Majority of Americans Do NOT Want Obama to Shut Down Guantanamo Bay

Even a majority of Democrats...

By Francesca Chambers 

Most Americans do not want President Obama to shut down the United State's terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a poll released this afternoon.

Americans continue to be wary of releasing prisoners with terrorist ties like the ones swapped last month for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl or moving them to prisons in the U.S.

Two in three Americans told Gallup that they want president Obama to keep the 149 suspected terrorists being held at Gitmo under lock and key on foreign soil instead of shutting down the camp.

 

 

Closing Guantanamo Bay was one of the president's core campaign promises in the 2008 presidential election.

On his first full day in office, Obama stated that 'Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.'

That never happened, in part, because the idea became politically unpopular and Congress clamped down on the president's authority to release and transfer detainees.

Americans have never wanted president Obama to close the prison and move the most dangerous inmates to prisons on U.S. soil, but the number in favor of keeping it open has sharply increased since the president brought attention to it by promising to shut it down.

In 2007 a simple majority, 51 percent, of Americans thought the U.S. should keep Guantanamo Bay open. By 2009 that number had jumped up to 65 percent, and since then, roughly 66 percent of Americans have said they don't want it to close. 

The majority of the president's own political party doesn't think he should close Guantanamo Bay. 

The percentage of self-proclaimed Democrats who believe Obama should close Gitmo has decreased 53 percent to 41 percent since 2009.

In Gallup's latest poll, 54 percent of self-proclaimed Democrats said Obama should not close the prison. 

Nevertheless, President Obama has pushed forward with his plan. 

Obama told Congress in his 2014 State of the Union address in January, 'With the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay – because we counter terrorism, not just through intelligence and military action, but by remaining true to our Constitutional ideals, and setting an example for the rest of the world.' 

Current law prohibits the president from transferring terrorists to U.S. prisons.

Additionally, the president is legally required to show that it is in the national interest of the country to release detainees and steps have been taken to 'substantially mitigate the risk of such individual engaging or reengaging in any terrorist or other hostile activity that threatens the United States' before they can be repatriated.

He is also required to give Congress 30 days notice before releasing detainees. 

Obama did not confer with Congress in the case of Bergdahl exchange, but the Obama administration has said they did not break the law because it only applies to prisoner releases, not trades.

This March 2013 picture shows the exterior of Camp Delta at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The president has said he wants to shut down the U.S. detention facilities there, but he lacks the power to do so.

Even members of the president's own party don't want him to shut down Gitmo.

As a result of the stringent restrictions placed on the president, only 17 Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been released in the last 13 months. That number includes the five Taliban fighters Obama traded last month.

One way the president may legally be able to release the terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay is by ending the war in Afghanistan.

Legal scholars have argued that the U.S. is only authorized to keep the captured Taliban associates in prison as long as it is at war with the terrorist organisation.

President Obama announced two weeks ago that he would withdraw the majority of America's troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, effectively ending the war there as far as the United States is concerned.

Administration officials recently told CNN that the president's first preference would be to work with Congress to shut down the terrorist detention camp rather than go it alone, however. 

And, according to a Politico article from earlier this year, the Obama administration believes that a third of the combatants being held at Guantanamo bay are too dangerous to release outright but are unsuitable for trial, further complicating the matter and making it unlikely the the president will fully close the camp at the end of this year.