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Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such
by SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless.
I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen and if you aren't makes me physically ill.
As a country, in many ways we deserve the disdain directed at us.
That said, we are not only Gitmo, and we actually do a lot of good things for the world. We just need to get our government to respect our borders.
- dublinben 14y agoCongress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.
- lwat 14y agoWhat was his solutions? Moving the detainees to another facility? Or did he actually want to give them trials and send the innocent ones home?
- twoodfin 14y agoMove them to another facility on U.S. soil. And presumably hope the Supreme Court would then "force" his hand on moving them into the domestic judicial system. I will be snarky because it's late, and I'm annoyed this topic is on hn: President Obama loves nothing more than to vote "present".
- daegloe 14y agoNo state will have them. Literally.
- mattstreet 14y agoWell I think he could put a bit more public pressure on them then. I really don't hear him bringing it up too often.
- Locke1689 14y agoIt's in his comments on every appropriations bill. You just don't care. Let's all be honest: we don't think about Guantanamo. When people bring it up we'll hem and haw and say, "gee, that's just terrible," but we don't give a shit. Take it out of the spotlight and it may as well not exist.
- jeroen94704 14y agoYep, that's exactly it. When this link popped up on HN, I read the article and though "wow, that's horrible. Something should be done here!". But tomorrow my mind will be full of other concerns, and a Yemenite I don't know who has been detained without charge or trial for 10 years on a military base far away by a government that is not mine is simply not on my radar. Sad, and shameful, but true.
- crag 14y agoYep. Most Americans have the attention span of a gnat. Plenty of us care, we just get distracted by other things. And that's the point really. The government wants us distracted. It's called Negative Liberty. Most who read that article wil be outraged. They'll share it on FB. And forget it by Friday when the net big movie, sport event, or parade comes along.
- betterunix 14y agoThat might have something to do with the fact that we have problems to deal here. The prisoners at Guantanamo might seem like a bigger deal if we did not have millions of prisoners who were never tried by a jury in the USA. We might actually care about this particular Obama campaign promise if there were not so many other broken promises.
- mudil 14y agodublinben: Can you substantiate your claim that Congress is responsible for this? Seems like Obama is the Commander in Chief and is the head of the Executive branch...
- dublinben 14y agoThis section of the Wikipedia article does an excellent job of explaining President Obama's actions to close the detention camp, and how Congress interfered. They've made it impossible for the President to lawfully transfer the detainees to any US state or foreign country. There is realistically no way for the President to release them without being able to transfer them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guant%C3%A1namo_Bay_detention_camp#Obama.27s_efforts_to_close_the_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guant%C3%A1namo_Bay_detention_...
- GHFigs 14y agoFor example: http://www.webcitation.org/5jPWyaCDq http://www.webcitation.org/5jPWyaCDq In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison. The 90-6 Senate vote—paired with similar House action last week—was a clear sign to Obama that he faces a tough fight getting the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention center and move the 240 detainees. That's from 2009, but it's been an ongoing problem with defense funding bills since then.
- trimbo 14y agoGuantanamo has nothing to do with congress. It was effectively authorized in this 2001 executive order: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/mo-111301.htm http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/mo-111301.htm
- pyre 14y agoRescinding that executive order doesn't make magic happen. There is the process of closing down and what to do with the prisoners that matters. It's sounding like Congress is tying the President's hands by restricting his ability to use funds (funds that Congress authorizes) towards those goals. If you're in the US and you want this to happen, I would look towards your representatives in Congress, and research these bills. This rings similar to the 'legalize marijuana' issue. Making it legal 'tomorrow' would be a massive undertaking because of all of the infrastructure that's in place with the assumption that it's illegal. Sometimes decisions/actions seem 'easy' on the surface, while the devil is in the details.
- taproot 14y agoYet leaving it illegal is the problem we face on both counts. I dont see why youre bothering to state this nonsense in the form of an argument against doing the right thing. It would have been easier to do nothing in the first place yet here we bloody well are.
- pyre 14y agoI would support you if you want to go after the people that made this happen, that said if you want to clean up the mess as it currently is, then you'll have to work out how to get it done. Complaining about how it shouldn't have happened in the first place doesn't translate into action now to remedy the situation.
- taproot 14y agoI wasn't complaining, I was simply replying in kind. Good job on catching that.
- iconjack 14y agoThis is absolute nonsense. The US president, wrapping himself in the role of commander in chief, does just about anything he wants if it's even loosely connected to war or security, with or without congressional approval. Surveillance. Torture. Black sites. Assassination. Drone murders. Infinite detention. If he wanted Gitmo closed, he could close it. Congress won't give him the budget? Fine, he could order the closing as a military operation. He doesn't want to take the political heat. I voted for him (2008), but he is without testicular fortitude on this issue.
- Locke1689 14y agoAlas, naïveté in the political system. How I knew you.
- justin 14y agoI don't see how his answer was naive. I think we've reached a low point as a people if believing an elected official will actually attempt to keep his campaign promises is naive.
- mpyne 14y agoOn the other hand, it would be nice indeed if people understood the political process. Obama has attempted action on Gitmo (however long ago that was). But, Congress has not only not supported closing down Gitmo and sending the prisoners "home" (to whatever home means), they have explicitly forbidden it in their defense appropriation bills going back for years. And people here say that Obama should break the law he was elected to enforce this time, just not all the other times that the law is in their favor. And either way, the first person he gives the direct order to break the law to will refuse to carry it out (since it's an unlawful order), and then that breakdown in command & control will be the end of Obama's Presidency. It must be nice being an HN commenter, there's a reason Obama's hair is rapidly turning gray.
- mehwoot 14y agoWho did you vote for in 2012? Ron Paul?
- r0s 14y agoIt's more likely he's apathetic to the issue.
- Locke1689 14y agoThe problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility. Introducing them to the justice system would require the same. As every American should know, Congress holds the purse strings here and has denied said request. The President has no power here.
- Zak 14y agoIt seems unlikely that Congress micromanages the budget of the Department of Justice to the degree that it could not initiate prosecution of detainees in the civilian legal system. Whether that would be a reasonable solution is debatable, but it's certainly within the President's authority to attempt. There's always the nuclear option: threaten to release the detainees if Congress doesn't provide funding for another solution.
- Locke1689 14y agoThis back and forth has happened many times. The Defense Appropriations bills that have passed Congress have forbid the President from using fund for any of these activities. There is no nuclear option. Veto is not an option. What people don't seem to understand is that this isn't a failure of democracy to act: this is what the American people want. We don't care that Guantanamo is open and we'd rather see it stay open than give these people a chance at a fair trial. We are a government by the people, of the people, and the people have spoken.
- jorgeortiz85 14y agoThe Constitution is supposed to protect the rights of individuals from the tyranny of "the people".
- ThrowawyAcctLOL 14y ago> not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead! How are you so sure of that? McCain's neither a saint nor a philosopher-king: his personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's, and he often seems to be successfully flattered and managed by those around him. But he erratically takes stands on principle, and he also has personal experience of both torture and prolonged imprisonment. And in fact he took an anti-torture position which, while it wasn't absolute, was well out ahead of other Congressmen and presidential candidates and was hardly calculated to win votes. There's also the fact that whatever about McCain's personal inclinations, he or any other Republican president would have been under much sharper pressure from others on the issue. The people and institutions who were shouting so much about detention and torture and drone strikes under Bush and then became silent or muted under Obama (or indeed rushed to bestow on him a Nobel Peace Prize) would have continued shouting under McCain.
- gruseom 14y agohis personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's I realize that the view of Obama as a tremendous narcissist has become a right-wing meme, but it seems so odd (kind of like the related view that he's a know-nothing who can't speak without a teleprompter, though that one seems to have died down since the election). I'm curious: how did the narcissism meme get started, and what evidence is cited for it, other than that major politicians tend to have major egos? I'm not trying to make a political point. I don't follow the sources on this and would like someone to explain to me how the people who believe this came to believe it and what arguments they advance for it. (p.s. I think you may have misread the GP, who meant that McCain would not have gotten their vote instead of Obama.)
- jacquesm 14y ago> That said, we are not only Gitmo, and we actually do a lot of good things for the world. Indeed, it is not just Gitmo, if only, and it's not just the US. Lots of EU governments are complicit in the whole rendition (what a word, kidnapping would be the appropriate term) program as well and there are/were more places in the world where people are being held without any sort of process, to be tortured and disposed of, either by killing them or by turning them loose years later without even an idea of who their captors were.
- davedx 14y agoBut those other countries do not claim moral high ground in the same way the US does on so many other issues, or claim to lead the world with respect to values such as freedom and democracy (of which the right to a fair trial can be considered a part).
- rmc 14y agoYes they do. All countries claim to be the best.
- gsnedders 14y agoReally? I've never once, despite living in the EU for my entire life (in various countries), heard anyone claim the country they live is anything like "the land of the free".
- rmc 14y agoWell, the UK claims to be the "Mother of all Parliaments" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament#Origins , and has songs calling itself "Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Hope_and_Glory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Hope_and_Glory ). I know more about UK & Ireland than others, but it's not hard to find other countries similar. France's national anthem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise ) is a song about overthrowing tyranny, the national motto of France is "Liberty, Freedom, Fraternity" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9... ). All countries claim to be the best.
- hmottestad 14y agoOn days like these the US is Guantanamo Bay. The US is poverty and regular people without a home. The US is bad health care, as in only the rich can afford it. The US is drones, fired at civilians in the dead of night. The US is oil, as in that they want it all. The US is guns, like the ones likely to be pointed at you if you get robbed. The US is x-rays at the airport. And finally, the US is the land of the free.
- facorreia 14y agoThis is not the kind of content I come to Hacker News for.
- serf 14y agothe article, or the opinion espoused by the commenter you replied to? In other words, you come to HN for one aspect of the Political world , and not all of them? Myself, I don't come to HN for ANYTHING in this thread. It's all interesting, in it's own right, but has little to do with 'hacking'. But, then again, civil liberties are a set of issues that can broadly affect us all.. maybe that was the grand position of whoever thought this was HN worthy. I don't know. Maybe it's beyond us all, and the OP has some insight as to how the whole GITMO situation can be solved with functional programming and 'high-availability clustering solutions', and he's just trying to nudge us into finding the solution. One can be hopeful.
- davidw 14y ago> But, then again, civil liberties are a set of issues that can broadly affect us all If HN's front page were open to anything and everything, and links were voted for based on their importance in the real world, the actual Hacker News content would be completely buried. The real world is far more important than most of what's on Hacker News, so paradoxically, if we want to maintain the quality and focus of HN, real world articles like this need to be excluded, even if we all agree they are very important.
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- sfjailbird 14y agoNo, Obama is cool! He plays basketball and does reddit AMAs! And he's black, too!
- zamryok 14y ago> The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen and if you aren't makes me physically ill. I also think that is profoundly unjust, and unfortunately it is not simply a question of being a US citizen or not: US citizens who are arab or muslim are more likely to be suspected of acts that could be considered to lie within the vague legal category of Terrorism. So it seems that non-muslim and non-arab people (whether US citizens or european citizens or otherwise) are less likely to be subjected to exceptional treatment, to be detained without trial or be killed in extra-judicial assasinations etc. It seems the divide is more on a racial/ethnic line than a US-citizenship line.
- gitmothrow 14y agoWhy is it unjust to spend limited FBI resources focusing on high risk groups? Do you think they should be monitoring bridge games at nursing homes? Do you think that Arab and Muslim Americans have never been involved in domestic terrorist operations?
- rooshdi 14y agoYou're making very strong allegations towards a group of humans solely based on their ethnicity or religion.
- gitmothrow 14y agoNope. I have made no 'allegations'.
- rooshdi 14y agoThen what are you implying by your third question?
- zamryok 14y agoSome people are not considered "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law". That is what I find unjust. I can accept focusing on "high-risk groups" (although one should question how this definition of a high-risk group is constructed), monitoring them, and trying them in court. What is unjust is punishing them without a fair trial.
- gitmothrow 14y agoI think it's funny that you vote for Obama because you think he's a good guy with a good vision for America, then when he gets into power and makes a decision you think is morally contemptuous, your first though is that 'he wasn't who I thought he was'. What the fuck do you know about national security, SoftwareMaven? You're a programmer on Hacker News. You're not privy to the shit that Obama is privy to. How do you know your idea of what is moral is also what would be good for society as a whole? How do you know that Obama isn't simply responding in a reasonable way to the reality that you have no conception of. Also, throwaway so I don't get called a fascist nazi or whatever.
- smokinjoe 14y ago> Also, throwaway so I don't get called a fascist nazi or whatever. Don't worry, I just consider you a coward for that. If you seriously want to call someone out, do it from your account and stand by your words.
- gitmothrow 14y agoIf only I could be as brave as you.
- smokinjoe 14y agoIt's not being brave, it's being responsible for your own actions. If you didn't use a throwaway, I'm sure you'd also do a much better job at making your comment a little more eloquent instead of just aggressive and angry. Posting with a throwaway shows me that you probably don't even 100% believe what you just said.
- hackinthebochs 14y agoThis is stupid. There are plenty of reasons to post potentially controversial things anonymously, the same reasons against placing a darwin-fish on your car in overly religious regions. None of which have to do with cowardice.
- dhimes 14y agoHere's an interesting thought experiment: Imagine you are Obama, newly elected president. Under what conditions would you reverse yourself and let Gitmo stand? What information would you have to become privy to that you weren't before in order for you to change your mind?
- PavlovsCat 14y agoThat it's, among other things, what they wanted to hear to elect me, and that I'm elected now, and can't in any way be held accountable for idle promises, and that standing firm on that principle is more important to my handlers than a bunch of bleeding hearts.
- acjohnson55 14y agoThe fact that you will have no chance of accomplishing your other policy goals if you do.
- dhimes 14y agoInteresting- I hadn't thought of that. It then begs the question: why would his opponents not want to close it down?
- DannyBee 14y agoBecause it makes them look weak. If the US president can close Guantanamo over the objections of sabre rattling congressmen who keep doing local town halls where they tell their constituents "we lock the bad guys up forever", then it makes clear to those local folks that their congressman are actually pretty impotent. There are plenty of "he wanted to close Guantanamo bay and let terrorists go, like Obama" commercials that aired during the election. As the parent said, doing this to congressman, be they republican or blue dog democrat, would make him completely and totally ineffective in getting bills passed. There is usually a broad difference between the posturing you hear about on TV, and the actual way they act in closed door meetings. In one case, they have to appear that way to keep their constituents happy. By and large, congressmen are not stupid (or at least, not egregiously so), they are just good at acting. If you do something that is going to seriously threaten their apparent power position, however, it will no longer be acting.
- utunga 14y agoThis is not a situation where we should be outraged at a president breaking his promise (yawn), but a case of an executive order not being carried out. We should not gloss over the fact that Obama's 'promise' (or rather, executive order) to close Gitmo came after the election. One of his very first acts as president in fact. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/20/obamas-first-term-promise-close-gitmo-prison-still/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/20/obamas-first... The question we must ask is why did it not close? And, if Obama can't close this abomination, then who can?
- sigzero 14y agoThe same people that prevented it from closing, Congress.
- rayiner 14y agoThe double standard is Constitutional. The Constitution was never contemplated to give rights to foreigners not on U.S. soil. Indeed, every society has different rules for "its people" versus "other people." It's one of the things that makes war possible.
- randallsquared 14y ago> The Constitution was never contemplated to give rights to foreigners not on U.S. soil. Or to anyone. The Constitution is supposed to limit what the federal government can do, not grant any rights at all. When it was written, the assumption was that those rights were already held.
- rayiner 14y agoHeld by who? Held by the citizens of the sovereign states, not every human.
- randallsquared 14y agoThe Constitution doesn't say who they're held by; the only reference to "right" in there is actually a place that calls out my error: it does grant one right, which is copyright/patent. Oddly. A document that might indicate who rights were considered to be held by is the Declaration of Independence, but it says "all men", which I would take to mean every human. Obviously not all the signers viewed it that way, given that slavery was still permitted. Since the US didn't exist at the time when these rights were already viewed as being operative, though, I think we can safely exclude that they were intended to apply only to US citizens. Edit: spelling.
- rayiner 14y agoThe Declaration of Independence has no legal significance. It is just a letter, and the prose is intended to be poetic (to justify violent revolution) rather than functional. Your comment about the U.S. not existing shows a misunderstanding of the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution is essentially a contract outlining the delegation of powers to the federal government from the sovereign state governments. The rights therein were viewed as already operative, but not because they were viewed as rights intrinsic to humanity, but because they were rights already enjoyed by citizens of the several states. When the Constitution talks about "people" it is not talking about "people in general." It is talking about "the people"--the body politic of the several states which combined to form the union. Those are the people who have rights under the Constitution.
- at-fates-hands 14y ago>>>>>>>>I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. It's really not that easy considering most people say these people should be covered under the Geneva Convention and given a military tribunal to determine their guilt. Unfortunately, the convention was really adopted for conventional warfare, not the sort of loosely organized terrorists we're currently fighting. Also keep in mind a large percentage of these people who claim to be innocent have returned to the battlefield after being released from Gitmo: "A declassified document made public Tuesday showed that up to 25% of all former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, subsequently engaged in terrorism or insurgency" http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/guantanamo.detainees/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/guantanamo.detainees/index.... And here's a list of other Gitmo prisoners who have been released and involved in terrorist attacks: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/327926/gitmo-detainees-return-terror-nathaniel-botwinick http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/327926/gitmo-detainees-... >>>>>>As a country, in many ways we deserve the disdain directed at us. No, not really. Considering when something bad happens anywhere in the world, nobody calls Canada, nobody calls Turkey, nobody calls Sweden. They call us to fix it. They call us to send billions in aid. They call us to take care of their crazy saber rattling neighbors. You think we deserve the disdain, but can you imagine the world without the billions in aid, without all the military aid we give other countries?
- mebassett 14y ago>>No, not really. Considering when something bad happens anywhere in the world, nobody calls Canada, nobody calls Turkey, nobody calls Sweden. They call us to fix it. They call us to send billions in aid. They call us to take care of their crazy saber rattling neighbors. You think we deserve the disdain, but can you imagine the world without the billions in aid, without all the military aid we give other countries? Citation needed, please. There's a lot of countries and a lot of people outside the US, and the idea that they are all calling on the US to solve their political and international relations problems sounds a bit silly to me. Did you know France has had military operations Mali since 2012 without the advice, consent, or involvement of the US, for instance? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%E2%80%93present%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%...)
- parfe 14y agohttp://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Obama's second full day in office. How is that a reversal? Congress then blocked any and all money which the administration would need to take action to close the base. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196 http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196
- enraged_camel 14y agoI never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers. For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.
- Camillo 14y agoThen Obama was counting on many people not to understand politics when he chose to make promises on things he wouldn't have the power to change.
- enraged_camel 14y agoAn argument could be made that Obama was young, inexperienced and naive when he made those promises. But that's leaps and bounds different than accusing him of making promises and then breaking them. Because that implies malice. It implies that he lied. And I don't think we have any proof of that. Personally, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's not a perfect president, but he's not awful either (like the parent implies).
- rhizome 14y agoIs this along the lines of the "Once he got into office they showed him the OSHIT information" rationalization?
- kunai 14y agoDon't waste time pushing the blame on Presidents, they're but sock puppets for Congress. The real problem is the legislature. Fill Congress with enough third-party seats, and maybe, just maybe we can get out of this mess and take back our country from the filth that runs it right now.
- rdtsc 14y agoFor me it was Obama's vote to give retroactive immunity to telecom companies that spied on Americans illegally. He wasn't even running for president. Also as a general rule, look at a man's actions not his words and promises (more so if they are in politics) <- should be obvious. Now as you say -- big deal, what are other alternatives? There are not viable alternatives. So I just didn't vote.
- hawleyal 14y agoUnrealistic expectations.