Hope And Change: Now Obama Might Not Close Guantanamo Until The End Of First Term In Office
Hopefully Obama’s first term in office will be his only term in office and The One’s backpedal on one of the issues he was loudest about during the campaign may just help make that wish come true.
In a wide-ranging 70-minute interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, the president-elect pledged quick action on the Middle East once he takes office, promised to support voting rights for D.C. residents, and said he will consider it a failure if he has not closed the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first term in office.
I said a while ago that Obama was going to end up between a rock and a hard place with Guantanamo Bay. It’s easy to throw rocks at the guy currently in charge of the dangerous terrorist detainees in the heat of a political campaign. It’s much harder to actually be the guy calling the shots.
Now that Obama is the guy calling the shots, he’s not quite as certain that closing down Guantanamo Bay and either releasing the terrorists detained their or giving them lawyers is such a great idea. Which is why he’s backpedaling on closing the detention facility (which he’s never actually visited, by the way) as quickly as he can.
My guess is that he’ll push back his proposed closing of the facility so far that eventually most people will just forget about his campaign promises. Whether or not they’ll actually forget remains to be seen.
