Barack Obama's Greatest Accomplishment (so far)

That would be restoring George Bush's national security credentials, and it is an impressive accomplishment, indeed. He has basically adopted all of Bush's policies, with the notable exception of embracing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. On that subject, Bush was thoughtful and analytical (as always, in spite of what you mistakenly think), whereas Obama was as intellectually superficial as he was morally pompous. He still is.

Don't believe me? Consider these comments from George Bush from way back in 2006:

Press Conference of the President
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 14, 2006

The Rose Garden
...
Q Thank you, Mr. President. You expressed serious concern when you learned about the Guantanamo suicides, and you and your aides immediately called allies. I'm wondering, how concerned are you about the U.S. image abroad, based on this incident and the ongoing investigation in Haditha and Abu Ghraib and other incidents? And, also, why shouldn't Guantanamo be closed now?

THE PRESIDENT: I'd like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we're holding some people that are darn dangerous, and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts. And the best way to handle -- in my judgment, handle these types of people is through our military courts. And that's why we're waiting on the Supreme Court to make a decision.

Part of closing Guantanamo is to send some folks back home, like we've been doing. And the State Department is in the process of encouraging countries to take the folks back. Of course, sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home country. It's a little bit of a Catch-22. But we're working through this.

No question, Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our friends -- provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to. And my answer to them is, is that we are a nation of laws and rule of law. These people have been picked up off the battlefield and they're very dangerous. And so we have that balance between customary justice, the typical system, and one that will be done in the military courts. And that's what we're waiting for.

Eventually, these people will have trials, and they will have counsel and they will be represented in a court of law. I say, "these people," those who are not sent back to their mother countries. You know, we've sent a lot of people home already. I don't think the American people know that, nor do the citizens of some of the countries that are concerned about Guantanamo.

That is, by 2006, Bush believed that America had been safe for long enough that it was finally time to close Guantanamo Bay. But, as he saw it, we had better have a thoughtful plan in place before we do, and coming up with such a plan was not trivially easy.

Fast forward to January of 2009. A new president is in power, and, by God, he's going to restore our moral authority throughout the world by just closing the Guantanamo Bay detection facility once and for all:

January 22, 2009

Obama signs order to close Guantanamo Bay facility

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.

During a signing ceremony at the White House, Obama reaffirmed his inauguration pledge that the United States does not have "to continue with a false choice between our safety and our ideals."

If you mistook Obama's gratuitous moral grandstanding for intellectual depth of analysis (as many in the media did), then you probably celebrated this shining moment in the history of our great nation. But if you engaged your higher brain centers, you were likely less impressed. In fact, you might even have recognized that Obama's comments were ungracious and were beneath the dignity of the high office he holds because they imply that Bush was taking the moral low road and that he compromised our ideals in an effort to make us safe. Those are cheap shots that fail to recognize that reasonable people of good character can disagree about the hard choices that face a president who is trying to keep America safe (the kind of cheap shots that George Bush never ever took).

Either George Bush or Barack Obama is misguided about what it takes to close Guantanamo, and the evidence continues to pile up that it is our current commander-in-chief, not our previous one, who needs an education on the subject:

WASHINGTON — In an abrupt shift, Senate Democratic leaders said they would not provide the $80 million that President Obama requested to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The move escalates pressure on the president, who on Thursday is scheduled to outline his plans for the 240 terrorism suspects still held there.

In recent days, Mr. Obama has faced growing demands from both parties, but particularly Republicans, to lay out a more detailed road map for closing the Guantánamo prison and to provide assurances that detainees would not end up on American soil, even in maximum security prisons.
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“Guantánamo makes us less safe,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference where he laid out the party’s rationale for its decision, which is expected to be voted on this week. “However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”
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“In looking at the position of the House, that was more logical,” Mr. Reid said. “We have clearly said all along that we wanted a plan. We don’t have a plan. And based on that, this is not the bill to deal with this.”

Say what? George Bush wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, but he was thoughtful and reflective enough to realize that a plan had to be in place first (because it is a complicated issue). Usually, that's the order in which things are done: make a plan first and take action second. By contrast, Obama seemed frighteningly unaware of the basic facts of the matter, so he simply engaged in moral posturing on the day after he took office by taking bold action, but without a plan. Unfortunately, basic facts like this one, need to be addressed first:

1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.
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Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

Mustn't upset Obama's moral grandstanding by revealing facts that illustrate why the decisions about Guantanamo are actually difficult. Instead, some apparently believe that it would be better to let the White House act as if it is a simple choice between doing what the morally depraved wished to do vs. doing what the morally enlightened would rather do. That's the superficial stance of many of Obama's supporters, but it is intellectually vacuous. It might be best to close the facility, as both Bush and Obama want to do, but it is just downright silly to pretend that it is easy and needs no plan. The choice we face is between closing Guantanamo with a plan or closing it without a plan. Bush chose the former; Obama the latter.

Here is another reason to plan first and then act second (not the other way around):

FBI chief worried about Gitmo detainees in U.S.

Mueller says prisoners could radicalize others at high-security prisons

WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States could pose a number of risks, even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons. Responding to FBI concerns, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration would not put Americans at risk.
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At the start of Wednesday's hearing, Mueller was asked what concerns the FBI has about the release of Guantanamo detainees.

"The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others," Mueller said, as well as "the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States."

"All of those are relevant concerns," Mueller said.

The FBI chief said he would not discuss specific individuals. He said there were also potential risks to putting detainees in maximum security prisons.

Except for Guantanamo Bay (and harsh interrogations of high-level al Qaeda detainees), Obama is coming around to Bush's position on everything. Karl Rove has noticed:

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.
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These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Even the New York Times has noticed:

News Analysis

Obama After Bush: Leading by Second Thought

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.

Mr. Obama’s opening gambits as president were bold declarations of new directions, from announcing the closing of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to sweeping restrictions on interrogation techniques. He advertised both as a return to traditional American values, after the diversions taken by George W. Bush to the detriment of America’s image abroad and of itself.

But as he showed this week in the way he dealt with those two hard cases, Mr. Obama has begun to scale back. Faced with the choice of signaling an unambiguous break with the policies of the Bush era, or maintaining some continuity with its practices, the president has begun to come down on the side of taking fewer risks with security, even though he is clearly angering the liberal elements of his political base.
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But the bottom line is that Mr. Obama’s course corrections have real-life consequences. Mr. Bush kept saying that he wanted to close Guantánamo Bay but could not find an effective replacement for it. So he never acted. Mr. Obama began with that action, and now discovers it is more difficult to accomplish than it seemed a few months ago.
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“These issues are always more difficult in practice than they are in the environment of a campaign,” Samuel R. Berger, who served as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, said Friday. “In the end, what you have to remember is that President Obama is going to close Guantánamo and he is going to end torture. But I think everyone admits that doing so has proven to be more difficult than anyone anticipated.”

The reality is that the second 100 days of this presidency are bound to be filled with course corrections. Announcing departures from the Bush-era practices was, as one of Mr. Obama’s national security aides put it recently, “grabbing the low-hanging fruit.” Writing the rules for the next four years, or eight, requires lawyers, compromises and, inevitably, disappointments for those who discover that cleanly breaking with the past always sounds more appealing than living with the consequences.

Leading by second thought, and not by just any second thought. Barack Obama is leading by adopting George Bush's thoughts. When both Karl Rove and the New York Times notice the same thing, you can pretty much take it to the bank.

But on Guantanamo Bay, Obama's speech today suggests that he still appears to be stuck in moral grandstanding mode:

He defended his decision to eventually close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, saying the prison has "set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."

Would you stop with the superficial moral grandstanding already? Remember, the choice is to close Guantanamo Bay with a plan (the Bush option) or without a plan (the Obama option).

At least Obama is being a bit more gracious about his predecessor now that he is learning how hard it can be to deal with these issues:

After September 11, "faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions," Obama said.

"I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often, our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions."

Fine, but if that isn't an example of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't what is. Obama is a the one who made a hasty decision to close Guantanamo Bay on his second day in office, and he did so to fit ideological predispositions. But I believe that his decision was motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people, and I'm glad he recognizes that this is true of Bush as well. But he still has no plan, and that's remarkable to me:

Obama said his administration was in the process of studying each of the remaining Guantanamo detainees "to determine the appropriate policies for dealing with them."

"Nobody has ever escaped from one of our `supermax' prisons which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists," Obama said.

Obama disclosed that administration lawyers had approved 50 detainees at Guantanamo for transfer to other countries.

Even so, it was not clear how many countries were prepared to take them.

Obama used the speech as an effort to try to retake the initiative on the matter. He spoke a day after the Senate, at the behest of majority Democrats, followed the lead of the House and voted decisively to deny his request for $80 million to close the prison. Lawmakers said they would block the funds until he gave a more detailed accounting of what would happen to the detainees.

He sought to do that in his speech, but stopped short of offering a clear answer on the key question of what to do with detainees who won't be tried for war crimes but are likely to be held indefinitely.

He described this group as those "who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people."

"I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face," Obama said.

He said that the his administration would "exhaust every avenue that we have" to prosecute detainees but there would still be some left "who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes" yet remain a threat.

Among these, he said, are prisoners who have expressed allegiance to Osama bin Laden "or otherwise made it clear they want to kill Americans."

The main concern is not that detainees will escape from supermax prisoners. Didn't Obama listen to the director of the FBI? Obama does not know which foreign countries will take the prisoners he wants to send abroad. He did not explain what to do with detainees who won't be tried for war crimes but are likely to be held indefinitely. He still has no plan. It makes no sense to take bold action first and then start thinking about the plan. You have to do things the other way around. I hope that, in time, Obama will come around to Bush's way of doing things on this issue, too (as he has with most other national security issues).