Closing Gitmo And Putting an End To Torture

TW: Certainly I am excited about Obama's aggressive moves to close Gitmo and end our disastrous foray into torture. I understand there will be procedural and practical challenges some of which may end up being quite thorny but the benefits to our national reputation and moral authority will be worth the efforts.

But we must understand the current consensus supporting the moves are potentially ephemeral. The Republicans explicitly take the position that they will sacrifice much liberty for the possibility of much security. No one will ever know whether torture increased our security. I personally have no doubts that it did not.

Pat Buchanan framed the issue well the other day. The test will come if and when the next terrorist attack of some materiality occurs, will the American people stand with those of my (and our POTUS) ilk. We shall see.

From Economist:
"BARACK OBAMA has signed an executive order that shuts down Guantánamo Bay "as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order." Another executive order...goes further.

The Order also prohibits reliance on any Department of Justice or other legal
advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001 and
January 20, 2009.

Glenn Greenwald, a libertarian-leaning constitutional lawyer, is overjoyed: the president is on track to "meet or actually exceed even the most optimistic expectations of civil libertarians for what he could or would do quickly." Indeed, the conventional wisdom after the election was that President Obama, by his choice of intelligence advisers and his vote for retroactive immunity for telecom companies that let the National Security Agency tap phones, had revealed that he wouldn't actually roll back many of Mr Bush's war-on-terror reforms.

That underestimated the disregard Mr Obama had for Mr Bush's policies: the neoconservative assumption that Democrats need to talk and act tough, so as not to be blamed if things go wrong, is not shared by the new administration."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/01/erasing_the_bush_era.cfm