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  No Detainees in My Backyard: Obama Under Fire over Guantanamo Closure Plans

No Detainees in My Backyard Obama Under Fire over Guantanamo Closure Plans

By Britta Sandberg, Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart

Part 2: 'The Toughest Issue We Will Face'

Obama's room for maneuver is shrinking with each new statement by a member of Congress. The speech at the National Archives may well get academics excited because of Obama's passionate support for the rule of law, but it has not benefited him in the Washington power game.

Americans were far more interested in the small print than in Obama's clever thoughts. New places to send the terror suspects from Guantanamo are being discussed every day, triggering allergic defensive reactions everywhere.

Fort Leavenworth in Kansas is under consideration. The navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, which is considered extremely secure, is another possibility. There would certainly be enough space in the 400-cell prison to accommodate the remaining Guantanamo detainees. But the city's mayor is worried that bringing the terror suspects to Charleston would adversely affect real estate values.

One alternative would be the "supermax" high-security prison in Florence, Colorado, which currently houses Ramzi Yousef, who is a nephew of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and was responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. A few days ago, a rumor began that the government even plans to build a new supermax prison somewhere in an American desert. David Axelrod, Obama's strategic advisor, promptly denied the speculation.

Guantanamo Bay, that sad chapter from the Bush administration, threatens to cast a shadow on Obama's opening balance sheet. There are still 240 detainees there, down from a maximum of 779. The camp is currently undergoing renovation, with astonished prisoners looking on as workers weld together metal fences around new soccer fields. The goal of the renovations is to improve conditions for inmates at the facility.

But Guantanamo will always be a stain on US history. The images from the prison that circled the globe became symbols of a place beyond the reach of the rule of law, a place the United States had allowed itself to establish in its "war on terror."

In June 2006, the US Supreme Court declared the military tribunals installed by then-President George W. Bush to be unconstitutional. A short time later, however, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act that made military tribunals legal once more.

Now even Obama wants to revive these tribunals, but with more rights for the defendants. He has no idea how to deal with those detainees which even his own administration classifies as high risk. "I want to be honest: This is the toughest issue we will face," the president admitted, as he thought out loud about a system of preventive detention without charge -- the next major disappointment for civil rights organizations.

The battle over American values in times of war has now begun in earnest. In his speech last Thursday, Obama said that he "swore an oath to uphold the Constitution," adding, in a comment aimed at his Democratic detractors and delivered in a threatening undertone, "so did each and every member of Congress."

Meanwhile, the conservatives savored their victory. Cheney, the old warhorse, was celebrated as the savior of a demoralized party caught up in a struggle to determine its future direction. Cheney now dominates the debate, said former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, predicting that he would gradually nudge Obama in the direction of "Bush-lite."

President Obama, for his part, would prefer to put a speedy end to the discussion that he once welcomed with open arms as a candidate. But Cheney refuses to let up. In the next few years, much will depend upon how well the president understands his predecessor's national security policy, he says slyly. But what Cheney neglects to mention is that there was even a fair number of respected Republicans who once criticized the excesses of the Bush/Cheney duo in the war against terrorism.

"I have no interest in spending my time examining the policies of the last eight years," Obama replied, noting that this was just a distraction and would cost valuable energy.

But Cheney has plenty of energy -- and all the time in the world.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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