One of Barack Obama’s many campaign promises was the swift closure of the Guantanamo Bay facility, which houses a variety of terrorists and non-combatants. But even Teh One has discovered that figuring out what to do with dangerous people isn’t as easy as signing an executive order.
As Ed Morrissey notes (who got it from Ed Whalan, Obama wasn’t kidding when he said that closing our torture chambers won’t be as easy as he thought.
Buried amid the news of calls for Social Security and entitlement reform is the news that,
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.
Hmm. Somehow, I don’t think four years translates to immediately. I think this can be counted among Obama’s flip-flops.
It is not necessarily a flip flop. I read he will be issuing the executive order immediately and then they will begin to work on closing it. Closing the base will not be an over night thing since the fate of the detainees needs to be determined. So he does seem to be keeping his promise on closing the base, just not as quick as he said. In reality politicians lie about things like that all the time in order to create buzz. Obama did it, McCain and Palin did it. This is not a total flip-flop. Obama acknowledged that there are more pressing matters such as the economy to attend to right now. I’m sure that some of the promises McCain made would have been pushed back as well.
So he does seem to be keeping his promise on closing the base, just not as quick as he said.
Clintonesque!
In reality politicians lie about things like that all the time in order to create buzz. Obama did it, McCain and Palin did it.
“Everybody does it” didn’t work with my mom.
This is not a total flip-flop.
So, you acknowledge that it’s a partial flip-flop?
I’m sure that some of the promises McCain made would have been pushed back as well.
Conjecture. We’ll never know.
What we do know is that Obama made promises that he can’t keep, since he’s beginning to realize that being in charge and flapping your gums on the campaign trail are two different things.
If the issue is on closing Guantanamo, then it is not a flip-flop. I’m saying that the only thing he broke was on how fast it was going to close down. He says he is still committed to the closing.
Every President has been unable to fulfill all of their promises. While it would be nice for them to stick to all of their campaign promises, it doesn’t always happen.
The Right will always attack a Left politician for failing to fulfill everything they say down to a T and the same is of the Left. If McCain was president, DailyKos would be nitpicking every promise that he did not fulfill precisely as he said he would.
On the campaign trail, Obama promised that closing Guantanamo Bay would be his “first priority.” Of course, he also named a lot of other “first priorities.” Even earlier this week, as one of my links showed, leftwingers were arguing that issuing an executive order to study closing Gitmo would cause it to be closed “immediately.”
There’s a disconnect here between what Obama said on the campaign trail and what he is doing and will do as president. Will he close Gitmo in four years? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. There are a lot of very, very bad people there, the kind we don’t want on American soil if we can avoid it. These are the guys that other countries aren’t even going to “grudgingly” take. What do you do with them?
My bet is that Obama will “study” closing the Cuban facility until it is no longer a big issue. With the economy the way it is, there will be plenty of apologists willing to give Teh One props for “trying.”
Also, Tony, I’m just giving Obama the Bush treatment. You know, every misstep, every misstatement will be used to bash him. But I promise not to either call for his impeachment or compare him to Hitler.
The problem with the far Left is that they fail to rationalize. Same thing with the far Right. I’m talking extremes. People who vilify the other side seriously. Sure Obama was probably one of the most liberal senators depending on who you ask to gauge that, but I also believe that he is smart enough to govern moderately. Which is why you see so many far Left wing blogs up in arms when he pushes things aside to work on the economy or when he has Rick Warren do a prayer. Mind you that Obama also asked the gay Bishop to do a prayer as well before Rick, so Rick was only balance. But I digress.
And to be completely cynical, there is nothing stopping Obama from putting these prisoners in another detention facility or making ones that cannot be tried “disappear”for a lack of a better term. Maybe that’s a little too conspiracy theorist, but hey why not toss it out there.
You’re right that the Gitmo issued will be “studied”. I believe though that he will probably intend to close it towards the end of his first term, and of course all of that is dependent on the political climate of the time.
Tony wrote:
Well, perhaps so, but some of us would wonder about the breaking of a promise after he has been elected but before he has even been inaugurated.
I’m no scholar but I’m sure there have been numerous example. I’m not defending it, just saying Obama is probably not the only one to do so.
I think along with a bit of flip-flopping, Obama is learning that certain words like immediately and timeframes themselves mean an entirely different things as campaign rhetoric and MSM love ends and the tough reality of presiding over the nation begins. Very different animals, that. The only thing I am sure of regarding him at this point in time is that he is inconsistent and appears to always be in a continual state of policy/belief flux which appears consistent with what we’ve read about his formative political years.
I read tonight where Obama once said in September, 2008,
“As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight.”
Today he is saying this,
“But the president-elect suggested Friday that he would wait for Congress to weigh in on the issue. “Well, if we can do something legislative then I usually prefer a legislative process because those are the people’s representatives,” Obama said in a CNN interview.”
Meh.