Interesting that Obama is backing away from his campaign pledge to immediately close Gitmo. Interesting because I was driving home from work Friday night composing a post about the totemic obsession the Left has with closing the Guantanamo Bay facility where captured terrorists have been housed for the last six years.
I don't understand why it's wrong to have a place to keep potential bad guys that isn't situated within the contiguous 48 states. I mean is the argument that the detainees are being abused? Fine, let's figure out what the abuse is and end it... but stopping the abuse will not change the underlying reality. That there is always going to be value in keeping these guys, some of whom are almost certainly very bad dudes, away from the continental United States and in military custody.
Surely Obama understands that value as well, and this is what is behind his backpedal.
Here's the thing though. We're going to have to hold these folks somewhere... and even if Obama closes Gitmo and moves them to some other facility... I don't really understand what will have changed. The Left will have its symbolic victory, the closing of Gitmo, but those detainees will still be... somewhere. And wherever that somewhere is, you can bet there will be an American Marine standing guard with an M1... just like there were at Gitmo.
Meanwhile, I'll be here, holding my breath and waiting for all that change.
UPDATE: Drudge is reporting that on Day One, Obama will issue an executive order closing Gitmo. Well I guess the broken promises complaint will be rendered moot, but not my overall concern of, if not Gitmo, then where?
UPDATE 2: See I think Obama secretly agrees with me on this. He doesn't know what else to do with these guys either, but the Angry Left has said "you must close Gitmo"... and so he must. He needs to be very careful though. I think a nightmare scenario for Obama is one of these guys is released and then attacks the United States six months or a year down the road. That will pretty much be the end of Obama's administration, and if these guys are suddenly under the care of Portugal, or Sweden, we lose some of our ability to say "no that guy cannot be released."
UPDATE 3: Ahem... Pentagon says 61 former Gitmo detainees back on the battlefield.
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He'll issue the order to close it and then give himself a year or so to get it done because it's clear he has no idea what to do with those guys but he isn't going to turn them loose. It's funny now that Obama is going to take office the MSM meme has changed from "this is Bush shredding the Constitution" to "these are complex issues with no easy solutions that will take time to solve."
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