Folks on the Left are confused because, for one thing, it is the Barack Obama hour, they love him, and they want to support him on just about everything. But there he is doing what he said he would not do on Guantanamo Bay. How to get around it?
Well, if you have been reading what they write and listening to what they say, it’s pretty clear that many, if not all, have decided to put their faith in Obama’s dodges instead of his deeds.
They embrace his rhetoric, saying how nuanced, how subtle, how finally profound it is. He is finding a new, middle way, they tell us, when actually, he is finding a political way as old as the hills: Fool everyone with misleading words.
From the start, Obama’s Guantanamo policy was a gesture to win the hearts of those convinced the terrorist prison there was a hellhole. The administration will close that place, he announced early on as president, although, if you read the fine print, you found he was actually planning to close the prison in a year, maybe.
The “maybe” became bigger in the scheme of things when even Democrats in the Senate said they weren’t about to let those terrorists on U.S. soil, even in maximum security prisons with unblemished records of preventing escapes.
They wanted more information before they coughed up money for relocation. So Obama spelled out his proposal in more detail. Except for the articulateness and differences of supposed instead of real consequence, it was George Bush all over again.
There would be some prosecutions in criminal courts, he said, but wait a second, because he would also use military tribunals he had himself maligned. He wants to release some of the prisoners, as Bush had, and transfer others to countries that would accept them, as Bush did to great criticism.
Finally, there would be indefinite detention of some.
Indefinite detention? But along with much of the above, doesn’t this fall short of the “restoration of values” Obama promised, while bashing Bush as no president in memory has ever bashed a predecessor?
Much of the Left, I think, will excuse this – and should – just as it really should have cut out the wild exaggerations aimed at the Bush administration’s honest efforts after 9/11 to save America from another attack.
As the historian Arthur Herman notes in an excellent online piece for Commentary magazine, the inmates at Guantanamo had been selected from tens of thousands of captured men as people who were in fact trained terrorists, and a West Point study confirmed that 73 percent were a likely threat to the United States. Of the 390 released by 2007, a number have returned to terrorism.
Twelve official inquiries have shown Guantanamo has operated in accordance with high prison standards, even after some confusion early on, he notes. The toughest interrogations were limited to three men and carried out in accordance with rules meant to avoid torture, as it is defined in law and international standards.
The horror stories that take us beyond water boarding – about which there can be debate – mostly come from left-wing activists who treat the tales of the terrorists themselves as gospel.
There can be little doubt that incarceration at Guantanamo has saved American lives and that a willy-nilly decision simply to release some prisoners and turn all the rest over to civil courts would be a venture putting American lives at increased risk.
Obama seems to understand as much at the same time he is retreating on campaign promises and giving speeches pretending that he isn’t. Make of the dodges what you will. Hurrah for the sensible deeds.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He can be reached at: [email protected].
