Guantanamo to Close

So one of the first moves that President Obama has made is to sign an executive order mandating the Guantanamo be closed within a year, as well as move to end harsh interrogation techniques and return to the guidelines within the army field manual.  I’m definitely going to watch on with interest on how Obama’s anti-terror measures compare with Bush’s.  On one hand Obama made a lot of promises throughout the campaign to take a step back from the seemingly unethical and unconstitutional measures of the Bush Administration.  The catch though is that if America is attacked again by terrorists, it could ruin Obama’s presidency.  Regardless of whether or not Bush’s controversial techniques actually worked, if Obama discontinues them and then America is attacked, the press and a lot of people will correlate the attack to Obama’s new anti-terror policies.  Therefore, when it comes to issues like Guantanamo, harsh interrogations, lawyers for terror suspects, wire-tapping etc, Obama is going to have to walk the tightrope of appeasing his base that elected him and make good on his campaign promises while at the same time protecting America.  Definitely a difficult position to be in.

In case you’re interestsed in the article on Guantanamo closing within a year, here is the link :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012201527.html?hpid=topnews