception that would allow it in limited circumstances approved by the president.
Obama’s most blatant reversal has been over the use of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial. Candidate Obama said closing the camp would be his first order of business after taking office. Yet, while he issued an executive order calling for the camp’s closure, the prison remains in use — and is now central to the military tribunals Obama is instigating after his attempts to try the terror suspects in U.S. civilian court met with political opposition in Washington and New York.
“That was the one area where people were expecting things to be different,” said Raj Desai, a foreign policy expert with the Brookings Institution.
White House spokesman Jay Carney defended Obama’s decision to try terror suspects under a military justice system, saying congressional opposition to bringing any of the detainees to the United States left the president with little choice.
“Given the circumstances we find ourselves in on this issue, it is time to move forward with prosecuting these suspects,” Carney said. “It’s the right thing to do for the victims’ families and it’s the right thing to do, period.”
Administration officials said Obama has brought dramatic change to America’s international relations, employing cooperation where the Bush administration would act unilaterally.
“[Obama] has taken enormous steps towards … rebalancing our foreign policy and re-establishing American leadership around the world,” Carney said.
