Obama never wanted to end the injustice of Guantanamo, he merely wanted to move it:
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention — the defining injustice of Guantanamo — as his own policy.
...
hen the President finally unveiled his plan for “closing Guantanamo,” it became clear that it wasn’t a plan to “close” the camp as much as it was a plan simply to re-locate it — import it — onto American soil, at a newly purchased federal prison in Thompson, Illinois. William Lynn, Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary, sent a letter to inquiring Senators that expressly stated that the Obama administration intended to continue indefinitely to imprison some of the detainees with no charges of any kind. The plan was classic Obama: a pretty, feel-good, empty symbolic gesture (get rid of the symbolic face of Bush War on Terror excesses) while preserving the core abuses (the powers of indefinite detention ), even strengthening and expanding those abuses by bringing them into the U.S.
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
I think in a way you're being unfair to President Obama. I believe his actual intention was to get the prisoners onto continental American soil and into a Federal prison so that the Supreme Court would feel more inclined to require they be released or charged in the civilian system. He'd get the outcome he wanted (I think he really does believe Gitmo and unlimited detention are bad ideas) without having to take political responsibility for it himself.
President Obama's stranger decisions can often be explained as an attempt to vote "present".
You think he said to himself "I'd like to shut guantanamo bay, but only if I can do it without getting credit or blame, if I have to take credit or blame I just won't do it" ?
Seems to me he's in his final term - it's not like closing guantanamo bay would be the thing that stopped him getting re-elected.
More likely, in my opinion, is that after being elected he received secret information (maybe proving the detainees are guilty, maybe proving they've been subject to torture which they'd go to the press about, maybe both) and he decided he didn't want them released.
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention — the defining injustice of Guantanamo — as his own policy.
...
hen the President finally unveiled his plan for “closing Guantanamo,” it became clear that it wasn’t a plan to “close” the camp as much as it was a plan simply to re-locate it — import it — onto American soil, at a newly purchased federal prison in Thompson, Illinois. William Lynn, Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary, sent a letter to inquiring Senators that expressly stated that the Obama administration intended to continue indefinitely to imprison some of the detainees with no charges of any kind. The plan was classic Obama: a pretty, feel-good, empty symbolic gesture (get rid of the symbolic face of Bush War on Terror excesses) while preserving the core abuses (the powers of indefinite detention ), even strengthening and expanding those abuses by bringing them into the U.S. http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/