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Say One Thing, Do Another

Mike

Well-known member
There was yet another of those grand pronouncements from President Obama on Monday -- exercises in Orwellian doublespeak: The White House declared that while Mr. Obama was still committed to completing “the difficult challenge of closing Guantanamo” Bay detention camp, he was instructing his Pentagon to resume trying detainees before military commissions there.

Come again?

Republicans loved it, calling the president’s new executive order an indication that Mr. Obama had finally “seen the light” on the need for military tribunals, and on how hard it would be to shutter the detention facility, as he vowed to do on his first day in office. Rep. Peter King, of New York, the Republican chairman of the House committee on homeland security, praised the decision as yet another “step in the right direction.”

But liberals and political independents, whose support for the president has steadily eroded based on Mr. Obama’s earlier policy waffles, denounced the move as hypocritical and cynical – yet another example of presidential leadership by default. It was also, they asserted a prime example of Mr. Obama’s penchant for saying one thing and doing the opposite. Calling the move “troubling,” the ACLU said it indicated that the president had chosen to “institutionalize unlawful indefinite detention,” creating a “new normal” when it comes to combating terrorism.

While we agree with the president that military commissions are, as the White House put it, an "important tool in combating international terrorists," this is the third time in less than a week that President Obama’s rhetoric and actions have been strikingly at odds.
 
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