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Saturday, May 23. 2009
Appeasing the Right
Barack Obama and the Democrats are quickly becoming a bitter disappointment. Obama is willing to let the people who authorized torture — including the chief architect of the torture program Dick Cheney — walk on the issue. Congress isn’t in too big of a hurry to do anything about torture and now Speaker Pelosi is caught up in a faux controversy over what she might have known and when.Then, after applauding the president for signing an order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Congressional Democrats caved to Cheney and the Republicans by not voting for the funds to begin the process of closing the Guantanamo Bay facility.
What’s really disappointing is that the Dems caved over ridiculous arguments about the “release” of these terrorists and terror suspects. There were Republican clowns like Senator John Thune of South Dakota speechifying in the well of the Senate that President Obama’s plan was to not only let the terrorists loose in American cities — free — but pay for them to live in America.
What? No one, other than some Republicans, has said Guantanamo prisoners would be set free on American soil. Quite the contrary.
In reality, the U.S. has a “supermax” federal prison in Colorado that already houses some notorious terrorists as well as some of the most violent and dangerous convicts in custody anywhere. The worst of the worst. To suggest this facility isn’t capable of housing the worst of Guantanamo is ridiculous. The only reason the Republicans oppose it is because the proposal is now coming from a Democrat president. Two years ago, when he was Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez said the Colorado facility was capable of housing the Gitmo detainees.
Nearly every state, including California has its own supermax facility. In this state it’s Pelican Bay. The feds could actually pay states to house some of the Guantanamo Bay detainees in these various state-run supermax prisons.
Then there are those prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have done nothing, won’t be convicted of anything and are, in the eyes of our legal system, innocent. What should be done with them? Since they are foreign nationals, repatriated to their countries of origin — deported.
But President Obama has a different plan. He wants to hold them indefinitely without cause and without due process; deny them habeas corpus, the central pillar of our legal system and our freedoms. Habeas corpus is the foundation of our justice system.
Obama campaigned on returning to the rule of law and yet he has skirted these particular issues primarily out of fear. He doesn’t want to anger the relative few voters who consider themselves Republicans by pursuing charges against those who authorized torture and he’s decided the core of our freedoms won’t be extended to the few Guantanamo Bay detainees who are innocent — despite the fact that the Bush Administration released hundreds of Guantanamo detainees who were found innocent in previous years.
We have Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich going on every talk show available telling us the interrogation techniques ordered by Cheney are not torture and instead of pushing back, save for a few, Congressional Democrats leave it unchallenged. President Obama has strongly stated his position, that it is torture, and Speaker Pelosi has echoed the president.
But if the president wants to seriously return to the rule of law, then he needs to seriously pursue those who broke the law by ordering our agents to torture suspects, including Alberto Gonzalez and Dick Cheney. If President Obama wants to strictly adhere to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, then he needs to release those detainees who are innocent and send them back to their home countries.But he won’t. The Democrats have proven themselves to be cowards, scared off by the politics of fear once again despite the election in November that rejected those Republican tactics and philosophy.
The Democrats, including the president, need to grow a backbone.
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