GOP Says No to KSM/Gitmo Deal
As I wrote for TAP Online, I think the main thing we learn about Rahm Emanuel from reports that he’s been pushing inside the White House to strike some kind of deal with Lindsey Graham whereby KSM doesn’t get a civilian trial and in exchange the White House gets GOP support on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is that Emanuel’s reputation as a hard-nosed political thinker seems undeserved. Why on earth would he think Republicans would agree to that?
And today Spencer Ackerman’s rounded up the quotes to show that nobody in the Republican Party has any interest in following Graham down that road. They think demagogic arguments about “keeping dangerous terrorists from being brought to this country” are political winners and they intend to keep making them, just as they intend to keep making legal arguments that have been denounced by a wide swath of conservative lawyers because Chuck Grassley thinks they’ll help in the midterms.
Meanwhile, it really is worth emphasizing what a bed of nonsense the whole Gitmo argument is based upon. The very existence of an American military facility that’s located on foreign soil but not covered by a Status of Forces Agreement with the government of the country in which it’s located is a bizarre coincidence. Suppose the Castro regime had falled in 1989-91 along with the USSR and the rest of the Soviet bloc and we’d worked out a proper basing agreement with the successor government in the mid-nineties. Would that have left the country incapable of defending itself against al-Qaeda? If Germany catches a terrorist and doesn’t happen to have an offshore prison facility available, would it really be so terrible to imprison him in a terrestrial penitentiary just like the Red Army Faction?
21 Responses to “GOP Says No to KSM/Gitmo Deal”
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March 8th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Obviously then we would have had to speed up our work on the creation of a “Phantom Zone” as seen in the popular film Superman II. Much like General Zod, the only safe place to keep KSM is a prison dimension… or an army base with strange legal status. Same difference.
March 8th, 2010 at 11:54 am
Not only is Obama pursuing a strategy of negotiating with people who are not negotiating in good faith, he’s reinforcing the coward theme. Sure, the Republicans are going to “punk” Obama and still call him a socialist and terrorist-lover. But he legitimizes their argument when he runs from it in fear. Then we are left with a shitty policy and the Dems taking ownership of it.
And, unfortunately, it’s no longer a theme. It’s a fact. Obama does not have the courage of his convictions. If he has convictions at all. Especially since Obama such moralistic language when promising to clean up Gitmo.
March 8th, 2010 at 11:56 am
You’re either for the rule of law or you aren’t, and you’ll do a damned sight better if you’ll stand up and declare instead of trying to split the difference like this was a negotiable point.
Appeasement does not work on Republicans.
March 8th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
The politicians, commenters, and their audience know that there’s no meaning in their dog-whistle arguments. They’re purposefully absurd. Each step along the way is just another little initiation ritual. It’s actually important that all of the dog-whistle crap should be patently absurd. Saying “yes, master” to something reasonable wouldn’t prove loyalty.
March 8th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
The very existence of an American military facility that’s located on foreign soil but not covered by a Status of Forces Agreement with the government of the country in which it’s located is a bizarre coincidence.
To be honest though, I am enjoying every single minute this fact of extraterritorial legality that the American Gitmo enjoys makes it loud and clear that Castro is a sack of useless, powerless shit who can’t even run the entirety of his own country. May America occupy Gitmo forever and ever until all the Castros die off.
We really should have some routine overflights coming from Gitmo, Tu-95 Bear style, just to scare and kick around the Cubans a bit. They deserve it.
March 8th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
a terrestrial penitentiary
As opposed to what, Matt – an prison in low Earth orbit? Or on the moon, like in Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress?
Man, that would drive the per-prisoner costs of incarceration right through the stratosphere!
March 8th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
We really should have some routine overflights coming from Gitmo, Tu-95 Bear style, just to scare and kick around the Cubans a bit. They deserve it.
It’s only Monday, but I am pretty sure this is the stupidest thing I am going to read all week.
March 8th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Closing Gitmo ranks right up there in popularity with Obamacare, raising taxes and cutting Medicare.
The only thing the democrats could do that would be more unpopular is start an initiative to grant citizenship to illegal aliens.
Oh, wait……….
March 8th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Gawd-Dam, the Ds are so stupid. I’m just flabbergasted!
March 8th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Why does Rahm think the Gop will agree on anything at all?
March 8th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Gawd-Dam, the Ds are so stupid. I’m just flabbergasted!
I agree, “Dems”. Rahm is pretty stupid to think he can negotiate with terrorist–er, I mean Republicans.
Closing Gitmo ranks right up there in popularity with Obamacare, raising taxes and cutting Medicare.
The thing is, jwest, by mid-summer, with HCR long since passed and unemployment dropping and the economy clearly showing signs of a strong recovery, and as they begin tauting the huge tax cut they enacted last year (which nearly every single Republican voted against), Obama and the congressional Dems will start to look like an unstoppable juggernaut.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
It’s only Monday, but I am pretty sure this is the stupidest thing I am going to read all week.
You got a problem with that? You actually like for Castro to be left in peace? You like that murdering criminal?
March 8th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
I think we all know the difference is that Muslim terrorists have heat-ray vision.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I still don’t understand on what basis anyone (including Rahm) believed Graham was negotiating in good faith.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
You got a problem with that? You actually like for Castro to be left in peace? You like that murdering criminal?
Your proposal would not “scare or kick around” anyone in power in Cuba in any meaningful way. It would, however, harass and increase the misery of the already-long-suffering general populace, accomplishing nothing other than a kind of chest-beating. That’s fucking stupid.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
It would, however, harass and increase the misery of the already-long-suffering general populace, accomplishing nothing other than a kind of chest-beating. That’s fucking stupid.
It’s in their power to overthrow the Castro government. And if making them miserable makes them more wont to overthrow Castro, good for them. We got to drill home the lesson that as long as Castro and his cronies are in power Cubans will have to suffer for it.
Plus, apparently a good deal of Cubans actually support Castro. In that case, they wholly deserve to be harassed.
March 8th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
It’s in their power to overthrow the Castro government. And if making them miserable makes them more wont to overthrow Castro, good for them. We got to drill home the lesson that as long as Castro and his cronies are in power Cubans will have to suffer for it.
Plus, apparently a good deal of Cubans actually support Castro. In that case, they wholly deserve to be harassed.
Clearly, I was wrong when I conjectured that comment 5 was the stupidest thing I would read all week.
March 8th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
“The very existence of an American military facility that’s located on foreign soil but not covered by a Status of Forces Agreement with the government of the country in which it’s located is a bizarre coincidence.”
Its use as a prison is also totally illegal. The original agreement on which our presence at Guantanamo is based sets out explicitly what uses were permitted. A prison was not one of them.
And as to the moron above who said “Castro is a sack of useless, powerless shit who can’t even run the entirety of his own country,” Cuba has about 3.8% of the population of the United States. Are you suggesting they start a war with us? We had enough mindless belligerence, thank you, from Reagan and Bush, to last us for a century or two.
March 8th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Especially now, with Obama FINALLY going on the attack against the GOP and endorsing reconciliation, it looks like that lesson has finally sunk in.
Look at the way he staged his visit to the GOP retreat and the Health Care Summit to make them look like intransigent, obstructionist extremists. I wouldn’t write off the possibility that this is more the same, a trial balloon floated for the purpose of letting the country see the Republicans shoot it down, and buying him the political space he needs to do what he wants to do.
It would be very off if, just when Obama was finally accepting that bipartisanship was impossible when it comes to health care, he would stick his neck out to try to reach a bipartisan deal on an issue that Republicans consider even more ripe for their demagoguery and obstructionism. I guess we’ll find out.
March 8th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
“Emanuel’s reputation as a hard-nosed political thinker seems undeserved”
As Bertrand Russell might say: “Not seems–is.” When confronted with a problem Rahm’s first reflex is to abandon his side’s preferred outcome as unattainable, and compromise downward from a position of desperation.
March 8th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
On a slight tangent, I don’t recall anyone ever commenting on how the U.S. officially denounces Syria but we sent suspected terrorists to them for “special rendition”.