President Obama’s claims that he totally really wants to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and that it is only Congress standing in the way doesn’t really hold water, but Congress seems keen to make it look like it does.
One day after passing an amendment barring the use of military funds to release any of the 166 detainees at the prison (including the large number cleared for release years ago), they are now moving to prevent putting them anywhere else either.
The new vote forbids the use of funds to expand any prison anywhere in the United States if that prison might be used to house Gitmo detainees, with Rep. John Culberson (R – TX), insisting that US prisons were too nice and that he thought even Gitmo, which is so bad most of the detainees are trying to starve themselves to death rather than stay there, is too “lenient” for them.
Culberson has been a long-standing advocate of open-ended detention, insisting that efforts to give detainees access to US courts “undermines our Constitution.”
The President has the authority to override what Congress has done here. If he had the guts to exercise it, Congress would end up with mud on its face, and a major legal and humanitarian problem would be solved. He was not elected to commit war crimes or perpetuate them, he was not elected to ignore our own Constitution, so while he was elected to execute the laws passed by Congress, that duty is tempered by his obligation under the Constitution, and the nation's obligations under the Geneva Conventions to which it is a signatory.