I really don't have much to add to Glenn Greenwald's evaluation of how the administration is currently handling the closure of Guantanamo Bay Prison:
The sentiment behind Obama's campaign vow to close Guantanamo was the right one, but the reality of how it's being done negates that almost entirely. What is the point of closing Guantanamo only to replicate its essential framework -- imprisonment without trials -- a few thousand miles to the North? It's true that the revised military commissions contain some important improvements over the ones used under Bush: they provide better access to counsel and increased restrictions on the use of hearsay and evidence obtained via coercion. But the fundamental elements of Guantanamo are being kept firmly in place. What made Guantanamo so offensive and repugnant was not the fact that it was located in Cuba rather than Illinois. The primary complaint was that it was a legal black hole because the detainees were kept in cages indefinitely with no charges or trials. That is being retained with the move to the North.
The closure of Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration and others argued, is a necessary part of depriving extremists of a symbol of injustice that they can use to bolster their narrative of a holy war between righteous warriors and an oppressive West. Replicating everything that's wrong with Gitmo in Illinois doesn't solve the national security problem that refusing to follow our own laws creates. Yesterday, Anthony Romero, the head of the ACLU, released a statement saying that "Shutting down Guantánamo will be nothing more than a symbolic gesture if we continue its lawless policies onshore."
Astonishingly, although the differences between Bush policy circa-2008 and Obama policy now are minimal, the right is still gripped with hysteria over the decision to move Gitmo detainees to the United States. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Gitmo detainees have been released without charge or conviction and have not taken up arms against the United States, conservatives still assume every individual at Guantanamo Bay to be a terrorist. As a result, this National Review editorial calls the legal rulings that found many of the last administration's policies unconstitutional and extended rights to Gitmo detainees "pro-terrorist," and warns that the Obama administration is filled with human rights activists who will force more "pro-terrorist" policy.
The right's reaction to Obama national security policy has been as deranged as it has been to everything else the administration has done--they don't actually see the policy here, the degree to which things they defended during the Bush administration are being preserved, for them Obama is a radical secret Muslim terrorist sympathizer and all conclusions flow from this first premise.
-- A. Serwer
