Congress to Obama: You're not bringing Gitmo prisoners to the U.S., bro

If you want to say something good about the Obama presidency . . . well, that's not an easy challenge you've taken upon yourself, but you could say this: His ineptness have prevented some of his absolute worst ideas from being implemented. One cheer for incompetence! And that's why, even though he signed an executive order directing that Guantanamo Bay be closed on the first day in office, it remains open nearly six years later.

This is a very good thing for the United States of America, as the establishment of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba was one of the most brilliant ideas the Bush Administration had in the War on Terror. Housing the prisoners in Cuba - where we had leased property for the base since before Castro's communist revolution, and from which we are not about to be ejected however much the Castro brothers may hate having us there - allows us to avoid dealing with the entanglements of the U.S. legal system and also prevents issues between us and nations with whom we actually have diplomatic relations. In other words, yeah, the only rights the detanees have are the ones we decide to give them - and that's how it needs to be when you're trying to win a war against people who follow no rules of their own in their determination to murder both civilians and members of your Armed Forces. But of course, these very facts made Gitmo a major point of contention among liberals who decided during the Bush years that it was more important to protect terrorists' rights than to protect the U.S. from terrorists, and Obama promised during his 2008 presidential campaign to close Gitmo. He was elected not because of that promise, but because Americans were in an economic panic and were tired of the Iraq War in particular (and the Bush Administration in general). But no matter. Obama promised he would do it and went ahead and signed that executive order on Day One. So why hasn't he pulled it off yet? Mainly because no one can come up with a good answer for the question of where the detainees should go if they're not at Gitmo. The Obama Administration has tried before to have them brought to the U.S., and that did not go well. They still like the idea, but the latest defense policy bill headed for Obama's desk once again bars him from trying it:

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The president has pushed to close the post-9/11 prison since his inauguration in January 2009. He has faced strong resistance from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who don't want terror suspects housed in U.S. facilities and have warned of suspects returning to the fight when they are transferred back to their home countries. In the previous version of the defense bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee included the provision authorizing the transfer of terror suspects to the U.S. for “detention, trial and incarceration.” The House version of the defense bill prohibited the transfer to U.S. soil, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have repeatedly and successfully fought White House efforts to move detainees prevailed in the final version of the defense bill. Currently, the prison holds 142 men, including 73 already cleared for release. Obama was approached by a store patron during his holiday shopping Saturday. "Hope you can close Guantanamo," said the patron. "We're working on it," Obama replied, then jokingly added to the nearby crowd of shoppers: "Any other issues?"

Right. They're no more "working on it" than they've been since 2009. The Gitmo matter is a classic case of Obama finding out that being president is not as easy as he liked to make it sound during the stirring speeches that got him elected back in 2008. We don't like Gitmo! Close it! OK, champ, so where are you going to put the terrorists? The only answer he's ever really had was to put them in U.S. prisons, which affords them the services of U.S. lawyers and gives them the opportunity to plead their cases in U.S. courts, quite possibly in front of Obama's own liberal appointees who will be only too happy to set them free because the U.S. Armed Forces didn't read them their Miranda rights when they were captured on the battlefield. Scratch that idea. Got a better one? Nope. Other countries don't want to take them, so you're stuck with keeping them at Gitmo or setting them free. And in fact, we're setting quite a lot of them free now. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Obama simply sets them all free if it's the only way he can close Gitmo, thus allowing him to keep a campaign promise even though it would hurt U.S. national security and no one really wants to see it happen. Obama seems pretty willing to go rogue at this point, given the public's act of ungrateful insolence in electing a Congress full of wingnuts. You don't like the way I run the country? Well you ain't seen nothing yet, suckers. Trivia: Remember when Democrats had people convinced that we were upsetting our allies and "squandering all the goodwill we enjoyed after 9/11" by keeping detainees at Gitmo? Yes? You got the right answer! Hard to believe, but there was a time when people really bought that crap. Seems hard to believe now. Seems even harder to believe that Obama is still trying to close Gitmo, but this presidency gets more surreal with every passing year.