The Republicans have a strange emotional attachment to keeping the prison at Guantanamo Bay open for the foreseeable future. As an explanation, I kind of discount actual fear that the inmates might escape from a super maximum security prison in the United States. I know they fan that fear whenever the subject of closing Gitmo comes up, but I believe this is just a tactic.
Maybe they just don’t want to admit that they were wrong to support the Cuban prison in the first place. That certainly seems to animate the most vocal opponents who also are the most notorious neoconservative members of the Senate.
Take a look at how they’re responding to the administration’s just-announced plan to close the notorious facility:
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the armed services committee, all but rejected a plan he himself has urged the administration to submit. McCain has shifted his positions on Guantánamo from the Bush to the Obama administrations, but has positioned himself as the last gasp of Obama’s ambitions to win congressional support.
McCain, while pledging to look at the plan in hearings, termed it “a vague menu of options, not a credible plan for closing Guantánamo, let alone a coherent policy to deal with future terrorist detainees,” and said Obama had “missed a major chance”.
Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican on the armed services committee, preemptively rejected the final proposal in a statement.
“The president is doubling down on a dangerous plan to close Guantánamo – a move that I will continue to fight in the Senate,” Ayotte said.
Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican and war veteran, dismissed the plan as a “political exercise”. Cotton, a rising star in GOP national security circles, received significant media attention for declaring Guantánamo detainees “can rot in hell” last year.
Then there’s Marco Rubio, who is already criticizing the plan on the campaign trail, saying that not only shouldn’t the prison close, but we should never give the property at Gitmo back to a “communist dictatorship.”
I don’t expect Congress to act on the president’s plan. Maybe Obama will act after the November election when he’s truly a lame duck. What are they gonna do? Impeach him?
I think Obama represents a new approach to foreign policy, where cruelty and overkill are not always the top choice (see Iran deal). I would call it “smart imperialism”, where factors like world opinion and ways in which a goal can be achieved with the least expense of blood and treasure are taken into account. Neocon opposition to closing GITMO is opposition to this general approach to foreign policy
P.S
BTW I’m not sure a president Clinton wouldn’t mean a return to the pre-Obama days of foreign policy
I’d call it common sense.
Well, there’s more common sense to it than the Kissinger approach, but it’s still imperialistic.
political scientists call it “non hegemonic leadership” i.e. working via geniuine oalitions and alliances [not proxy]
They will keep it open until all the detainees die of natural causes. Then it’ll be OK to close it. Dumb!
I’m sure that once they reach the safety stock point of prisoners, the inventory will be replenished. Especially if the Republicans hold the Presidency.
As always, it’s overdetermined, but I think a genuine affection for brutalizing hated brown people and depriving them of human rights is a leading factor. However, I think a Republican president could close fairly easily.
Trump could close it in a NY minute. The site is much to valuable to squander on an open air prison. He could build a really yuuge resort emblazoned with a President Trump logo.
Yes bc sadistic torture porn excites the Masters and the Base, alike. Not snark. I’ve sadly reached the conclusion that these people enjoy the suffering of others. I could barely watch that torture porn propaganda crapola “Zero Dark Nonsense.” I think that movie was created for, among other deceptive reasons, “normalizing” torture. And witness the Donald who continues to LIE that torture “works.” And the Donald will do more and yuuuuge torture, and his base clapped and cheered and shouted Jav.. Hell Yeah!
By any measure, torture doesn’t work. Never has, never will.
Also I don’t think the GOP wants to close Gitmo bc somehow they have come to believe that closure represents the sheer barking utter failure of their whole foreign “policy” lying misadventure in Iraq & Afghanistan. Or something of that ilk.
I fully expect senile over the hill mad dog McCain to come barking out of his pen to be all shouty and enraged about closing this den of torture iniquity. Boo Yah!
I’m no expert on the CIA, but I’ve been trying to think of something successful they’ve ever done, and coming up empty. Well, Zero Dark Thirty may be the most successful CIA Op ever. They must have been popping champagne at Langley when that came out.
I’m traveling to Laos in some months, and I am reminded with horror about how “successful” the CIA – via Air America – was in nearly bombing at least sections of Laos back to the stone age. I, uh, guess that’s one success of the mighty CIA. That plus, selling heroin here and abroad that they bought from the Golden Triangle area.
When I hear the creepy assertion by Cruz to carpet bomb the ME back to glowing sand, it literally makes me sick to the stomach.
Most Americans then, and now, are blissfully unaware of America’s dirty war in Laos in the ’60s and the very horrific impact it had on the locals. And btw, it’s they very height of hypocrisy for US citizens to tisk tisk various other nations/groups/religions for destroying artifacts, museums, etc, when YOU and I PAID to nearly destroy a bunch of ancient artefacts, whole cities, museums in Laos, amongst many other places.
Google Plain of Jars, for example.
I could go on, but I’ll end there. CIA has sometimes been way too successful, frankly, just not in a way that many of us would want or like.
Ooops, and that’s not to neglect the many Laotian citizens who were murdered in the ’60s by the CIA in the dirty war that was never officially declared.
Laotian locals lived in caves (yes, really) to stay alive from the nearly constant bombing, and they were forced to do their farming – mostly rice – at night to avoid being murdered.
Depends on definition of success, of course…
Why, yes, they’d probably would–at least, they’d try it. Never underestimate the mendacity and stupidity of Republicans.
Gitmo is a symbol of torture and abuse. The Republican base loves torture and abuse, and are convinced that these are indispensable tools for protecting American survival. Having Gitmo makes them feel safer. Closing Gitmo strikes them as a symbol of American weakness and apology.
Of course not one word of that makes a damn bit of sense. But, to human beings, symbols are awfully powerful things. That’s why Obama wanted to close Gitmo in the first place.
If the Gitmo detainees end up on US soil, we will have to deal with them in the judicial system. The Republicans want to simply ignore the detainees. They don’t seem to care if these prisoners stay there for life, without trial, without sentence, which is totally wrong as far as I am concerned.
We need to finish the Iraq war chapter, which means finishing with the Gitmo prisoners.
I think that strange emotion is revenge at all costs, not to mention the pleasure of punishing some other sinner.
Cleek’s Law.
I can try every other explanation, but it always comes back to Cleek’s Law.
There is no principle involved in the Republican opposition. It’s not about safety or security. Again, it is simply the fact that this President, the black guy with the funny name, wants to do it. So it’s a complete non-starter for Republicans. Yet no one will dare to state this anywhere outside lefty blogistan.
It really is irrational, except that I think that they can get away with avoiding constitutional protections by keeping them offshore. At least I think there’s a legal theory there in the bowels of the Pentagon that some little Kafkaesque figure in the basement dreamed up.
And remember, we’ve got more wars scheduled. Libya is about to reignite. We’ve got Chechnya (yet again), Dagestan, Armenia and of course Ukraine hasn’t been completely ground down and Russia’s gas is still transversing it. Believe me, if a Repub or Clinton are elected President we’ll have opportunities for plenty more terrorists. Then there’s our old standby, Afghanistan, that’s always good for scooping up terrorists.
2016: Feel the terror!
What are they gonna do? Impeach him?
They’ll find a compliant Bush-appointed appeals court judge to issue an injunction against Obama’s executive order and run out the clock, that’s what.
No. They’ll get still-dead Scalia to issue the injunction. The GOPers are claiming (really) that Scalia still gets to be a sitting judge even while dead. So, why not?