Movement on Gitmo: Why does this have to be so hard?
by digby
President Barack Obama’s renewed push to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects has given a glimmer of hope to foreign governments that he will fulfill that promise and triggered diplomatic maneuvering from U.S. allies eager to bring home long-held detainees.
Kuwait has hired lobbyists to help bring its two remaining prisoners home. British Prime Minister David Cameron personally pressed Obama at the Group of 8 summit last month to release the United Kingdom’s final detainee. And the fate of Afghans being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba has been at the forefront of peace talks between the U.S., Taliban and Afghanistan.
The indefinite captivity has created tension with some important U.S. allies, particularly in the Arab world, the native home of many of the 166 remaining detainees. Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are among those countries that have pressed the U.S. to turn over their nationals.
The Obama administration is in the midst of determining which detainees present the lowest risk for terrorist activity if released – considering both their personal histories and security in the countries to which they will be returned…
David Cynamon, an American lawyer based in the Middle East who is working with Kuwait on getting their detainees back, said in recent months they are finally having meaningful negotiations after years of “radio silence.”
“You would think with a close ally like Kuwait they would at least get a hearing, but they kept getting the brush off,” Cynamon said.
But hey, it’s only five, six extra years of imprisonment. Not a biggie, I guess. Also too, the prisoners finally had someone sussed out how you have to do business in Washington. Appeals to decency, morality and basic human rights are clearly not taken seriously. This is how you get things done:
Kuwait hired The Potomac Square Group, a Washington lobbying firm, to help spur talks for the transfer of Faiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah.
“They want all their citizens back if the United States is not going to charge and try them,” Cynamon said. “Now that the negotiations have started, I do think they are meaningful. But for a two-year period there was nobody who was answering the door.”
I honestly don’t understand why this has to be so hard. President Obama pledged to close the prison and even though congress has tied his hands, he has had the authority to release many of these prisoners since he took office. Now that they are submitting themselves to force-feeding and making the US look bad, the administration is finally making some moves to do this. This has been happening only since May of 2013 two months ago. Why does it always take such dramatic pressure from outside before this administration will behave in a way that comports with its alleged values? It’s not as if the Republicans (or the terrorists, for that matter) will give them any credit for “holding out as long as they could:”
Administration officials say they are working aggressively to certify detainees for release under Obama’s directive in May to transfer as many detainees as possible to other countries. The president, in announcing new steps to get the detainees out, said diplomatic concerns are chief among the reasons to close the facility.
“Gitmo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law,” Obama said during a speech at National Defense University. “Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will end up at Gitmo.”
Congress has fought Obama from achieving the goal he announced upon taking office in 2009 of closing Guantanamo. Lawmakers have blocked detainees from coming into the United States, but the Pentagon can issue a national security waiver to transfer the detainees overseas.
So far the Obama administration hasn’t used that power to move out any detainee, even though 86 have been cleared for transfer. But administration officials say they expect to begin transfers soon.
Last month, Obama appointed lawyer Clifford Sloan to reopen the State Department’s Office of Guantanamo Closure. Obama said the sole responsibility for Sloan and a yet-to-be named envoy at the Pentagon will be to transfer detainees overseas, and Sloan’s team is busy finding its first candidates.
That’s good. It’s only taken five years. Better late than never I guess.
All the caterwauling about the US having a finger stuck in its eye with the NSA revelations is a joke — the US has been pounding itself in the face for nearly a decade with this shocking violation of its own principles and basic human rights. Finding out that it is collecting information on huge numbers of people, including its own citizens, is a mild transgression of our values by comparison.
I’m glad they are finally coming around and using some measures they’ve had at their disposal to end this nightmare. Every time I see someone wringing her hands over Edward Snowden “betraying” our country and and our president and making us “less safe” with his revelations about global spying I want to scream. There is nothing anyone could do in this so-called War on Terror that makes us any less safe than the continued imprisonment of these men, many of them innocent of any crimes, in Guantanamo.
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