The Politics of Gitmo | Newsweek Scope

Pakistan’s Fickle Ally
Sumit Ganguly 10/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
President Obama is on the verge of signing legislation that would grant $7.5 billion in new aid to Pakistan over the next five years, most of it in the form of economic assistance designed to strengthen the alliance and induce Pakistan to move more aggressively against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Deployments and Diplomacy
Henry Kissinger 10/3/2009 12:00:00 AM
The request for additional forces by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, poses cruel dilemmas for President Obama. If he refuses the recommendation and General McChrystal's argument that his forces are inadequate for the mission, Obama will be blamed for the dramatic consequences. If he accepts the recommendation, his opponents may come to describe it, at least in part, as Obama's war. If he compromises, he may fall between all stools—too little to make progress, too much to still controversy. And he must make the choice on the basis of assessments he cannot prove when he makes them.
Bundy’s Blunders
Jonathan Alter 10/3/2009 12:00:00 AM
We're told that this month's marathon policy meetings about Afghanistan mark a fateful moment in the Obama presidency—a fork in the road. But that's only true if the president sharply escalates the number of U.S. ground forces. As everyone learned the hard way in Iraq, getting out is a helluva lot harder than getting in. If, by contrast, Obama chooses to limit U.S. involvement to fighting Al Qaeda, and stops short of a commitment to protect civilians from the Taliban, he has more options for a midcourse correction. That wouldn't be as fateful. (Click here to follow Jonathan Alter)
Generation 9/11
9/8/2009 12:00:00 AM
Of course, children have always lived through the challenges and horrors of history. In the last 50 years alone, young people witnessed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the killings in Vietnam, the Challenger disaster, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the shootings at Columbine, to name just a few. Many of these events were defining moments for them, changing their lives in some fundamental way. While it's too soon to say definitively what the long-term impact of 9/11 will be—experts are still studying the historical and psychological fallout of Hiroshima, decades later—the attacks did present a new paradigm: an enemy who would use a plane filled with civilians as ammunition, a foe who could potentially live undercover in any city and kill at any moment. And we all—adults and 10-year-olds alike—were potential targets. The immediate impact of 9/11 was shock, fear, confusion. The attacks heightened awareness of global events for a generation of kids, shattered their illusions of a peaceful world, and changed perceptions they had of their nation as almighty and invulnerable. Daniel Young, who was in his fifth-grade social-studies class in Charlottesville, Va., that September morning, says he quickly learned an enduring lesson: "We found out that the United States isn't invincible."
Getting Off the Island
5/29/2009 12:00:00 AM
Late one night in February 2004, the U.S. ambassador for war-crimes issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, and the Danish ambassador to the United States, Ulrich Federspiel, sat in the living room of Denmark's ambassadorial residence in Washington ironing out the details of an agreement to repatriate Guantánamo's only Danish detainee. His name was Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, and while he had drawn little attention in the United States, his fate had been the subject of intense negotiations between Danish diplomats and a group of high-ranking American officials, including Prosper, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the White House National Security Council's legal adviser, John Bellinger.
NATION
Safe To Release?
Michael Isikoff 1/24/2009 12:00:00 AM
The Pentagon is preparing to declassify portions of a secret report on Guantanamo detainees that could further complicate President Obama's plans to shut down the detention facility.