Future Challenges: Obfuscation and Candor

We have been determinedly disguising—especially from ourselves—the challenge posed by our continuing need to detain transnational terrorists. The call to shutter the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay is a case in point. Whether to close Gitmo is the wrong question and has functioned to conceal the right question. The issue is not one of location or where to hold unlawful enemy combatants, but rather the rules under which we detain, interrogate, and prosecute transnational terrorists.