Obama's failure to know the enemy leads to Gitmo gaffs

It’s been a week of detainee drama for the Obama administration, none of which would have been necessary but for President Obama’s self-inflicted policy problems.

Obama rode (and stoked) the fire of anti-Bush liberals into the White House by being The Anti-Bush: Everything was Bush’s fault. Pertinently, Obama promised during the campaign to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claiming it and the military tribunals enacted by Bush were “an enormous failure.” On only his third day as president, Obama signed an executive order to close Gitmo within a year. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast.

Obama still wants to close Gitmo but closure is a tougher sell when you haven’t figured out what you’ll do afterwards. The Senate today voted 90-6 to scrap funding for Obama’s closing plans meaning every Republican and virtually every Democrat rejected the plans. The administration spins this—with Democrat support—as a matter of Congress needing more details before agreeing to fund the closure. That’s putting lipstick on a pig.

President Obama can say he’s keeping his campaign promise, and he is to a point. But promises made in the heat of a campaign, where facts are few but finger-pointing is plentiful, are difficult to keep once the campaign stops and the facts become known. Now that Obama is receiving the most top secret of information, closing Gitmo still sounds good publicly but makes him wince privately.

Any closure plan—no matter how specific or detailed—will face huge obstacles. Primarily there’s the pesky matter of what to do with the 240 or so detainees. No one save the ACLU seems to like the idea of housing them in US prisons. Other nations are smart enough not to take them. That was one of the problems President Bush ran into when he wanted to close Gitmo, a fact liberals conveniently forget. Nevertheless, even most liberals don’t want the detainees released into our population, though ACORN could use the volunteers.

Then there’s the justice angle. Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling last year, Obama has the green light to prosecute detainees in our federal courts. You’d think that would please The Anti-Bush, except that Obama recently expressed support for the very military tribunals he criticized during the campaign. And the administration successfully convinced a federal judge this week that some Gitmo prisoners can be held indefinitely without charges—just like the previous administration Obama so eagerly disparaged. Would the real Obama please stand up?

Worst of all were the comments of administration Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today. In response to questions about Gitmo, Gibbs reiterated that the president believes it should be closed because (Bush is evil and) Gitmo is a “rallying cry” for terrorists.

This, the administration’s official position, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our enemies. Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists don't need a “rallying cry” to plan and carry out terror attacks against us. Our very existence is their rallying cry! Our stench as the Great Satan has led them to war against us for decades, only we didn’t wake up and smell the jet fuel until 9/11.

Gitmo itself is not a rallying cry. Rather, the claim that Gitmo must be closed is a rallying cry that plays into the terrorists’ notion of America as the Great Satan. If America would just close Gitmo, liberals claim, our evil (read: Bush/Cheney) would be vanquished and the Muslims would like and respect us again. That will stop them from wanting to hurt us.

Hogwash. The terrorists have sworn to destroy us because of who we are. You can’t compromise a dispute with someone whose singular objective is your death. The enemy publicly expresses support for the nicest, most compassionate outreaches but privately views them with derision and as weakness.

Obama boxed himself into a corner during the campaign and by so quickly ordering Gitmo closed. In recent weeks, he has vacillated between his promised Change and his continuation of Bush’s policies. Now he has yet to come up with a viable plan to deal with closure and the related issues comprehensively. The right answer is to keep Gitmo open and stop the self-flagellation.

Being The Anti-Bush isn’t so easy after all.