BACKPEDALING ON GUANTANAMO

By H. N. BURDETT

There can be no plausible argument that there are those among the 172 detainees in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay who require imprisonment lest they become grave threats to national security. There are 47 prisoners in this category at that facility.

In his 2008 election campaign, President Obama pledged to shut down Guantanamo. Four months into his presidency in a speech at the National Archives, he declared: "Rather than safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American security." The president called Guantanamo "a rallying cry for our enemies" and ordered it closed within one year.

In May of this year, it will be a full two years since President Obama spoke those words. But less than a dozen of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo since it began receiving inmates from the war on terrorism in 2002 have stood trial.

The president has now signed an executive order establishing indefinite detainment for those who remain a significant threat to national security.

With the interminably long 2012 presidential election campaign gearing up, the president is doubtless recalling the Democratic party nightmare of the 1988 presidential campaign and the noxious Willie Horton episode.

While Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was Governor of Massachusetts, Willie Horton, serving a life sentence for stabbing a boy to death, was granted a weekend furlough during which he kidnapped a young couple, tortured the young man and repeatedly raped his girlfriend.

Referring to Dukakis, Lee Atwater, Bush's campaign manager known for his bare-knuckle politics, vowed to "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make Willie Horton his running mate." After that, Dukakis's 17-percent lead in the early polls vanished and Bush went on to a landslide victory. It is a lesson that can hardly have been lost on Barack Obama in his quest for a second term.

Human rights advocates, who had denounced the George W. Bush administration policy of holding Guantanamo prisoners without trial, hailed Obama's promise to close the prison. They are now crestfallen at the president's turnaround on his pledge.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It is virtually impossible to imagine how one closes Guantanamo in light of the executive order. In a little over two years, the Obama administration has done a complete about face."

On the heels of the president's announcement, Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, responded: "The bottom line is that it affirms the Bush administration policy that our government has the right to detain dangerous terrorist until the cessation of hostilities."

In a so-called "war" against terrorism, Rep. King or anyone else would be hard pressed to define when hostilities actually cease.

King's backhand compliment is one that President Obama might well have anticipated but finds far preferable to the possibility that a current Guantanamo prisoner once released perpetrates an act of terrorism and becomes his "running mate" in 2012.

The highest profile Guantanamo detainee, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, openly boasts of having plotted the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Obama administration abandoned its plan to have him him stand trial, following strong public and political outcries.

Five years ago, the Department of Defense reported that three of the Guantanamo Bay detainees had committed suicide with nooses made from their shirts and clothes. trial. Systematic disregard of the American tradition of due process is the shame of Guantanamo.

The United Nations, the European Union and Amnesty International have all requested closure of the Guanatanamo prison.

Obama's reversal of his pledge is somewhat mitigated by the requirement in his executive order of a regular review of prisoners by an independent executive panel, as well as to access to legal counsel throughout their incarceration. Together with adherence to international laws barring torture and other forms of inhumane treatment and contrary to Rep. King's boast, these are significant departures from detainee policy under the Bush administration.

Moreover, Obama's original goal to shut down Gitmo has been thwarted by a bipartisan congressional ban on moving the prisoners' trials to the United States, rendering it virtually impossible to release the prisoners - a prohibition the Washington Post calls "unconscionable" and the New York Times lambasted as "an act of notable political cowardice."

The Obama administration decision to continue indefinite detention rather than to push back hard against the congressional mandate reflects a president withering in the heat generated at the starting line of this nation's overlong presidential race.

Future presidents would be able to negate the executive order with a stroke of the pen; it is no substitute for passing a law requiring independent evaluations of the courts and the guarantee of legal protection of the prisoners. In a nation ruled not by monarchs or despots, but rather by law, nothing less is acceptable.