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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Well Gitmo was ordered closed. So it's gone right? Oh yeah.

Announce all you want, it will still be there tomorrow.

After making all his Nobel prize winning promises, all Obama has done is systematically break nearly every one of them. Tomorrow is just going to be one more in a long series of disappointments.

While I'm the first to admit that Obama is lacking in political courage (he generally just sticks his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, like he did with gay marriage), Gitmo isn't his fault. We can thank the cowardly Congress for that. "Rep. Dumbshit voted to close Gitmo!! Dumbshit loves the terrorists!!! This November, vote Jim Douchenozzle for Congress, because Douchenozzle hates the terrorists."

The ignorance and overall un-literacy (not illiterate, unliterate, meaning they're too fucking lazy to read) of the American public, and the high turnout ratio of elderly, and I'm sorry to say, gullible senior citizens doesn't help.

Personally I don't see the problem with a politician figuring out what their constituents want and doing just that. I hear criticisms of weak politicians just doing whatever seems favorable... isn't that what they're there for? To represent the will of the people?

I don't want to elect someone who will force their ideas into law. I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law. What's wrong with a politician saying "I had this idea, but I changed my mind because the people told me I was wrong"?

Ideally, we elect them to do what we would want them to do if we were fully informed and had time to think about each issue. In practice, both sides of the question are easily used and just as easily alleged to be used as political cover for unsavoriness.

>I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law.

What about when the people choose an ethnic group that they want to lynch en masse, or a particular type of music that they want to make it a crime to distribute, or to start a mass extermination of sharks in coastal waters, or to have the EPA offices torn down and replaced with a massive monument to the 10 commandments?

Yeah, but I don't think freehunter was invoking white line unConstitutional things, which cover your first two items.

The latter two are just reflections on shifting cultural trends. E.g. replace sharks with wolves for the first ... but the latter is cute. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wetlands....

Sure, but you are failing to account for the part where by ways of mass media you can plant your ideas in the heads of the people which they will then request you enforce.

I'm so tired of this reply, because ultimately it boils down to "The President of the United States was unable to use the bully pulpit to convince Americans that torture is bad."

That's a reflection on the quality of the president, not checks and balances.

Reflection on the quality of the president or on the morals of the average American?

If true (all I noticed were "Don't move them into my district!", a legit issue), what does that say about Obama's foresight?

Such objections were predictable when he made that pledge, nothing's changed in your claimed reasons of "ignorance and overall un-literacy" and high turnout elderly. It says nothing good if all this was enough to stop him once he became President, whatever the exact reason(s), and it's remains another broken promise.

Going to disagree with you that it's a "legit issue". The people in guantanamo are not comic book supervillians. They do not have special powers. The whole NIMBY thing surrounding them is just as silly as saying that maximum security prisons shouldn't exist.

The normal occupants of maximum security prisons don't have world-wide networks of people with a demonstrated willingness and ability to kidnap or mass murder to apply pressure for their release. Guantanamo is wonderfully isolated, Cuban mine field on the land side (Clinton removed ours, replacing it with sensors), otherwise a Navy base only accessible only by air and sea, which we control.

There was also the wrinkle of trying them in normal civilian courts, which would have been a logistical nightmare.

Ah, yeah, don't forget the usual suspects would be out there protesting 24x7. Not saying that's not their right, but what Congresscritter wants that?

(And all rather silly, at least for the unlawful combatants, which per international war conventions can be killed out of hand.)

I'm not sure what the first thing has to do with anything. If a terrorist organization is going to kill or kidnap in order to play for someone's release, it doesn't particularly matter where they're located.

Logistical nightmare? We try more dangerous people than this every single year. It's hardly insurmountable.

"We promise to work harder next time to not get caught"

I feel like a pessimist but this what it sounds like during these types of announcements.

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