NIMBY
May 20th, 2009. Filed under: Wednesday's Wonders.The old “not in my backyard” rule wins out over shutting down Gitmo. The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to deny funding for President Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. A vote of 90-6 represented a setback for him. Obama used the closing of Gitmo as part of his campaign promises and signed an executive order beginning the process soon after he took office. Obama does have a bit of a problem with pronouncing all the “I wills” without thinking ahead in regards to the hows.
This time funding will be withheld until he figures out the how and where of what to do with the detainees. No one, including other countries, want these ruthless terrorists residing in their back yard. Oops, I forgot what we’re supposed to call terrorists now that Obama has decided to eliminate “the war on terror” from our vocabulary. Shades of George Orwell and some newspeak in 1984. Hopefully, we won’t progress to thoughtcrime.
You can read more about this failed funding attempt at The Washington Post.
Update, May 21st, 2009: I just read an article in The New York Times about the continuing problems Obama is having regarding these detainees. One interesting fact is that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center at Gitmo are engaged in terrorism or militant activity according to an unreleased Pentagon report. This just backs up the “not in my back yard” argument. Read the entire article here.
May 29th, 2009 at 05:40
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