Unfulfilled Promises and Arab Expectations; Or, the Obama Administration's Other Credibility Problem

A recent Huffington Post article by James Zogby makes note that Arabs are a pretty jaded bunch. They are used to the fact that American politicians promise much and deliver little, and are therefore relatively pessimistic about any American-led progress on the Arab-Israeli peace front. Particularly where Israel is concerned, Arabs have little reason to believe that America will change direction any time soon.

When President Obama promised to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, however, Arabs took him seriously. More than one year later, however, they are still waiting. And their jaded attitude has returned. As Zogby comments, "credit must still be given to the President's good intentions, but it is now clear that it will take more than a year to undo the damage of the last eight."

Closing GITMO may indeed be complicated by issues of jeopardizing classified information or risking the release of dangerous individuals whose conviction cannot be secured on the basis of evidence obtained though torture. However, even if we put aside issues of justice, we would do good to think of an important question: for every individual NOT released from GITMO, how many actual NEW dangerous individuals do we create and encourage to join or assist dangerous organizations? Although this question is ultimately unanswerable, the thought exercise may help us to determine a major cost of violating the principles upon which our country was founded.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost