The recent haggling over Guantanamo Bay is such classic Democratic Party politics, it almost makes you want to laugh. Almost, except that it’s, you know, revolting. Eight years of Clintonian squirming was bad enough, but now we have Barack Obama, smoking Habeas Corpus and not inhaling it.
Why is the Gitmo decision classic Democratic Party thinking? Because when certain of us said we wanted Gitmo closed, we sort of meant a change in policy – we didn’t mean just physically closing the plant, moving the prisoners elsewhere, and leaving the policies essentially unchanged. This is what this generation of Democrats does every time: every time they come to a fork in the road, they try to take it.
Matt Taibbi has more on “The End of the Obama Honeymoon, Part II”
I strongly suspect the difference is not that Obama likes to stride the middle – I suspect the difference is being President.
Presidential contenders are always speculating when they make forward looking statements, because in fact they are running on partial information. As a Senator, probably fuller information than you and I, but certainly not the full disclosure available to a President. And never truer I speculate, than coming out from under the last secrecy obsessed administration.
So I suspect President Obama has now found out a lot more about who is there, the legal difficulties in prosecution, and the utter lack of willingness of other countries to take them, or probably even admit them.
So we either have to figure out by what right we prosecute them, or we line ’em up and shoot ’em.
And the ENTIRE problem caused BECAUSE we are adhering to principles – we didn’t throw them out of a helicopter, and they all survived capture.
How bad could they be? If guilty, they’re nothing more than thugs. We have all kinds of violent killers locked up; they are no threat to us. Why do we fear these guys? It’s not like they will run right to where the WMDs are stored.
It’s political fear, nothing more.
And it’s morally wrong.
And as for that they know more than us line. Emmett, really. I spent 30 years around government secrets. What a charade.
You mean if I become President they still won’t tell me about Roswell or Kennedy? ; )
And for gov’t secrets I’ll concur, but having been near the headlines I know the press always gets it wrong. It’s not an evil plot, it is a consequence of always being in the position of “wandering thru”.
But political will is always a factor.