Building on success

Fresh from passage and enactment of a “health care reform” that Dick Nixon would have been proud of without so much as a single Republican vote, the President continues to be utterly undeterred by reality, and insists that he can “negotiate” with Republicans (including, amusingly, Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King, who despises all terrorists who aren’t the I.R.A.) over “closing Guantanamo,” featuring discussion of such “details” as statutory indefinite detention of un-charged and un-tried persons, having actual criminal trials in actual courts (with actual, real judges and everything!), and other stuff.
We have, of course, gone from “closing Guantanamo within one year” by executive order… to… maybe somehow close it by the end of Obama’s first (and, if he keeps this chicksh*t up, only term), notwithstanding that his own “executive review team,” has concluded that the majority of the 180 or so men left there should be released (just as the Bush Administration had determined that nearly 600 of the 800 men held on its watch should be released, and it released them)… the number of those for whom terrorism trials might be held, if ever, has never really been thought to be more than two to three dozen, leaving somewhere around 50, 60, or 70 men in official limbo (and everyone still at GTMO in actual limbo). You all know my feeling on the concept of “not enough evidence to try but too dangerous to release;” it’s code for “totalitarianism.” If there is “insufficient evidence to try,” how is there possibly sufficient evidence for life imprisonment? Stalin and Mao would have appreciated the “logic” of such a category, but any American who believes in our Constitution, or at least the Bill of Rights (a tiny and ever-dwindling number, by my observation) will be appalled.
Anyway, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have been the top recruiting sergeants for America’s enemies for years now; why stop now? Honestly: we could do no better good for ourselves than to promptly either try or release everyone we are holding… and if “bad guys” are acquitted, nothing would serve to save more American lives. That’s right, folks: a demonstration that we aren’t hypocrites— a false one, since, of course, we are, as demonstrated by the absurdity of the fact that actually trying criminals in court is now controversial— would still be far more successful at winning the hearts and minds of people in areas where our troops are now in harm’s way than all of the “surges” and “awakenings” and other catch-phrases we can think of combined.
But… we’re not going to go there. Honestly, our President is now in Afghanistan on a surprise visit, urging the inherently corrupt Hamid Karzai to swear off corruption. Like trying to get Republican support on anything (honestly, Mr. President, your condition, as viewed by Republicans, Tea-partiers, and the Davids Broder and Gergen, is best called “Governing While Black”… you’ll get as much respect from them as you would have from an LAPD officer at a traffic stop during your early college daze at Occidental…), trying to get Karzai to clean up his corrupt act, or trying to “improve our security” by doing everything imaginable to undermine it, the Obama First/Bush Third Term seems to be hellbent on proving Einstein’s axiom that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
This has been “Building on success.”