The Obama administration has announced that it will remove the term ‘enemy combatant’, which has been used extensively by the previous Bush administration. The term will not be used by the justice department to justify the holdings of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. However, many critics argue that the elimination of the term is not enough to provide basic legal protection against the prisoners. Many human rights activists expressed their disappointment with the Obama administration, and they emphasized that holding of prisoners indefinitely without charge is unlawful.

It seems that many have put in too much weight on the administration move to eliminate the term ‘enemy combatant’ when in fact I believe it was a simple legal maneuver to conform with U.S. District Judge John Bates’ deadline of providing a definition of whom the United States may hold as ‘enemy combatant’. The fact of the matter is that Obama’s stance on the legal treatments of those particular prisoners is not so different from the previous administration, and one should not expect any significant lawfully moral advancement from this administration in regards to this particular case.