Second Term: No Posing for ReElection

So now do we get Gitmo closed?

[The reason] Senators such as [Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders] voted against funding GITMO's closing wasn't because they were afraid to support its closing. It was because they refused to fund the closing until they saw Obama's specific plan, because they did not want to support the importation of GITMO's indefinite detention system onto US soil, as Obama expressly intended.

[...]

Obama's plan was never to close GITMO as much as it was to re-locate it to Illinois: to what the ACLU dubbed "GITMO North". That's why ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said of Obama's 2009 "close-GITMO" plan that it "is hardly a meaningful step forward" and that "while the Obama administration inherited the Guantánamo debacle, this current move is its own affirmative adoption of those policies." That's because, he said, "the administration plans to continue its predecessor's policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location."

  Glenn Greenwald

But you can bet that if he succeeds in getting it relocated, he and his cheerleaders will claim bragging rights for having closed Guantánamo.

The New York Times' John Harwood this morning reports that "for all the talk that President Obama has shifted leftward, much of his early second-term energy seeks simply to preserve the status quo." Really? Obama is an agent of status quo perpetuation? But he just gave (another) really pretty liberal speech. Is it possible that there's no correlation between his pretty speeches and his actual beliefs and actions?

Surely not. Surely this time we can believe in change.

The State Department on Monday reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him, according to an internal personnel announcement. Mr. Fried’s office is being closed, and his former responsibilities will be “assumed” by the office of the department’s legal adviser, the notice said.

The announcement that no senior official in President Obama’s second term will succeed Mr. Fried in working primarily on diplomatic issues pertaining to repatriating or resettling detainees appeared to signal that the administration does not currently see the closing of the prison as a realistic priority, despite repeated statements that it still intends to do so.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.