On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Chuck Grimes <[email protected]> wrote:
> Then I read this quick little news piece about Obama using a budget > argument > to close Gitmo. Nevermind it was created by fiat and funded somewhere in > the > military budget, where the President can control its purpose, development, > and costs as commander and chief. > > It is ridiculous to blame Congress for keeping Guantanamo open and > ridiculous to keep people there who are free of even manufactured > charges... > Now there are two very different things in the above that are worth disentangling. First, I have serious doubts over Obama's sincerity regarding Guantanamo. This is after all a guy who sees no problem with indefinite detention and with drone strikes. So I am totally with you about the ridiculousness of Obama's position on the whole thing. Second and completely unrelated to Obama's sincerity or lack thereof is the appropriateness of economic arguments on a subject that is really about basic human rights and decency. Now I happen to think that the economic argument on its merits is very weak. It simply does not cost all that much money to run Guantanamo, especially in a world of high unemployment and deflation. The US government can easily afford to run a hundred Guantanamo-like gulags for a hundred years without running out of money. Nevertheless, I completely understand the rhetorical necessity of the economic argument. Our fucked-up social norms *require* this in order to be taken seriously. This second point was what I was making and I am afraid I didn't (and still don't) get the joke in your earlier email. -raghu.
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