Meet the new GITMO, same as the old GITMO

  Ever since the president signed the executive order to close GITMO by the beginning of this year there has been debate over what to do with the terrorists that are confined there. Needless to say, the president didn’t meet his GITMO closing deadline and GITMO remains operational today. The original plan was to detain these terrorists in American jails and provide them with criminal trials but that plan met fierce resistance with the American people so the administration is rethinking its plan.

  Enter into the picture Bagram– a detention center in Afghanistan. The administration is now looking at relocating the GITMO terrorists to Bagram, and trying them in military tribunals.

  Meet the new GITMO, same as the old GITMO.

  It seems as if nothing is going to change for these terrorists except for the location they are being detained in. How is this a shift from the Bush administration’s policies?

  If we are going to hold them in a place that is basically a new GITMO, but in a different location, what is the difference? Why bother to do this other than to do it for public relations purposes, to appease the far left? But how will treating the terrorists in the same manner as they are being treated at GITMO appease the left, when nothing but the location changes? 

  The president signed an executive order to close GITMO because it became a hot button political issue during the 2008 election, but he never bothered to come up with a plan before he signed the order. Now he is stuck; he needs to do something in order to please the far left, yet he faces extreme pressure from moderate to conservative America to not move these terrorists onto the soil of the United States and grant them the same rights under our constitution; the same constitution that they are at war against.

  The administration’s new plan is to move the terrorists to a new location and continue Bush’s policies from there. While I am personally glad to see the president admit through his actions that he was wrong in his assessment of what to do with the GITMO detainees, I have to wonder what the far left thinks about this decision, if this indeed is the decision the president makes. If they are honest with themselves they will be forced to admit this is disappointing to them. And it must be maddening to them that Barack Obama is basically admitting– without saying it out loud– that President Bush was right all along about the GITMO detainees.