There are 11 comments.

1. Contributor
   Diane Ellis

   Your explanation suggests that Congress cut off funding for efforts to close the facility at Guantanamo for noble reasons. This is in contrast to The Hill which ran an article this weekend (featured on Drudge) explaining the move as an act of defiance and demonstration against Obama resulting from the anger over the tax deal. Do you think there’s any truth to this explanation, or is it simply sensationalist (and cynical) reporting?

2. Inactive
   Mel Foil

   I’ve also read, many Guantanamo detainees don’t want to be released. What do they have to look forward to at home? Often, just life in a much more uncomfortable and dangerous prison.

3. Member
   Stuart Creque

   Obama campaigned on the idea that America’s ‘shameful’ and ‘egregious’ treatment of Gitmo detainees was harming our national security by motivating jihad. And in office, he’s been so terrified of capturing more combatants and making them detainees that he’s adopted the very strategy he denounced in his campaign of “just bombing villages” – as though Predator strikes don’t enrage the same people he thinks Gitmo so enrages. That is a special kind of cowardice, breathtaking to see in a Commander-in-Chief.

4. Inactive
   Starve the Beast

   John Yoo: The left’s myth of Guantanamo Bay is finally dying.

   I think that should read, “The left’s myth of Guantanamo Bay should finally be dying.”

   In the real world, these things never die, no matter how many stakes you drive through them. I have lots of liberal friends in the San Francisco area, and I can confidently tell you that:

   • George Bush stole Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, and he conspired with bin Laden to bring down the World Trade Center;
   • Bill Clinton was responsible for the economic boom of the 90s, and never did anything against the law;
   • Global warming will kill us, but the corporate fatcats are supressing the truth;
   • Bristol Palin is actually Trig’s mother.

   And on and on.

   Any narrative that is useful to the left never dies, no matter how ridiculous it looks in retrospect. I predict that we’ll be hearing about the evil that is Gitmo for at least the next decade.

5. Member
   Maurilius

   I’m ambivalent about the drone strikes. Ultimately it seems a successful bid by Obama to kill our enemies in a way his base won’t complain about, and as such it may be better than not doing them.

   But it seems clear that his base should be picketing the White House every day over this action that is much more morally troubling than water-boarding. Out and out killing targets that we can at best hope are the actual targets — and anyone who happens to be near them — seems beyond the pale compared to a form of torture that journalists have regularly chosen to undertake voluntarily.

6. Inactive
   Spin

   Maurilius: But it seems clear that his base should be picketing the White House every day over this action that is much more morally troubling than water-boarding. · Dec 12 at 12:38pm

   That’s a good point. But you know, if Obama does it, it is likely a necessary, if undesirable action. He is so much more a man of the world than Bush was, and therefore is better able to make these kinds of decisions.

7. Coolidge
   Sisyphus

    

   Starve the Beast John Yoo: The left’s myth of Guantanamo Bay is finally dying. I think that should read, “The left’s myth of Guantanamo Bay should finally be dying.” … Any narrative that is useful to the left never dies, no matter how ridiculous it looks in retrospect. I predict that we’ll be hearing about the evil that is Gitmo for at least the next decade. · Dec 12 at 9:57am

   The narrative will change, actually, almost without missing a beat, if a new narrative works better, and the new narrative then was always the narrative. 

8. Contributor
   John Yoo

   Post author

   Diane Ellis, Ed.: Your explanation suggests that Congress cut off funding for efforts to close the facility at Guantanamo for noble reasons. This is in contrast to The Hill which ran an article this weekend (featured on Drudge) explaining the move as an act of defiance and demonstration against Obama resulting from the anger over the tax deal. Do you think there’s any truth to this explanation, or is it simply sensationalist (and cynical) reporting? · Dec 12 at 9:27am

   That’s an interesting angle. My guess is that this is more than Democratic Congress anger at Obama. If the Democratic Congress is generally more liberal than Obama, and the leadership and caucus that remains after the midterm elections are too, then they would have shown their unhappiness by moving to the left. What they should have done if they were so mad is close Gitmo immediately, cut off funding for military commissions, and buy that old prison in Illinois to house the terrorists.

9. Member
   The perspective of those of us who are critical of Gitmo would be better understood if its defenders acknowledged that many innocent people were held there for years on end.

10. Member
    Does anyone know what the Allies did with German POWs after WW2? I wonder if a comparative examination of detainee techniques is possible here. I gather that German POWs were less suicidal than our guests at Gitmo and there are obviously other differences. But nevertheless…

    “Gitmo alumni.” Very clever.

11. Inactive
    Spin

    John,

    Here’s a question perhaps you can answer. The rules of war allow combatants to be held indefinitely. does that mean that the detainees can be expected to be held until they die? It doesn’t seem we will ever be rid of Islamic terrorism (or any other for that matter), so can we expect the numbers to grow? Certainly not under this Administration, but the next may well be Republican. Do the US have a long term strategy in place?

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