Locked in fear

The U.S. Senate has sent President Obama a military spending bill that continues the costly and counterproductive use of a terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The measure, which passed on a 91-3 vote, would prohibit the transfer of any of the slightly more than 100 detainees to the United States for prosecution or further detention.

Obama had made a campaign pledge to close the facility, but his efforts have been frustrated at every turn by a Congress that has clung to dubious arguments that closing it would be a sign of weakness.

In reality, the continued existence of a lockup where foreigners are held without due process undermines this nation’s counterterrorism efforts. It deprives our ability to claim moral authority through respect for human rights and the rule of law.

If anything, Guantanamo Bay has become a prime recruiting tool for terrorist organizations.

It would be cheaper, no less effective — and consistent with U.S. constitutional principles — to hold those suspects on American soil and subject them to criminal prosecution.

It costs about $2.5 million annually to detain a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo — about 30 times the cost of keeping someone at a supermax federal prison in Florence, Colo.

Now the president is forced into the difficult choice of whether to use his executive authority to try to get around the congressional blockade against Guantanamo’s closure. As the White House was reminded earlier this week in a ruling against its executive orders on immigration, unilateral action comes with considerable risk.

Obama needs to keep pushing with a plan to persuade a timid Congress that closing Guantanamo Bay is in the national interest.