Some Policies Don’t Change

By Leonard C. Goodman

Obama has changed the rhetoric of the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, he has not changed the destructive policies that continue to make us less safe and that increase the likelihood of future terror attacks. Like Bush, Obama claims the right to perpetually detain any person deemed to be a threat without interference from the courts. Obama is simultaneously carrying on the Bush policy of incinerating any person deemed a threat by drone or air-strike. (Indeed, our CIA is presently conducting an undeclared war on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border—a war that is claiming an untold number of civilian casualties.)

In response to 9/11, the Bush Administration rounded up about 600 Muslim men and sent them to an off-shore prison camp for years of isolation and harsh interrogation. The location of this camp, at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, was chosen because the Bush Administration lawyers believed it to be outside the reach of the U.S. courts.

For seven years, the Bush lawyers fought to keep the detainees’ cases out of the courts and out of the press by making the false claim that to do otherwise would jeopardize our national security. Sadly, the Obama lawyers have carried on this misguided and destructive policy. For example, to avoid discovery deadlines and evidentiary hearings, Department of Justice lawyers continue to employ the tactic of moving to “stay” all court proceedings based upon the mere promise to transfer the detainee out of Gitmo at some unspecified date in the future.

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