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Greg Craig, White House Counsel, has tendered his resignation (PDF file), in what The Washington Post calls the administration’s highest level shake up:

The departure comes after months of dissatisfaction over Craig’s management of Guantanamo policy and other matters and less than a month after officials said Craig was no longer guiding the effort to close the prison. His departure represents the highest-level White House shake-up to date.

Craig is a respected attorney who became more prominent for his defense work for President Clinton. The Washington Post story credits him with being one of the first Clinton administration insiders to support the campaign of then-Senator Barack Obama. Criag wrote a scathing editorial criticizing candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy credentials and, as The Washington Post reports, sought a foreign policy position in the new administration.

Craig is credited with influencing President Obama’s hurried executive order promising closure of the Guantanamo detainee facility in Cuba. It was a move he felt had broad support:

I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives.

Both major candidates had promised to close Gitmo, so Craig’s assessment is understandable. What the new administration found out is that bold strokes stand out, and actually doing things is harder than talking about them:

White House officials have conceded they will not make the January closure deadline that Craig helped Obama settle on and are at a loss as to where to house a number of hard cases who cannot be transferred to foreign countries or tried in U.S. or military courts.

Cross-posted to Donklephant.com

Politics detainees, Gitmo, Greg Craig, war on terror

The Administration’s rush to show the public just how naive it is resulted in it’s first official act: a public ceremony showing the new President signing an order to close Guantanamo within a year.

Its not uncommon for a new administration to take a few missteps along the way. Fixing those mistakes is always a lot harder than making them. The person on point for closing Guantanamo was White House counsel Gregory B. Craig according to the Washington Post. Craig, like the rest of President Obama’s political advisors, evidently believed their own BS instead of listening to the national security experts:

I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives.

“Broad consensus?” Craig may have come to that conclusion because both candidates, Obama and McCain, promised to close Guantanamo. Setting a date before you have had time to fully study the issue isn’t embracing consensus. It is showmanship, like an opening statement in the courtroom. Foreign policy should not be directed by lawyers.

The President chose to believe Craig’s ideas were better than the national security and foreign policy experts who cautioned against arbitrary timelines. The President seems to prefer initiatives that are fresh, bold, and wrong.

The American people expect our President to be smart about things, evaluate policies, and make rational changes. Our current President talks … he talks a lot … and apologizes. He apologizes a lot, always ready to demean and blame the US for any of the world’s ills. It is time he and his team realized they are no longer on the campaign trail, and were elected to govern.

Removing Craig as the point person on the closing of Guantanamo is a start. Getting serious about the rest of the duties of governing a nation, and not just making inspiring speeches, is the rest of the job. President Obama needs to show the nation that he is more than a one-trick pony, and can do more than apologize and demean America. It is time for Mr. Obama to become President Obama.

Politics Gitmo, Greg Craig, Guantanamo, obama