Since his first run at the White House, President Obama has been promising to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It has been a sort of moral crusade for him.
Today, he presented his plan to do it.
“I have spent countless hours on this, I do not exaggerate,” Obama said.
“I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president whoever it is,” he added. “As a nation, if we don’t deal with this now, when will we deal with it?”
The plan involves releasing about one-third of the inmates and moving another 60 or so to facilities within the United States. And the problem is, that isn’t “dealing with it.”
Aside from the fact that it’s against the law to move Gitmo prisoners to U.S. facilities, is that there’s absolutely nothing morally superior to holding alleged terrorists without trial in one geographic location over another.
The permanent imprisonment of alleged terrorists in Kansas or Illinois or Colorado is no more faithful to the Constitution than is housing them in Cuba. It will also generate no less resentment among anyone who sympathizes (to one degree or another) with the prisoners’ cause. Even worse, it could create new terrorist targets of symbolic importance within the continental U.S.
This issue has always been a moral mirage, and it will be until those credibly accused of terrorism are either tried, convicted, and punished or else released for lack of evidence.
