Obama defends Guantanamo decisions

President Barack Obama stood — literally — beside the Constitution and the Bill of Rights Thursday, and defended his decisions to ban torture and to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Responding to former Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservative critics, the president accused Bush administration officials of acting from "fear rather than foresight" in the days after the 9/11 attacks, with "hasty decisions" that undermined U.S. efforts in the war against Islamic terrorism.

And American efforts in the war against terrorism are now being compromised, Obama warned, by partisan bickering. "Over the last several weeks, we have seen a return of the politicization of these issues," Obama said. "We will be ill-served by … the fear-mongering" that has "more to do with politics than protecting our country."

Speaking at the National Archives, in the great hall that houses America's founding documents, Obama pushed back against conservative critics who have alleged that he's hindered U.S. intelligence agencies, and endangered Americans, by fulfilling his campaign promises to end torture and close down the "Gitmo" detention facility.

The White House has tried to ignore the debate, hoping it would die down and go away. But both the House and the Senate, in the last week, rebuffed Obama on Guantanamo Bay. At the same time, missteps by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have fueled conservative attacks on the issue of "enhanced" interrogation methods.

So Obama did what he often does when his political initiatives stall — he gave a speech. Its long-term effects will say much about his powers of persuasion.

In the short term, the president has already lost a round to his critics, who have succeeded at getting him distracted and defensive.

Even as Obama spoke, Cheney addressed conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, and kept up the attack. "In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists," the former vice president said, according to a transcript prepared by Fox News.

"People who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about 'values.' Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11 ... they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

"Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme.

"It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness," Cheney said, "and would make the American people less safe."

Obama, in his speech, defended his two decisions on both idealistic and pragmatic grounds. He did so, in part, by showing how his actions were compelled by court decisions, and supported by Republican candidates like Sen. John McCain and Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal benches.

He inherited "a mess," Obama said. Bush-era officials "trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions" with policies "neither effective nor sustainable."

He has been forced to clean up the mistakes of the past, Obama said, when he'd prefer to focus on the future.

"As commander-in-chief, I see the intelligence," Obama said. Torture techniques "alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.

"In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts — they undermined them."

But the president also chastised liberal critics, who have also joined in the partisan warfare by pressing for investigations and show trial hearings over the Bush-era practices. His own party is uneasy. Large numbers of Democrats deserted Obama on the recent votes to close Guantanamo, and others opposed his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by deploying an additional 21,000 troops. "There are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism," Obama said.

Obama made a typically sophisticated argument, arguing that wars on terror are inherently different, and that the brutal techniques of unbridled warfare can be counter-productive when employed against such groups as Al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden and his like know they cannot defeat the United States and its allies in a direct confrontation, he said, but seek to have their foes destroy themselves, by adopting panicky, draconian and disgraceful tactics.

"Instead of serving as a tool to counter-terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped Al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause," Obama said. "Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists than it ever detained."

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/diplomacy/090521/obama-defends-guantanamo-decisions