During his speech last night, Obama said:
"We are going to lead by example, by maintaining the highest standards of civil liberties and human rights, which is why I will close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus…."
Sounds great...but, like everything else about the Obama campaign, it's not clear what the actual change in policy will entail--beyond change for change's sake. If Obama closes Gitmo, moves the detainees to, say, Ft. Leavenworth, and gives them habeas corpus, does that mean he's against the military tribunals and wants terrorists to have full access to U.S. courts? It isn't clear, but that's what it sounds like.
Such a move would, at the very least, immediately expand the rights of those prisoners, and it would bring their prosecution closer to something resembling the authority of domestic law enforcement. They might still be prosecuted under the current system--just in a different location--yet the implication seems to be that the current system does not meet the "highest standards of civil liberties and human rights." The problem is that if you keep giving them more and more rights, there is no logical stopping point.
If Obama is going to grandstand on this particularly complex issue, he ought to at least spell out exactly what kind of legal process he hopes to implement. He is a law professor, after all. Talking simply of the "highest standards" sounds vaguely like full legal protection. Is that really what he proposes?
