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America can't Gitmo satisfaction

Eight years later, President Obama is still trying to close the disgraceful American gulag that is Guantanamo Bay. It never should have come to this.

The politicians who constantly fret and moan about America's standing in the world -- now fighting to keep open the facility that has done so much more to cripple our image and our moral leadership than any other person, place or thing.

The so-called leaders who don hats and traipse around promising to "Make American Great Again" -- even as they push the notion that the United States is too inept, and its criminal justice system too imperfect, to detain and try a handful of terrorism suspects.

The senators who proudly call themselves "fiscal conservatives" and yet cling to a program that not only has a barbaric history -- but wastes at least $65 million of taxpayer dollars every year while managing to make American citizens less safe in the world.

Welcome to the insanity that is the never-ending American gulag at Guantanamo Bay.

Today, President Obama -- as he has on numerous occasions -- urged Congress and the rest of America to get behind a plan to put this fiasco known as "Gitmo" behind us. The president called for detaining some terrorism suspects now at the facility on the tip of Cuba -- some 30 to 60, according to reports -- at tough "super-max" prisons on American soil, and transferring who's left among the current 91 detainees to other countries.

In arguing for the closure of Gitmo that he first promised as a candidate back in 2008, Obama's case seemed to lean heavily on two arguments: The dollars that are wasted in running a large overseas prison camp for so few remaining inmates, and the symbol that Guantanamo has become for those seeking to stir up anti-American sentiment and recruit new converts to terrorism.

Only briefly did the president -- who's leaving office in less than 11 months -- focus on the only reason for closing the detention center that should matter.

"Moreover, keeping this facility open is contrary to our values.  It undermines our standing in the world.  It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law.  As Americans, we pride ourselves on being a beacon to other nations, a model of the rule of law.  But 15 years after 9/11 -- 15 years after the worst terrorist attack in American history -- we're still having to defend the existence of a facility and a process where not a single verdict has been reached in those attacks -- not a single one."

Upholding basic human values shouldn't just be a "moreover." And, as some critics pointed out, Obama could have gone even further today and pushed to end the policy of indefinite-detention-without-trial, which for now would still continue even if the president did gain the ability to transfer the most dangerous of the Gitmo suspects to U.S. soil. Over the last seven years, I've certainly criticized Obama on his failures in ending the Bush-Cheney-era abuses, including his inability to find a way to close the Guantanamo facility, more than on any other issue. But in a moment where he could be just as easily spending his time studying the blueprints for the Obama Presidential Library, POTUS is turning up the heat. Good for him.

And bad for the Republicans in Congress, who immediately pledged to use every lever to block this plan, despite the many, many logical reasons -- cost, safety, public relations -- for closing Gitmo. Instead, they respond only to the talk-radio wing that dominates the 21st Century GOP with its bed-wetting prattle that a terrorist is hiding under every bed. Their irresponsibility and lack of logic is exactly what set the stage for the rise of a dangerous demagogue like Donald Trump in 2016.

It's not a coincidence that this all went down on the very same day that Senate Republicans -- in a stunning act of obstruction -- made clear that they will leave the 9th chair on the Supreme Court vacant for at least 11 months rather than hold hearings or vote on any nominee that our Constitutionally-elected president (that would be President Obama) sends over to Capitol Hill.

Today was not a good day for America. With the rule of law -- both actual and moral -- collapsing in Washington and with the unqualified Trump far too close to the Oval Office for comfort, I'm reminded of the controversial words once uttered by Malcolm X. The chickens are finally coming home to roost.