Tim Disney
On the closing of Gitmo
My friend Getz recently posted an article that David Limbaugh (brother of Rush…it’s pretty easy tell they’re related) wrote on Obama closing Gitmo
I have a few problems with David that I’d like to share with you. Let’s go through them one at a time:
How can President Obama credibly maintain that the issue is more complicated than he thought, when people have been raising these problems for years?
I’m not sure what Frank is referring to here. The closest thing I can find about this is this in which Obama says “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize”. This isn’t Obama being surprised by the complication of closing gitmo; it sounds to me like he’s trying to set realistic expectations for the hard liners who want it closed immediately.
Given that he now concedes there are unexplored complications, wasn’t it precipitous and imprudent of him to issue the closure order?
Not really, the closure will take upto a year. That doesn’t sound rash or imprudent to me.
What if further research indicates there are no reasonable alternatives other than to bring these prisoners to the U.S. mainland and grant them the full panoply of constitutional rights?
<sarcasm>Then the world will end!</sarcasm> Sorry, I guess if given the choice between giving suspected terrorists rights or treating them like animals (see Abu Ghraib) I’ll go with giving them rights. I don’t really see this as a huge problem.
That being the case, why won’t the president’s simultaneous executive order banning “torture” rectify this supposed image problem, thereby allowing us to preserve the facility and avoid these complicated issues concerning its closure?
Because symbols really do matter. Besides which Gitmo existed to carry out the previous administration’s willingness to ignore things like international law, the Geneva convention, the Constitution etc. Gitmo’s purpose was to hold its detainees in a legal limbo in order to give us a imaginary sense of security. If we are truly done with the flouting of human rights, then there is no reason for Gitmo to exist and it should be closed.
But if I’m wrong and his overriding concern truly is with international opinion, then could you please explain why he and other Democrats are constantly exaggerating and mischaracterizing the alleged incidents of abuse? We know there were only three cases in which waterboarding was used.
Only three!? One case of waterboarding would have been more then enough for an outcry. Torture (which waterboarding is) is unconstitutional, immoral, and goes against just about everything this country stands for. And at the highest level the Bush admistration endorsed it (secretly of course, and we didn’t really learn about that until 2008).
We do know, do we not, that information gleaned through these controversial techniques prevented real attacks and saved real lives? If the president is aware of no effective alternative techniques, will he tell the American people that he’d rather terrorist attacks occur and American lives be lost than debatable techniques be imposed?
First off, I’m not convinced the torture endorsed by the previous administration actually has saved lives. I’ve heard Cheney say it has but pardon me if I don’t believe a word he says.
Secondly, even if we assume that life saving information was gleaned from a torture session how do we know that there wasn’t a less immoral method of extracting it?
Thirdly, people will say anything under torture. How can we trust the information?
Fourthly, once the act of torture becomes known, more people will hate us. The act that is supposed to make us more secure actually makes us less so.
Fifthly, this is cliche but the ends do not justify the means. Torture is wrong. Even if we assumed that it could save lives, it would still not be worth it!
I’ll end with this clip from the daily show. My favorite is where Stewart says, “If you don’t stick to your values when tested, they’re not values! They’re hobbies.”
Exactly!
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