There is a report this morning that President-elect Obama is working on a plan to close Guantanamo immediately upon taking office. It is essential that he follow through on this matter immediately upon taking office, without qualification, hesitation or backtracking, if America is to reclaim a place of moral authority in the world.
However, there are some aspects that are troubling, such as a report that for some Guantanamo detainees a new form of special court may be required. I truly hope that this sort of thinking will not prevail, both because our existing court system ought to be able to handle anything thrown at it and because we don’t have the time to debate the nature and rules of a new court system if we are going to demonstrate effectively to the world a renewed commitment to human rights. It would seem to me that the legal authorities assisting President-elect Obama in this matter would do well to involve sitting federal judges in their planning to determine how existing federal courts might be used to prosecute the more intelligence sensitive matters. I would much rather see special court rules adopted by existing federal courts than a further debate in Congress over an issue that was clearly answered by our citizenry on November 4th.
As in all delicate matters, we need to revisit our priorities and goals, and use them as a measuring stick in order to determine how to proceed. Not only has our moral voice been severely muted in matters of international diplomacy by keeping prisoners indefinitely in Guantanamo without any serious attempt to give them a fair trial, many in the world have come to think of us as human rights abusers. America’s greatest authority on the world has not come from its extensive military might, but, rather, from its position as a moral authority. All of the military might imaginable is insufficient to allow us to maintain our position as a superpower, witness the fact that we are currently stressed beyond capacity in the occupation of two foreign countries. Our true authority has always stemmed from the essential morality of our positions. Even if we have not always been consistent in our approaches to the world and even if certain members of the international community have disagreed with our basic values or quibbled from time to time over our methods of their application, prior to the Bush administration’s hegemony there was little suspicion among other nations that we lacked a basic moral precept.
Thanks to the Bush/Cheney administration, that last statement is no longer true. In eight short years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney squandered decades of hard work to earn the trust of the international community. Based upon the international reaction to Obama’s election, there appears to be a residual hope in the international community that America is not really as Bush and Cheney have painted it. This is a legacy of all the hard work in the decades preceding Bush from which we may still benefit.
We must bear in mind at all times that the election of Barrack Obama to the presidency has not cured international skepticism about our moral precepts, but only has given hope to the international community that we will return to our senses. As January 20 gets closer, the world is likely to hold its breath to see if the election’s promise bears fruit. In other words, the hope will turn into belief only if the actions suit the words and the implementation of a new policy is swift and unqualified in its breadth. Conversely, if our actions do not suit our words, the hope generated by Mr. Obama’s election may quickly dissipate or turn to bitterness. We cannot afford to hedge our actions in any manner that even remotely smacks of the thinking of the Bush administration on this subject. If the hope of the international community is not swiftly turned into belief by the new President, his goal of returning America to a position of international leadership will become much harder to achieve.
The world is a complicated place, and the President will always receive advice, solicited and unsolicited, from all corners of the spectrum prior to taking any action, however major or minor. I hope and trust he will remember to keep his priorities firmly in front of him when making decisions of this magnitude, and use them as measuring sticks to cut through the cacophony of conflicting opinions and position. No matter what decisions he makes, there will be significant disagreement from portions of the electorate and senior politicians, so he will succeed best if he makes decisions consistently in accordance with his personal values and priorities. He would be better served by criticism that he is consistently incorrect in his positions than by criticism that he has no clear path to success on subjects due to inconsistent decision making.
In short, a President is better off being complained of for sticking to his or her positions than for having no discernible positions at all.
