An act of betrayal...

Guantanamo is a particularly significant issue because it demonstrates Obama’s fundamental lack of core convictions, contrary to what he had led us to believe during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

We were told to expect change, that the Bush/Cheney world view and approach belonged to the past…The rule of law, and civilized behavior worthy of a great democracy  would now be a political imperative for Obama’s America…

We were evidently misled…

The absolute ethical necessity to close Guantanamo may have reflected a belief he held at the time Bush/Cheney still wielded  (many would have said, abused) power in Washington.

Once he arrived in the nation’s capital, however, the issue was less significant because he was now in charge, presumably. The concept of justice for all was once again in safe hands, that is to say, his own...Those who took human and constitutional rights seriously no longer had anything to worry about…This conviction was so universally engrained that Obama actually won the Nobel Peace Prize his first year in office.

Closing Guantanamo, the modern-day Bastille, and an infamous symbol of abuse and of arbitrary detention, demanded the new President’s undivided attention and wholehearted support…Since the Obama Administration claimed that the facility was a recruiting tool for terrorists, many assumed the new President would not relent until he had reached the intended objective. Obama had vowed to close it at the conclusion of his first year in office.

The new, excessively popular president could have exerted the necessary pressure on a Democratic Congress to ensure this blight on America’s reputation would be forever obliterated….

And yet, he failed to do so…

The rule of law was no longer a priority, but conditioned by politics…

The rule of law was no longer a popular, political issue, thus expendable…

The notion of trying terrorist suspects in civilian courts, of transferring those held in Guantanamo to the US mainland, ceased to make political sense. It seemed more politically savvy to cater to the people’s fear, than  cultivate or educate their sense of justice and fairness…

We had hoped that a former professor of constitutional law would have done his utmost to promote the cause of justice, and not chosen the facile path of political expediency.  

He had too much else to do than to fight for such fundamental principles, we were told.

Pardon my naiveté, but what is more important than that?

Similarly, the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed was to have been a defining event, according to Attorney General Holder.

Our nation has had no higher priority then bringing those who planned and plotted the attacks to justice, Holder also recklessly declared.

Justice?

Caving in to pressure from local NY politicians ( including, alas, the Mayor of New York)  more interested in public opinion polls than principles, Holder relented.

KSM will be tried in Guantanamo, where justice is an alien concept, defiled by water-boarding, forced sleeplessness, other various “enhanced interrogation techniques” and arbitrary and indefinite detention...

Some have been held for nine years without charge, and will neither be tried nor released, thanks again to Obama who did not se fit to abolish the precedent set by his reckless predecessor …

Who would have thought that MM. Bush and Obama’s America would have resurrected les lettres  de cachet abolished by revolutionary France in 1789? Can anyone, alas, now take the US seriously when it sees fit to lambast another nation’s human rights record?

This, also, shall be part of Obama’s legacy…

How many of us shall be able to forget and forgive this grievous act of betrayal?

(the photograph of Guantanamo can be found here)