Here is how Congressional Republicans ought to respond to President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay: “Thanks Mr. President, we’ll take it up just as soon as we confirm your nominee to replace Justice Scalia.”
Obama’s plan is dead-on-arrival. Here is why.
There is no public support for closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing any of the terrorists held there to the US. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, Americans oppose doing so by an overwhelming margin of 66% to 29%.
The opposition to what Obama proposes is bipartisan. It is opposed by 84% of Republicans, 64% of Independents and even a 54% majority of Democrats.
REUTERS/Bob Strong.
Other polls show similar results.
Obama’s plan is pure politics. He made a promise to his liberal base to close Guantanamo in his first year in office, but never fulfilled it. He could not leave office without at least going through the motions of presenting a plan to do so. But he knows full well that the GOP-controlled Congress will never act on that plan. After all, it was a Democrat-controlled Senate that first passed legislation barring him from bringing detainees here to the US.
Moreover, while the liberal base would not forgive Obama if he did not put forward a GTMO closure plan, the conservative base would never forgive congressional Republicans if they went along with it.
Republicans could not stop Obama from shutting down the CIA’s interrogation program, or from killing virtually every senior terrorist leader he found with drones.
Republicans could not stop Obama from withdrawing from Iraq, and allowing the Islamic State to regroup and reconstitute themselves in that country.
Republicans could not stop Obama from doing nothing while Syria became a Grand Central Station for jihadists coming from all over the world to join ISIS.
Republicans could not stop Obama from drawing down our troops to dangerously low levels in Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to make a comeback, ISIS to come in, and al Qaeda to return to the country where they planned the 9/11 attacks.
Republicans cannot force Obama to use Guantanamo as a detention and interrogation facility for newly captured terrorists, or stop Obama from releasing dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo to other countries.
But they can stop Obama from bringing those dangerous terrorists to the United States. They can stop him from putting murderous jihadists into the federal prison system. They can stop him from giving 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and his co-conspirators full Constitutional rights once they touch down on US soil. And they can preserve Guantanamo as a strategic interrogation center for the next president to employ.
There are a lot of areas of disagreement among the remaining leading GOP presidential candidates, but Guantanamo is not one of them. All have said that they not only want to keep GTMO open, but:
- Ted Cruz has slammed Obama for releasing dangerous terrorists, asking “Does the White House want to close Gitmo more than it wants to keep terrorists and their accomplices locked up?”;
- Marco Rubio has said, “if we capture any of these ISIS killers alive, they are going to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and we’re going to find out everything they know, because when I’m president, unlike Barack Obama, we will keep this country safe”;
- Donald Trump has said, “I would leave it just the way it is, and I would probably fill it up with more people that are looking to kill us”; and,
- John Kasich has said, “These are people, some of them are the worst of the worst. Why would we send them into our country?”
In other words, there is zero chance that what Obama proposed today will happen before he leaves office. His GTMO plan is DOA.
from – Latest Content http://ift.tt/1TDkI6b
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment