Guantanamo Endgame

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/240370/guantanamo-endgame-2/



U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl will find a strange country when he returns home: The mood there is poisonous and threatens to get even more so. Bergdahl is causing even greater discord concerning the last of the Guantanamo prisoners.

Guantanamo Endgame
Süddeutsche Zeiting, Germany
By Nicolas Richter
Translated By Ron Argentati
6 June 2014
Edited by Gillian Palmer

At the time Bowe Bergdahl was kidnapped in Afghanistan, America had just gotten a brand new president by the name of Barack Obama. He promised Americans he would reconcile the nation and return it to constitutional principles. Right from the start, for example, he vowed to close the controversial Guantanamo prison camp.

Now, after being held captive by the Taliban for five years, Bergdahl is returning home. He'll find a strange land compared to the one he left. Guantanamo is still operating, and in Washington nobody seems in the mood to celebrate the return of a war prisoner. Instead, the Republicans blame Obama for not only swapping five captured Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, but for keeping a low profile in the White House instead of turning this delicate problem over to Congress, as required by law.

The atmosphere in America is toxic right now, and threatening to become even worse as the next great squabble begins; namely, how to play the Guantanamo endgame. Both the president and Congress claim jurisdiction over what will happen to the last of the Guantanamo prisoners captured in the war on terror. They fight over who gives the orders at Guantanamo and who will have the last say about the legacy of the Bush years. Obama has given up the attempt to reconcile America with itself on the issue of Guantanamo. But he stays fixed on another goal: Closing the prison camp.

Obama wants the Cuban compound closed at any cost.

Guantanamo's fate is closely entwined with Obama's credibility. Early on, he described the camp by saying it represented constitutional malfeasance and executive overreach. He wanted to relocate the prisoners to the continental U.S. and put them on trial. But Congress refused to go along with that: Many Republicans still regard Guantanamo as an island stronghold and a symbol of unswerving anti-terrorism. Because the president and Congress are at loggerheads, numerous prisoners remain captive there, where George W. Bush originally put them. Many have been there for a decade, without trial and with no prospect of any change in their status.