Obama's Broken Promise: Guantanamo Will Not Close (Savage)

The blessing of the news, in this article by Charlie Savage in The New York Times is far from surprising. EA argued as early as the first week of the Obama Administration that the President's declaration that he would close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay would be challenged and undermined by his own officials. And, even without that subversion, the process was bound to be beset by legal and political complexities.

Still, to have this coldly set out --- it's not just that Guantanamo did not close by Obama's promised date of 31 January 2010; it will not close by 31 December or, indeed, in 2011 or 2012 --- is harsh confirmation. The bottom line, beyond the rationalisations, is that many people around the world have seen Guantanamo as a powerful symbol of the hypocrisy and danger of American power. Now they may see it as a symbol as a failure of Barack Obama to deliver on his promises to re-shape that power for co-operation rather than punishment.

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

When the White House acknowledged last year that it would miss Mr. Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them.

“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who also supports shutting it, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.” He attributed the collapse to some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis.”

The White House insists it is still determined to shutter the prison. The administration argues that Guantánamo is a symbol in the Muslim world of past detainee abuses, citing military views that its continued operation helps terrorists.

“Our commanders have made clear that closing the detention facility at Guantánamo is a national security imperative, and the president remains committed to achieving that goal,” said a White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt.

Still, some senior officials say privately that the administration has done its part, including identifying the Illinois prison — an empty maximum-security center in Thomson, 150 miles west of Chicago — where the detainees could be held. They blame Congress for failing to execute that endgame.

“The president can’t just wave a magic wand to say that Gitmo will be closed,” said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking on a sensitive issue.

The politics of closing the prison have clearly soured following the attempted bombings on a plane on Dec. 25 and in Times Square in May, as well as Republican criticism that imprisoning detainees in the United States would endanger Americans. When Mr. Obama took office a slight majority supported closing it. By a March 2010 poll, 60 percent wanted it to stay open.

One administration official argued that the White House was still trying. On May 26, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee reiterating the case.

But Mr. Levin portrayed the administration as unwilling to make a serious effort to exert its influence, contrasting its muted response to legislative hurdles to closing Guantánamo with “very vocal” threats to veto financing for a fighter jet engine it opposes.

Read rest of article....

UPDATE Afghanistan Special: McChrystal and the Trashing of the President (US Military v. Obama, Chapter 472)

UPDATE 1945 GMT: So who is defending General McChrystal? Well, let's go to Kabul for a statement from a spokesman: "[Hamid Karzai] strongly supports McChrystal and his strategy in Afghanistan and believes he is the best commander the United States has sent to Afghanistan over the last nine years."

UPDATE 1830 GMT: Thumbs Down from the White House? Or Just a Bit of Posturing?

The stingers from the statement of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "All options are on the table [including McChrystal's resignation]....The magnitude and graveness of the mistake here are profound.”

Afghanistan Document: The McChrystal Profile (Hastings — Rolling Stone)

Gibbs said he gave an advance copy of the article, which had already gone out to the press, to Obama last night. The President was "irked".

Gibbs said the president wants to know “what in the world he was thinking.”

And here's Secretary of Defense Gates' careful statement:

I read with concern the profile piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the upcoming edition of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine. I believe that Gen. McChrystal made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment in this case. We are fighting a war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies, who directly threaten the United States, Afghanistan, and our friends and allies around the world. Going forward, we must pursue this mission with a unity of purpose. Our troops and coalition partners are making extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our security, and our singular focus must be on supporting them and succeeding in Afghanistan without such distractions. Gen. McChrystal has apologized to me and is similarly reaching out to others named in this article to apologize to them as well. I have recalled Gen. McChrystal to Washington to discuss this in person.

UPDATE 1740 GMT: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has issued a far-from-robust defence of General McChrystal. He expressed "concern" over the "significant" mistake of the Rolling Stone interview.

McChrystal also may have lost the backing of key Senators like former Presidential candidate John McCain former Vice Presidential candidate Joseph , ieberman, and Lindsay Graham, who called the General's remarks "inappropriate, inconsistent with relationship between the Commander-in-Chief and the military".

UPDATE 1450 GMT: The executive editor of Rolling Stone says that General McChrystal was shown the advance copy of the profile and raised no objections.

UPDATE 1230 GMT: Department of Defense officials say General McChrystal has fired a press aide over the Rolling Stone episode.

The US Embassy in Afghanistan, despite the military's ridicule of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, has maintained that Eikenberry and General McChrystal "are both fully committed" to President Obama's Afghan strategy and are working together to "implement" the plan.

UPDATE 1200 GMT: Five minutes after posting this, with the projection of a "quick cover-up" of the episode: "Top administration official says McChrystal has personally called Vice President Biden, [Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] Mullen, [Secretary of Defense] Gates, and NSC advisor Jones to apologize."

In the first week of Barack Obama's Presidency, we noted that his senior military commanders were trying to alter his policies in key areas, to the point of undermining him. We noted their opposition to his plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and their determination to escalate the military intervention in Afghanistan.

That challenge has continued for almost 18 months with Obama --- in my view --- getting "rolled over" on the Afghanistan issue as he twice conceded to the demands for troop escalation.

That is the background to today's hot media story. Rolling Stone magazine has released advance copies of an interview with General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. The soundbites are so explosive that McChrystal has already issued his "sincerest apology" for "a mistake reflecting poor judgement". He is flying back to Washington, reportedly for a meeting with the President.

All very dramatic. It's far from surprising, however: if this is to be more than a shiny bauble for the media, McChrystal's interview --- when it is released in full on Friday --- will need to be considered as far from "a mistake". It is part of the ongoing military contest with Obama.

Consider the soundbites from the advance copies of the interview.

1. Taking on the President. McChrystal and an aide refer to a 2009 meeting with Obama. The aide belittles the President for "a 10-minute photo op": "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was... he didn't seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed."

Gen McChrystal says, "I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position."

Hmm... McChrystal's pain smacks of a self-serving "poor me" pose. His supposed weariness over the "unsellable" is a bit ironic, given that McChrystal's visit was quite likely the ultimate in sales jobs: he was pitching for the increase in troop deployments that Obama granted in December.

2. Dismissing the Vice-President. Joe Biden may have tried to assert his authority with personal visits to Afghanistan but this snapshot from Rolling Stone portrays a military smacking his annoyance aside.

"Are you asking about Vice-President Biden?" McChrystal asks. 'Who's that?"

An aide then says: "Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?"

3. Trampling on the Ambassador. One of the high-profile episodes in that battle occurred last autumn, when a memorandum from the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry (a retired General), was leaked. It questioned the drive for military escalation, given fundamental political problems and corruption in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's considered reaction? "I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before. Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so'."

4. Dismissing the Advisors. Last August, in an effort to check the military's drive for more troops, National Security Advisor James Jones --- another former General --- went to Kabul and warned commanders that, if they pushed for escalation so soon after March's build-up of forces, Obama would ask, "WTF [What the F***]?"

The view of Jones from McChrystal's aide? "A clown stuck in 1985".

And here's the respect that Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, gets. Told of an incoming message, McChrystal says: "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke....I don't even want to open it."

Only Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it appears, gets approval from McChrystal's staff.

Now, a lot of this might be put down to day-to-day tensions in the difficult environment of Afghanistan. But --- and this is the point that seems to be eluding the media so far --- these examples of anger, impertinence, disrespect, and near-subversion of the President's authority did not occur in the heat of the moment.

They were offered, after the event, to a reporter as the "real" impressions of senior members of the US military.

That's not frustration. That's a deliberate challenge, in an ongoing campaign to challenge, to the President.

As McChrystal flies to Washington, possibly for a quick cover-up of the episode by all concerned, it needs to be remembered as such. For deliberate challenges do not suddenly evaporate.