Eight Years and a Thousand Broken Promises: Obama and Guantanamo

By Urooba Jamal, teleSUR

11 January 17

he day was Jan. 22, 2009. Forty-eight hours had passed since the 44th President of the United States was sworn in. Barack Hussein Obama II, riding on the coattails of his presidential campaign, hurried to sign an executive order promising to end the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba within a year.

“This is me following through,” Obama declared from the White House.

The presidential campaign of the lawyer-turned-politician was replete with pledges about “hope” and “change” — and it seemed the charismatic leader would follow through on them. After all, his presidency began on the heels of his deeply unpopular predecessor, who was responsible for opening Guantanamo in the first place. It seemed that the days of waterboarding, anal sodomy and other torture tactics ordained by the former president, George W. Bush, at the site would soon cease, thanks to Obama.

Eight years and two terms later, that fallacious promise remains a far-flung fantasy: short of Guantanamo being closed, it is due to undergo billions of dollars in renovations, with the 15-year anniversary of its opening taking place on Jan. 11, 2017.

As a Trump presidency nears, the possibility of Guantanamo's closure appears farther. In early 2016, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to load up the prison "with some bad dudes." Just last week, he confirmed that assertion, tweeting, “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

As the closure of the facility is buried as nothing more than an elusive promise, it is perhaps this issue that is most synonymous with the failure of the Obama administration and its militaristic legacy.

The Pit of Promises

Each policy change regarding Guantanamo issued during Obama’s eight years in office was parceled with yet another vacuous promise to close it.

In March of 2011, when his administration announced new rules regarding Gitmo prisoners, including resuming military trials and establishing a "periodic review" process for long-held detainees, the White House also declared that it "remain(ed) committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

But many saw the policy changes as cementing the military prison in U.S. counterterrorism policy.

As a Washington Post story noted, the move all but created “a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.”

In November 2015, the U.S. senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which not only authorized more than US$600 billion in defense spending but also contained provisions making it difficult to close Guantanamo. Just a month earlier, in October 2015, Obama had vetoed the bill for the latter reason but did not follow through with that move yet again.

In his final year in office, Obama announced on Feb. 23, 2016, a four-point plan that would “close Guantanamo once and for all.”

“When it becomes clear that something is not working as intended, that it does not advance our national security it's time to change course," he said at a press conference at the time. "Guantanamo does not advance our national security efforts.”

But even that plan was gravely finite: it merely involved transferring Guantanamo detainees — most never charged, convicted or tried — to instead a maximum security prison in the United States.

"The centerpiece of the plan — moving those detainees who have not been and will never be charged with any crime to a prison in the U.S. — does not 'close Guantanamo,' it merely relocates it to a new ZIP code," the Center for Constitutional Rights said at the time.

Executive Evasion

And just five months later, the potentate of empire announced he would not be using his executive power as commander-in-chief to unilaterally shut the detention center — a move he could have made anytime in the past eight years.

"There are many steps in Obama's plan that he has ample authority to carry out," Omar Shakir, a fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights told teleSUR in 2016.

Gregory B. Craig, a lawyer who served as White House counsel to Obama in 2009, and who was the special envoy for Guantanamo’s closure in 2013 and 2014, also wrote in 2015, “Some maintain that the congressional ban on transfers from Guantanamo to the United States prevents closure without congressional approval. But that is wrong. Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has exclusive authority to determine the facilities in which military detainees are held.”

What Happens Now?

The only cause for celebration in Obama’s war-stained legacy is that even in the waning days of his presidency, detainees are being transferred out — as the number of detainees at the prison has dropped from a high of 680 in 2003 to 59 in 2016 – 22 of whom have now been cleared for release.

Time can only tell what the fate of Guantanamo prisoners will be under Trump, having endured the brutality of both the Bush and Obama eras.

The Rise of Big Oil in American Politics

By Brian C. Black, EcoWatch

11 January 17

ow Big Oil Bought the White House and Tried to Steal the Country" is the subtitle of a book that tells the story of a presidential election in which a candidate allowed money from big oil companies to help him win office and then rewarded them with plum appointments in his cabinet.

With President-elect Donald Trump picking former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, one might think the book is an early exposé of the presidential election of 2016.

Instead, it's from The Teapot Dome Scandal, a book that tells the story of a corruption scandal that rocked the term of President Warren G. Harding's administration in the 1920s.

In the context of Tillerson's controversial appointment, history is a useful guide to understand the rising political power of Big Oil over the past century, a subject I've studied and written about. And with Tillerson, the political influence of the energy sector has reached a high point, particularly because it strikes the president-elect and other observers as a sensible, mainstream selection.

But this is only the latest episode of a tight relationship between energy and the U.S. government that stretches over decades.

Access to Energy

In 1921, when Albert Fall accepted his position as secretary of the interior, he interpreted his responsibility to accelerate energy development on federal lands, including some in an out-of-the-way place known as Teapot Dome, Wyoming. And he believed that this meant involving private entities.

He brokered a deal with Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, major players in the booming American oil fields of the early 1900s, blazing a new trail for federal policy—a trail that laid clear the crucial relationship between energy development and political power. In Fall's case, he personally accepted cash to allow this access to oil developers, which made him the first cabinet official to go to jail for crimes committed while serving in office.

Since its indiscreet beginning with Teapot Dome, of course, oil has only become more essential to the lives of every American. If we follow the lead of Life magazine creator Henry Luce, who referred to the 20th century as the "American Century," we are by association also declaring it the era of fossil fuels and particularly of petroleum. Oil and other fossil fuels were the relatively inexpensive energy resources that provided the foundation for the modern consumer society and political policy often focused on ensuring that supplies be assured and kept stable.

Despite energy being central to our society, though, the policy influence of Big Oil most often functioned behind the scenes. For example, President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 struck a deal in a secret meeting with King Ibn Saud to allow the U.S. and its allies to have access to Saudi oil for decades to come. During the ensuing decades, foreign oil development was carried out by international companies but often required the support, if discreet, of the U.S. government.

Out From Behind the Scenes

In domestic politics after 1950, the executives of oil corporations were often involved informally in elections, particularly as donors or lobbyists to candidates more friendly to the industry than others. Most often, though, Big Oil remained in the background.

In the modern era of heightened environmental awareness, Republican administrations typically created policies that benefited the oil companies. It was, for instance, the Reagan administration that sought to undermine the new environmental regulations of the 1970s, particularly with Anne Gorsuch as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and James Watt as secretary of the interior. It was Watt who allowed extensive energy development on federal lands under his jurisdiction—however, with no payment to himself.

Through the 1980s, energy resources on federal lands were opened to development, and environmental regulations were curbed to be more "friendly" to corporate interests. Most often, Reagan was unabashedly overt in his approach in this regard; however, Big Oil and energy were not cornerstones of his administration, per se.

The tenor and role of oil in government changed more substantially when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush—both former oil executives—were in office. They prioritized an agenda that, while not confrontational, grew from incredibly close consultation with the energy industry that they knew so well.

Dick Cheney personifies the proximity of these energy interests to power during this era. After serving under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Cheney was the CEO of the world's largest supplier of drilling and rigging supplies, Halliburton Inc., during the Clinton years before reemerging as George W. Bush's vice president in 2000.

In the book "Private Empire," journalist Steve Coll describes Cheney's consultation with industry executives, from which the Bush energy policy took shape. These close consultations drew criticism for Cheney's reluctance to disclose the participants and the apparent influence the industry had on policy.

Thus, a review of presidential administrations shows the growing clout of leaders from the energy industry. What's perhaps more revealing, however, is the increasing willingness to allow this connection to be seen by the public—to view it as business as usual—as evidenced by Tillerson's appointment.

Direction on Foreign Policy?

These political changes have come at a time of growing national awareness of the importance of energy, both as a source of wealth from the expansion of domestic drilling in the U.S. and as a contributor to climate change from burning fuels.

While the George W. Bush administration internally pressured government agencies to subdue scientific findings that supported climate change, the Obama administration used regulations and government science to pursue an agenda of mitigating climate change and adaptively planning for a different future. In this approach, climate change was included within the Department of State as a matter of national security.

Tillerson's appointment, along with other cabinet appointees, suggests a major reversal on the nation's serious treatment of the issue of climate change.

While Obama worked with more than 100 nations to craft the 2015 Paris climate accord, Exxon under Tillerson faced criticism and lawsuits accusing it of concealing the science that substantiated climate change.

Tillerson and the company, which traces its origins back to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and has operated in about 200 countries and territories, is of course no stranger to foreign affairs and politics. Coll quotes Lee Raymond, Tillerson's predecessor at the energy giant, as saying: "Presidents come and go; Exxon doesn't come and go."

As the 20th century closed, Coll described Exxon's approach to policy in this fashion:

"The corporation's lobbyists bent and shaped American foreign policy, as well as economic, climate, chemical and environmental regulation. Exxon maintained all-weather alliances with sympathetic American politicians while calling as little attention to its influence as possible."

With Tillerson as the country's top diplomat, the opportunity to redefine the rationale and methods for the entirety of our interactions with other nations is unparalleled. While this has been true to some extent since World War II, this appointment institutionalizes the view that our national diplomacy—much like a business—will be guided by resource acquisition, particularly energy.