I thought winning the election would feel better than this.

[zipplewrath]

81. False dichotomy

Don't engage in the logical falicy of the false dichotomy. He didn't have only two choices. He doesn't have only two choices. He is in this mess largely of his own making. Remember, they are only there on his authority alone to begin with. With the stroke of a pen he could have "pardoned" them all and the place would be empty. He could have pursued civil trials (and probably lost every single one). He could have pursued much faster military tribunals, but has chosen not to. And you will note, he said absolutely NOTHING about Gitmo during the campaign, even though he regularly mentioned it in his first campaign.

From a recent article in Mother Jones:

Experts from both sides of the aisle do agree that when Obama talks about closing Guantanamo, he's not talking about ending the practice of indefinitely detaining terrorist suspects without trial. Instead, he's talking about what to do with the prisoners already in US custody, whose future is uncertain.

"Obama has embraced indefinite detention since 2009 and has never backed away from it," says Karen Greenberg*, who is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, and is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days. "He's never clearly made that break from George W. Bush."

Stimson thinks the president doesn't want to limit his options. "No president in his right mind is going to constrain his ability to detain somebody," he says.

That means even if Obama does manage to close Guantanamo, the sticky issue of indefinite detention will remain, and civil liberties activists won't be satisfied. "There's no such thing as closing Guantanamo if you move the prisoners to Illinois or somewhere else on earth, and keep indefinite detention," Greenberg says.

Much of this indicates that he has chosen to accept the current situation and not particularly try to achieve his originally stated goal of "closing" Gitmo. At best he wants to move it.