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http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Obama's secon

by parfe 14y ago

http://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 ago
I 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 ago
  Then 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 ago
    An 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 ago
      Is this along the lines of the "Once he got into office they showed him the OSHIT information" rationalization?
  - pasbesoin 14y ago
    Especially during his 2008 campaign, as much as (or more so, parsing the details of his language) making specific, topical promises, Obama... "preached" and promised to be an advocate. I think that as much as in specific deliverables, "the Left" feels rather thoroughly betrayed, on that front. In this specific instance, he should have called Congress out on their behavior. People understand real compromise. They also understand that when the other party is completely intractable, there comes a time when you confront them on this. Or you lose power. Or... your original position was actually different from what you projected.
    - enraged_camel 14y ago
      Obama did call Congress out on their behavior. Openly, publicly and many times. It accomplished absolutely nothing. Look, when you have an entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich, that has sworn to do anything in its power to make sure you fail, there's not much you can do, even if you are the President of the United States.
      - glesica 14y ago
        Didn't the Dems have both houses of Congress for the first two years? Unless the "entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich" you're talking about is the Democratic party (I would argue that it is both).
        parfe 14y ago
        http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106376613 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1063766... Due a lawsuit and illness and death the Democrats had a filibuster breaking majority for something like 58 days. And even then it would require every single senator to be in agreement.
        lmickh 14y ago
        So because the Democrats didn't have total control on Congress, they aren't responsible for the failures to drive issues forward? They had a majority. They should step up and take ownership for their part. I remember when we expected statemen to work out difficult conflicts. Now they just throw up their hands and say "He did it" while people cheer them on for "sticking to their guns". It isn't our fault, they are the ones that refused to compromise by accepting my proposal...
- mirkules 14y ago
  "For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault." I disagree. For anyone that understands politics understands that things can get done by applying a significant political push. I think Obama symbolically tried, then threw his hands up in the air in defeat when he got some resistance from Congress. I assume this is because the political chips he would lose by pushing harder on closing Gitmo are chips he was not willing to lose. Meanwhile, CISPA, which was already defeated once, is making its way through Congress again. It's a perfect example of "political push" (and if you read between the lines, that means "money").
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    I responded to this below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553198
  - pkulak 14y ago
    That's a lot of metaphor there. No matter the "chips", and "pushing", it's still the legislative branch that makes the laws. There's got to be a limit to the blame you can assign someone for failing to convince someone else to do something.
    - mirkules 14y ago
      I really can't subscribe to that argument when you look at other national issues for which the President is fighting tooth and nail. Without straying too far from the subject, take gun control as an example [and please note, I am deliberately writing this from a partisan-agnostic perspective]. The opposition to this is fierce, and the issue extremely polarizing. Yet, the President seems to be willing to go the distance on the issue of gun control. The movement has failed again and again to gain bipartisan support. Yet, here we are still talking about it in the news. Same can be said about abortion, too. These debates went on for decades now. Nobody can say the President isn't trying hard enough in those cases, whichever side of the fence you happen to fall on. Yet, when we talk about basic human rights, the President somehow gets to just give up on the issue, and we should be OK with that? In my opinion, there is definitely a lack of effort by the President to do something about closing Gitmo, and I find that almost as disappointing as Gitmo being opened in the first place.
- chestnut-tree 14y ago
  "...the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault." I recommend this Salon article by Glen Greenwald from July 2012 The Obama GITMO myth: New vindictive restrictions on detainees highlights the falsity of Obama defenders regarding closing the camp http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Actually he could have issued an executive order to release the prisoners unilaterally. That would have pissed off Congress of course but as the Commander in Chief the original rational for imprisonment came from the White House and thus could have been reversed. That he didn't do that in response to the Congressional back pressure proved to me that he didn't have the leadership to follow through.
  - rickyconnolly 14y ago
    He doesn't want to release the prisoners, he wants to transfer them from military to civilian control so they can be tried in a public court. The later, as I understand it, is beyond the President's remit (but I stand to be shown otherwise).
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      The politics are less subtle than that. I believe that you are correct in what the President wants vs what he can do. The assertion was that Congress, which is the only part of our Government that can appropriate funds, was unwilling to fund that effort. In that stalemate, you negotiate. And the Congress certainly wants at least some of the prisoners to be tried in the US court system. So the President, in the absence of getting the funding to move them into the private court system, threatens to simply release them all back to their home countries. The leadership here is that "we" as a nation don't deprive people of their liberty without due process on principle. And while we recognize the expedience of detaining people during war time, nearly everyone seems to be believe that the prisoner's at Guantanamo are not sanctioned "prisoners of war" per the Geneva Convention. Being neither duck nor fowl puts them in limbo. The President promised to change that, he did not. He could have (not in a way that Congress approved) but the world in general would be much better off if you either shot these people in battle when they were shooting at you, or you charged them with a crime and tried them, or you let them go. When he left these people incarcerated, he removed another item where the US used to be 'different' from authoritarian regimes, and as a voter I've been working to change the regime through the institutions available to me to do so.
Wonderdonkey 14y ago
This is the closest he's come to keeping his campaign pledges to reverse the idiocy of the Bush era, but he failed, and then he even reversed his own executive order in 2011. Like suspension of habeas rights, like warrantless wiretaps, like drone warfare, like the TSA, President Obama didn't make these things, but he still chooses to use them. A lot. Obama was the only hope people like me saw for reversing the 9/11 death spiral, and he blew it. End the war in the Middle East? Naw, let's escalate it instead. Reform the Patriot Act? How about I reauthorize it as-is. End indefinite detention of Americans without trial? No, continue indefinite detentions without trial and/or execute Americans without a trial. Transparent government? How about secret laws instead. Stop rousting foreigners? Nope, let's ICE record numbers of immigrants. Veto NDAA? Sign NDAA! Veto CISPA? The trends in the Obama administration are the exact opposite of what people voted for. His legacy is more power for ICE and TSA; more power for national security agencies; more intrusive government; more war; more unprincipled, reactionary policy making. Zero upside. I get why people defend their candidates in the face of conflicting evidence. Obviously people believe their candidate, no matter how bad, is better than the alternative. But Obama's a lame duck. There's no reason to shield him or blame this on someone else who's already out of office, though don't get me wrong here: Bush was a truly horrible President. It doesn't solve the core problem, which is the we need a leader in 2016 who will lead us out of this spiral. Unfortunately neither party is worth a damn right now.
siphor 14y ago
Below shows that Obama can indeed take action to take prisoners of gitmo to trial. any reason he hasn't done any of this? It looks like the document 'blocking money' in fact describes what the president would need to do to bring people to trial and even free them.... Am I missing something? Why hasn't he done this it seems pretty straight forward... I know hes a busy guy but I would put this shit high up there on my priority list... (Found in the full bill at http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196 http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196, I just did a search for 'Guantánamo', its at the bottom (the 11th appearance of the term) -------------------------------------------- c) None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer an individual who is detained, as of the date of enactment of this Act, at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, or the District of Columbia, for the purposes of prosecuting such individual, or detaining such individual during legal proceedings, until 45 days after the plan detailed in subsection (d) is received. -------------------------------------------- Subsection d goes on to list what is needed. (1) The findings of an analysis regarding any risk to the national security of the United States that is posed by the transfer of the individual. (2) The costs associated with transferring the individual in question. (3) The legal rationale and associated court demands for transfer. (4) A plan for mitigation of any risk described in paragraph (1). (5) A copy of a notification to the Governor of the State to which the individual will be transferred or to the Mayor . R. 2346—63 of the District of Columbia if the individual will be transferred to the District of Columbia with a certification by the Attorney General of the United States in classified form at least 14 days prior to such transfer (together with supporting documentation and justification) that the individual poses little or no security risk to the United States

by parfe 14y ago

enraged_camel 14y ago

I 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 ago
Then 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 ago
  An 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 ago
    Is this along the lines of the "Once he got into office they showed him the OSHIT information" rationalization?
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  Especially during his 2008 campaign, as much as (or more so, parsing the details of his language) making specific, topical promises, Obama... "preached" and promised to be an advocate. I think that as much as in specific deliverables, "the Left" feels rather thoroughly betrayed, on that front. In this specific instance, he should have called Congress out on their behavior. People understand real compromise. They also understand that when the other party is completely intractable, there comes a time when you confront them on this. Or you lose power. Or... your original position was actually different from what you projected.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    Obama did call Congress out on their behavior. Openly, publicly and many times. It accomplished absolutely nothing. Look, when you have an entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich, that has sworn to do anything in its power to make sure you fail, there's not much you can do, even if you are the President of the United States.
    - glesica 14y ago
      Didn't the Dems have both houses of Congress for the first two years? Unless the "entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich" you're talking about is the Democratic party (I would argue that it is both).
      - parfe 14y ago
        http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106376613 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1063766... Due a lawsuit and illness and death the Democrats had a filibuster breaking majority for something like 58 days. And even then it would require every single senator to be in agreement.
        lmickh 14y ago
        So because the Democrats didn't have total control on Congress, they aren't responsible for the failures to drive issues forward? They had a majority. They should step up and take ownership for their part. I remember when we expected statemen to work out difficult conflicts. Now they just throw up their hands and say "He did it" while people cheer them on for "sticking to their guns". It isn't our fault, they are the ones that refused to compromise by accepting my proposal...
mirkules 14y ago
"For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault." I disagree. For anyone that understands politics understands that things can get done by applying a significant political push. I think Obama symbolically tried, then threw his hands up in the air in defeat when he got some resistance from Congress. I assume this is because the political chips he would lose by pushing harder on closing Gitmo are chips he was not willing to lose. Meanwhile, CISPA, which was already defeated once, is making its way through Congress again. It's a perfect example of "political push" (and if you read between the lines, that means "money").
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I responded to this below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553198
- pkulak 14y ago
  That's a lot of metaphor there. No matter the "chips", and "pushing", it's still the legislative branch that makes the laws. There's got to be a limit to the blame you can assign someone for failing to convince someone else to do something.
  - mirkules 14y ago
    I really can't subscribe to that argument when you look at other national issues for which the President is fighting tooth and nail. Without straying too far from the subject, take gun control as an example [and please note, I am deliberately writing this from a partisan-agnostic perspective]. The opposition to this is fierce, and the issue extremely polarizing. Yet, the President seems to be willing to go the distance on the issue of gun control. The movement has failed again and again to gain bipartisan support. Yet, here we are still talking about it in the news. Same can be said about abortion, too. These debates went on for decades now. Nobody can say the President isn't trying hard enough in those cases, whichever side of the fence you happen to fall on. Yet, when we talk about basic human rights, the President somehow gets to just give up on the issue, and we should be OK with that? In my opinion, there is definitely a lack of effort by the President to do something about closing Gitmo, and I find that almost as disappointing as Gitmo being opened in the first place.
chestnut-tree 14y ago
"...the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault." I recommend this Salon article by Glen Greenwald from July 2012 The Obama GITMO myth: New vindictive restrictions on detainees highlights the falsity of Obama defenders regarding closing the camp http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Actually he could have issued an executive order to release the prisoners unilaterally. That would have pissed off Congress of course but as the Commander in Chief the original rational for imprisonment came from the White House and thus could have been reversed. That he didn't do that in response to the Congressional back pressure proved to me that he didn't have the leadership to follow through.
- rickyconnolly 14y ago
  He doesn't want to release the prisoners, he wants to transfer them from military to civilian control so they can be tried in a public court. The later, as I understand it, is beyond the President's remit (but I stand to be shown otherwise).
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    The politics are less subtle than that. I believe that you are correct in what the President wants vs what he can do. The assertion was that Congress, which is the only part of our Government that can appropriate funds, was unwilling to fund that effort. In that stalemate, you negotiate. And the Congress certainly wants at least some of the prisoners to be tried in the US court system. So the President, in the absence of getting the funding to move them into the private court system, threatens to simply release them all back to their home countries. The leadership here is that "we" as a nation don't deprive people of their liberty without due process on principle. And while we recognize the expedience of detaining people during war time, nearly everyone seems to be believe that the prisoner's at Guantanamo are not sanctioned "prisoners of war" per the Geneva Convention. Being neither duck nor fowl puts them in limbo. The President promised to change that, he did not. He could have (not in a way that Congress approved) but the world in general would be much better off if you either shot these people in battle when they were shooting at you, or you charged them with a crime and tried them, or you let them go. When he left these people incarcerated, he removed another item where the US used to be 'different' from authoritarian regimes, and as a voter I've been working to change the regime through the institutions available to me to do so.

Wonderdonkey 14y ago

This is the closest he's come to keeping his campaign pledges to reverse the idiocy of the Bush era, but he failed, and then he even reversed his own executive order in 2011. Like suspension of habeas rights, like warrantless wiretaps, like drone warfare, like the TSA, President Obama didn't make these things, but he still chooses to use them. A lot. Obama was the only hope people like me saw for reversing the 9/11 death spiral, and he blew it. End the war in the Middle East? Naw, let's escalate it instead. Reform the Patriot Act? How about I reauthorize it as-is. End indefinite detention of Americans without trial? No, continue indefinite detentions without trial and/or execute Americans without a trial. Transparent government? How about secret laws instead. Stop rousting foreigners? Nope, let's ICE record numbers of immigrants. Veto NDAA? Sign NDAA! Veto CISPA? The trends in the Obama administration are the exact opposite of what people voted for. His legacy is more power for ICE and TSA; more power for national security agencies; more intrusive government; more war; more unprincipled, reactionary policy making. Zero upside. I get why people defend their candidates in the face of conflicting evidence. Obviously people believe their candidate, no matter how bad, is better than the alternative. But Obama's a lame duck. There's no reason to shield him or blame this on someone else who's already out of office, though don't get me wrong here: Bush was a truly horrible President. It doesn't solve the core problem, which is the we need a leader in 2016 who will lead us out of this spiral. Unfortunately neither party is worth a damn right now.

siphor 14y ago

Below shows that Obama can indeed take action to take prisoners of gitmo to trial. any reason he hasn't done any of this? It looks like the document 'blocking money' in fact describes what the president would need to do to bring people to trial and even free them.... Am I missing something? Why hasn't he done this it seems pretty straight forward... I know hes a busy guy but I would put this shit high up there on my priority list... (Found in the full bill at http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196 http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196, I just did a search for 'Guantánamo', its at the bottom (the 11th appearance of the term) -------------------------------------------- c) None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer an individual who is detained, as of the date of enactment of this Act, at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, or the District of Columbia, for the purposes of prosecuting such individual, or detaining such individual during legal proceedings, until 45 days after the plan detailed in subsection (d) is received. -------------------------------------------- Subsection d goes on to list what is needed. (1) The findings of an analysis regarding any risk to the national security of the United States that is posed by the transfer of the individual. (2) The costs associated with transferring the individual in question. (3) The legal rationale and associated court demands for transfer. (4) A plan for mitigation of any risk described in paragraph (1). (5) A copy of a notification to the Governor of the State to which the individual will be transferred or to the Mayor . R. 2346—63 of the District of Columbia if the individual will be transferred to the District of Columbia with a certification by the Attorney General of the United States in classified form at least 14 days prior to such transfer (together with supporting documentation and justification) that the individual poses little or no security risk to the United States