Last week, Gen. David Petraeus told Radio Free Europe that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and that he opposes the use of so-called “enhance interrogation techniques.” “I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention,” Petraeus said.

Today in an interview with Fox News, Petraeus reiterated his support for a “responsible closure” of Gitmo but went a bit further, noting that the prison has been harmful to the U.S.:

PETRAEUS: Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activities since 9/11. And again, Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.

As Fox host Martha MacCallum went through most of the right-wing talking points on Gitmo and torture (Gitmo terrorists will “go free” in the U.S, torture works and should be used for the “ticking-time bomb” scenario) Petraeus knocked them down one-by-one. “I don’t think we should be afraid to live our values,” Petraeus repeatedly said.

Seemingly referring to Obama’s decision to release the Bush-era memos documenting President Bush’s torture program, MacCallum asked, “So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use the techniques anymore, what impact will that have on those who do us harm in the field that you operate in?” Again, Petraeus noted that such policies and techniques harm the U.S.

PETRAEUS: What I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool, which again they have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention, we rightly have been criticized. And so as we move forward, I think it is important to again live our values to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

Watch it:

Transcript: Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, President Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, where they discussed all the distressingly typical topics relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Obama reiterated the necessity for the Israeli government to halt settlement activity, which Abbas seconded. While news coverage focused on the growing rift between the United States and Israel over new settlement construction, both leaders referenced the work Gen. Keith Dayton, the United States Security Coordinator, has done in building effective and professional Palestinian security forces.

While Gen. Dayton’s security work is critical for the success of any future Palestinian state, professional Palestinian security services alone cannot guarantee the success of a either a two-state solution or a viable Palestinian state. A more comprehensive effort to build Palestinian state institutions across the board and deliver basic services to the Palestinian population needs to be undertaken under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority. President Obama recognizes this on a basic level, stating yesterday that “a two-state solution is in the interests of the Israeli people as well as the Palestinians.”

And certainly that’s how the United States views our long-term strategic interests — a situation in which the Palestinians can prosper, they can start businesses, they can educate their children, they can send them to college, they can prosper economically.

Despite this general recognition that a successful two-state solution requires broad-based Palestinian economic development, the United States has not yet engaged in an effort to build economic institutions in the West Bank comparable to its effort to build security institutions.

Instead, U.S. concerns have focused on short-term issues that would have a more immediate impact on the Palestinian population. Easing freedom of movement for Palestinians by removing checkpoints, for example, is a step that falls under President Obama’s statement yesterday “to alleviate some of the pressures that the Palestinian people are under in terms of travel and commerce” along the way to broader economic development.

There is nothing inherently objectionable to this building block approach to Palestinian economic development. Checkpoints and freedom of movement are critical issues to both near-term and long-term economic development. But the United States hasn’t made the same commitment to economic institution building in the Palestinian Authority as it has to developing the PA’s security forces and institutions. Since both the economic situation of average Palestinians and the ability of a potential Palestinian state to deliver basic services will be critical to a successful two-state solution, the United States doesn’t have much time to waste.