"Anything But Bush?": The Obama Administration and Guantanamo Bay‪.‬

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama soundly criticized the Bush Administration's execution of the war on terrorism, especially the use of the detention facility at Guantanamo and the manner of interrogations conducted there. (1) The counterterrorism policy that then-Senator Obama described was robust--he declared willingness to order American military forces to take action in Pakistan upon receipt of "actionable intelligence" if Pakistan were unwilling to act (2)--but distinct from the policy then in place. As President Obama has now surpassed the two-year anniversary of his inauguration, it is an opportune time to compare his administration's counterterrorism policies with those of his predecessor. In a different symposium article, I concluded that there are high-level similarities between the policies of the two presidents. (3) Among the areas of agreement are the policies that military force is an appropriate (but not the only) tool for responding to al Qaeda, and that indefinite military detention of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters is lawful.