Portside

'Obama’s inability to redeem his 2008 campaign promise to close Gitmo is not all his fault: Congress imposed roadblocks, including a prohibition on giving the prisoners civilian trials. But it is a real failure of presidential leadership even so, given Obama's many missed opportunities, including his weirdly passive refusal to be proactive in dealing with the 86 inmates who've been cleared by our own intelligence agencies for transfer out. It’s hard to see how he can let the status quo, or anything like it, stand now. This pointless facility has long been a blight on our national security; its mockery of our country’s ostensible humanitarian and legal principles serves as a rallying cry for anti-American rage throughout the world. The notion of American doctors force-feeding prisoners who want to kill themselves is a further danger to the nation’s interests even leaving aside the moral calamity. And Obama has the political clout to take action: Though his approval ratings are lately lackluster (at 47 percent), a new Times-CBS News poll shows that 56 percent of voters approve of his handling of terrorism. (The same poll shows that only 24 percent want America to intervene in Syria.) For all the roseate nostalgia that greeted the opening of the Bush Presidential Library last week, we are no longer in Bush and Cheney’s America. As far as Guantánamo goes, Obama can ignore the neo-con dead-enders of the McCain-Graham school and start using the executive powers he has weirdly neglected so far; he can lobby Congress on the rest. He’s in a race against time, and staying pat, or settling for the noble rhetoric he provided yesterday, are not options. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this,” he said. “Why are we doing this?” Well, hello — it’s past time for the president to end his own reflection and answer the damn question.'