The Guantanamo Problem

So its January 28th, Gitmo is closed, and the world is back in order. Wait, what? The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility is still open. That is right everyone, the United States is still holding terror suspects at Guantanamo. Now I'm not going to bash Obama for not fulfilling is promise, he like other politicans promises are like those of high school boys, only good until they get what they want. Obama did make strides towards getting the facilities closed, on his very first day and vowed that they would all be close one year later. He struggled that year with finding places for the detainees to go, then he moved on to the Economy and Health Care. While most of the people took the State of the Union address to prove that Obama has been ineffective as a President, I looked at the Gitmo issue. When the President issued his Executive Order closing down the detention facilities everyone assumed that it would be a simple issue, and that he wouldn't even need a year to fix the solution. Back when George W. Bush was in office he too wanted to close down the facility and like Obama, failed.

Letting go of your opinions on the two Presidents lets look at the issue from another angle. The situation at Guantanamo is a far more complicated than any civilian knows. When Obama was on the campaign trail making his promise to close down the Detention Facilities he did not have access to the details of the detainees. He likely didnt find out the whole picture when he was getting security briefings as President-Elect. Obama and the members of his administration probably didn't find out just how difficult this was going to be until February of 09. Fox News did some leg work for me and found out some information on the detainees, "So far, 44 detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay under the Obama administration. There are 196 still in custody, about 50 of which are being held indefinitely without trial. Thirty-five are heading to U.S. trials and 110 will be transferred to other countries. "( Link )

This issue, mixed with my class on the Presidency brings up a whole new issue. What if we are too dependent on government to do things. Whether it be the complicated nature of dealing with terror suspects, or the far more complicated nature of health care. the Federal Government was established for specific reasons, to regulate commerce among the states and to provide a powerful and unified defense for the states. And over time the human desire for power has lead to an expansion of the role of government in our lives, some good, some bad. And right now it seems as though we are becoming far too dependent.