Thursday, January 22, 2009

Gitmo to Go

With fries, please.

Okay, so we're off to a good start. There are many things that The Idiot and The Dark Lord did that required immediate repudiation, but even I'm surprised at how quickly BO acted to shut down Gitmo. Well, not shut it down exactly, but to set the process in motion. This is unbelievably important.

It's going to take a while to figure out what to do with all of the prisoners there, and not all of the possible outcomes are exactly great improvements, but this is a great place to begin.

This is not only a great political move (we're already looking better in the global community just by one dude signing a piece of paper) but this is an important personal move for The Prez (still love typing that!). Here's why: As commander-in-chief of the United States military (and nothing else) our president is responsible for what happens under his command. And as of 12 noon Tuesday, Gitmo was under BO's command. If war crimes are being committed, they are his immediate responsibility. If Gitmo itself is illegal, he's responsible for every day it's open.

The swiftness with which he signed the papers made me hopeful that actual war crimes may be investigated. Obviously, if he wants to cover his tush he needs to make sure that his face isn't on any of the things that go on there. I'm sure he doesn't want DOJ to be investigating their own president.

Thanks, Mr. President (yes!) for giving all of us, or at least most of us, real action to be hopeful about after all of the feel-good talky-talk.

3 comments:

Kizz said...

I was kind of surprised at how good it felt to hear that he'd done this.

Mrs. Chili said...

I am LOVING typing "President Obama." It feels good.

I, too, was surprised by the speed with which he followed through on his commitment to close Gitmo. You're absolutely right about this, though - all of it is under HIS command, and if he can't sleep at night with the way things are, he's got to change them.

MAB said...

It's not just a matter of whether he can sleep at night, although that should be reason enough. It's whether he himself could be tried for war crimes for commandeering the joint. I'd like to think that the former was his #1 reason but the latter is what makes me think that, despite what he said about moving forward, he may actually appoint a special prosecutor to nail the Bushies.