Benjamin began shouting just after Obama began remarks on the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The president repeatedly asked Benjamin if he could finish his remarks, at one point pausing to let her finish yelling. "I'm willing to cut that young lady interrupting me some slack, because it's worth being passionate about," Obama said. He even went off script to address the heckler. "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to," Obama said.
During President Obama's counterterrorism policy speech at National Defense University on Thursday afternoon, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin interrupted when the topic turned to the closing of the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
"I'm about to address it, ma'am," Obama said as Benjamin went off about the hunger strike currently taking hold amongst Gitmo detainees. "Why don't you sit down? But you've got to let me speak."
"You are commander-in-chief! You can close Gitmo today!" she continued, despite Obama's repeated protests that he intended to address those issues himself.
"You should let me finish my sentence," he said before explaining his desire for Congress to make it easier to transfer detainees out of the camp, allowing him to fulfill his promise to close Gitmo. "I am confident this legacy problem can be solved, consistent with the rule of law."
Obama also added that he is willing to cut the heckler "some slack" because "it's worth passionate about" the indefinite detention of the prisoners without formal charges.
Several minutes later, Benjamin interrupted once more, decrying the administration's killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki with a drone strike. Instead of protesting her interruption, Obama paused his speech and allowed her to rant while security attempted to remove her from the back of the room.
President Barack Obama Major speech on drone and counterterrorism policy at the National Defense University today
'It's an honor to return to the National Defense University. Here, at Fort McNair, Americans have served in uniform since 1791-- standing guard in the early days of the Republic, and contemplating the future of warfare here in the 21st century.
For over two centuries, the United States has been bound together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and served as our compass through every type of change. Matters of war and peace are no different. Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but having fought for our independence, we know that a price must be paid for freedom. From the Civil War, to our struggle against fascism, and through the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed, and technology has evolved. But our commitment to Constitutional principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end.
With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived at home. For a moment, it seemed the 21st century would be a tranquil time. Then, on September 11th 2001, we were shaken out of complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire, metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind of war. No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could.
And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won't review the full history. What's clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world, and -- to this day -- our interests in a vital region.
