'We Should Have Pushed Harder': Obama's Gitmo Czars Reflect On His Failure To Close The Prison

LOADING ERROR LOADING On his first day in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order directing that the Guantanamo Bay prison facility “be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” The prison camp on the island of Cuba had come to symbolize the abuses of the war on terror. “In the Bush administration, there were a lot of decisions made in haste and in the emotion of the moment that turned out not to be wise, and Guantanamo was one of them,” said Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who served as a special assistant to Bush and became Obama’s first special envoy for Guantanamo closure. “It did not seem to be highly contentious and I think it would be fair to say that in the early days of the transition we thought this would take place in the ordinary course of business,” said Greg Craig, Obama’s first White House counsel, who drafted the executive order to close Guantanamo. “Because they lacked a kind of public legitimacy,” Fried said, “the military bent over backwards to try to be fair, which meant more opportunities for delay.” Craig called the system a complete “failure.” “The president of the United States promised swift and certain justice when he became president in January 2009,” he said, “and we’ve had anything but.” Seeing his fellow lawmakers’ disdain for the prisoners, Moran, the Virginia congressman pushing to close the prison, began to lose hope that the Guantanamo situation could be fixed at all. The administration deserves credit.” Even if Obama’s team didn’t ultimately close Guantanamo, Fried said, “that last year-and-a-half effort is impressive.” Sloan is also pleased with the final number, or at least the work that went into releasing so many detainees.