The Bowe Bergdahl debacle — trading five senior Taliban commanders for one American prisoner now charged with desertion — has its roots in President Obama’s determination to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay. If the president’s past is any guide, there will be more Gitmo-related fiascos in the future.
Obama has exhibited an unmistakable pattern of behavior in recent years: When Congress fails to do what he wants, he does it himself, or threatens to.
When it comes to Guantanamo, a growing number of lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Congress is more determined than ever to keep the prison facility open. In coming months they are likely to strengthen current restrictions on Obama’s ability to release inmates. Those restrictions will run head-on into the president’s resolve to close Guantanamo — and his penchant for unilateral executive action. The result could be ugly.
Obama is already forbidden by law from transferring Guantanamo inmates to the United States or building a facility to house them here. A new bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte and co-sponsored by 26 other GOP senators would also prevent Obama from transferring risky detainees to any other country for the next two years. It would make it harder to carry through any releases at all, and it would specifically ban releases to the country of Yemen for the next two years.
The Ayotte bill has passed the Armed Services Committee and appears headed for a vote in the full Senate. A spokesman for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that McConnell “supports the Ayotte bill, and believes that it’s a terrible time to be returning detainees to Yemen in particular.”
Needless to say, an effective ban on all transfers for the next two years would extend beyond Obama’s last day in office, January 20, 2017.
Added to the president’s worries is a new toughness among some lawmakers on Guantanamo. Earlier this month, five GOP freshmen senators — Tom Cotton of Arkansas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — toured Guantanamo and came away full of praise.
“Guantanamo Bay houses some of the most heinous and evil criminals of our time — the worst of the worst — and my visit today reinforces my belief that we must keep this facility open,” said Tillis.
“More than ever, it is clear how vital it is to our national interest to keep these terrorists at Guantanamo Bay,” added Ernst.
Then there is Cotton. Before the visit, the Army veteran of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan famously said, “In my opinion the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. … As far as I’m concerned every last one of them can rot in hell, but as long as they don’t do that, they can rot in Guantanamo Bay.”
Those statements are a clear provocation to a president dead set on closing Guantanamo. Obama is responding accordingly. First, he threatened to veto the Ayotte bill. “We believe this bill puts more constraints on a process that should be actually working faster,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, issuing the threat immediately after Ayotte’s legislation passed committee.
Then, at an appearance in Cleveland March 18, Obama expressed regret that he hasn’t already used sweeping executive action to shut the prison down.
Obama’s statement came after a seventh-grader asked him , “If you could go back to the first day of your first term and the first day of your second term, what advice would you give yourself?”
“I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day,” Obama answered. He explained that he didn’t unilaterally shut down the prison because “we had a bipartisan agreement that it should be closed” and there were hopes of congressional action. “But the politics of it got tough and people got scared,” Obama continued — a likely reference to his failed attempt to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial. “So instead, we’ve had to just chip away at it, year after year after year.”
And that is what Obama has done, to the point where there are now just 122 inmates left in Guantanamo. He has released five so far this year. But the clock is ticking. Will Obama go forward with unilateral executive action, as he has done in other areas? Would anyone bet that he won’t?
