Tomorrow, the Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a closed door hearing on progress toward the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, with Special Envoy for Guantanamo Bay Ambassador Daniel Fried and senior officials from the Departments of Defense, Justice, and the intelligence community. Closing the prison, which has become a recruiting tool for terrorists worldwide, is part of the Administration's broader counterterrorism strategy.

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This past weekend, two of America’s foremost experts on defense and security issues came out in full support of the President’s plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.  General Petraeus, CENTCOM commander, said that the detention center hurts our ability to maintain the moral high ground, harms our counterinsurgency efforts and serves as a major terrorist recruiting tool.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a career intelligence and defense official who has dealt with imprisoning terrorists for 20 years, said this past Monday that the U.S. has imprisoned terrorist suspects many times and conservative opposition amounted to “fear mongering.”  The statements from Petraeus and Gates reflect a growing consensus among former senior officials, military officers, and national experts that Guantanamo must be closed. Yet conservatives continue political attacks that argue that closing Guantanamo will bring terrorists into our backyard and that its symbolic damage to America’s image is irrelevant.

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The situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region continues to deteriorate, with news in the last week of more attacks on American and NATO supply routes from Pakistan and the Kyrgyz government’s decision to close a key American air base.  It is critical that we have a clear strategy for Afghanistan that includes measureable and realistic objectives, and President Obama’s decision to delay the announcement of additional troops into Afghanistan until we have a focused strategy is the right approach. 

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One of the major fault lines in this election has been over the willingness to talk to our adversaries. Sen. Obama has stated he is prepared to diplomatically engage rogue regimes, while Sen. McCain has insisted on setting “pre-conditions” before any talks are able to occur. Peace is made through negotiations.

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Throughout this campaign Senator McCain has failed to lay out concrete plans on some of the most important national security issues before the U.S. McCain has either adopted an incoherent approach, such as with Iran, where he will attack his opponent’s position in one sentence and then agree with it in the next, or replaced policy proposals with empty platitudes about “not surrendering” and achieving “victory” in reference to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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This week General McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and General David Petraeus made an obvious point: “Afghanistan is not Iraq.” Both insisted that the challenges in Afghanistan are very different than the ones in Iraq and therefore require a very different strategy and approach.

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This weekend’s financial turmoil spotlights how, like America’s diplomatic and military power, American economic power has eroded over the last eight years. The U.S. financial system has again been pushed to the brink, as Lehman Brothers moved toward bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was sold late last night to Bank of America. Fears of a worldwide sell-off appeared to be realized, as markets in Europe and Asia dropped sharply today. This financial crisis will have powerful consequences not just for Americans’ personal circumstances but also for our power and security as a nation.

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In his last days commanding U.S. forces in Iraq, General Petraeus issued words of caution – the security gains that had been achieved were “tenuous.” The increase in U.S. forces played an important role in creating the decrease in violence, but during this time almost no progress has been made on political reconciliation.

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