Still waiting to close $400 million American gulag in Guantanamo

President Obama has been, on balance, wildly successful during his seven years as Uncle Sam's CEO. He's delivered on health care and immigration reform, universal gay marriage, ending large scale combat operations in the Middle East (alas, replaced by endless criminal bombing), rapprochement with both Cuba and Iran, and many other lesser successes . But he's failed on a signature goal of closing the American gulag in Guantanamo. That's a shame because it represents one of America's most egregious examples of rampant Islamophobia; defiling American values of equal protection under law and serving as a costly recruiting tool for Islamic 'blowback' against this symbol of American aggression. How costly? This year's cost is $400 million, roughly $2.7 million for each of the roughly 150 unfortunates snared in a ferocious roundup of suspected bad guys, some of whom were simply sold into our gulag by their enemies for blood money. They languish because we don't have the goods or the will to try them in an fair court of law. They languish because cowardly American congressmen pander to their constituency by insisting they can't be brought into American supermax prisons because they might escape and cause mayhem. The most recent vote against funding such a move was 91-3 in the Senate; 370-58 in the House. One reason the president is not giving one of his famous versions of the FDR 'fireside chat' to inspire and ennoble the public on the urgency of closing Guantanamo is that far too few Americans demand removing this despicable stain from the American legacy. That must change.