Evil or just pragmatic?

Obama has decided that the US needs to be able to lawfully, and with proper oversight, detain anyone they want forever without formal charges, a trial, or proof of any wrongdoing.  Why?  The obvious answer is:  He is evil and the Democrats are just as evil as the Republicans because all American politicians are evil!  (Obvious according to the internet, anyhow.)  I wonder if it isn't something else entirely though... maybe Obama is just desperately trying to be reelected.

Imagine this scenario.  Obama closes Guantanamo Bay and frees a couple hundred people that were being detained for crimes that cannot be proven.  Presumably some of those people are absolutely innocent, some are vaguely guilty and some are absolutely guilty of either trying to attack US soldiers, civilians or interests or at least planning to attack them.  Sometime later there are terrorist attacks against US interests and the Republican candidate proclaims that Obama releasing the Guantanamo prisoners allowed them to initiate this attack and that Obama isn't protecting America.  Obama loses the election on the basis that he freed maniacal terrorists bent on destroying America and the new president declares war on Iran.

Realistically most of those released, even of the ones who actually were involved in terrorism against the US, aren't going to do anything of note once they get their freedom.  However, that has absolutely nothing to do with the accusations against Obama that will be believed by a lot of Americans.  Combine this with the fact that all Republican candidates barring Ron Paul support a new war in against Iran (for NO FUCKING REASON) and you can see why there is some kind of argument for doing anything at all to prevent a Republican victory in 2012.

I am not going to debate what *should* be done since I think it is abundantly clear that the US needs to immediately try those detainees who can be tried and release the rest.  Their willingness to detain without charge is just another reason that people want to commit terrible acts against them - in order to end the war on terror the world needs to stop being given so many reasons to hate the US.

So here is the question:  Given that a war against Iran would probably involve killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, not to mention soldiers on both sides, can Obama be doing absolutely anything he can think of to try to make sure he stays in power for another term?  Does he think that indefinite detention is bad but necessary to prevent a war, which is certainly a far greater evil?  I personally think that the answer is yes.  I was very hopeful that Obama would be a drastically left leaning president but he has failed in many ways - Indefinite detention, suppression of Occupy and environmentalism come to mind but there are surely many others.  That said, I don't see the US starting another war under his administration and preventing war is by far the greatest priority I can think of.  Perhaps Obama is just another evil US politician eager to crush the little man but maybe he is just desperate and willing to do things that are wrong to hopefully prevent an even greater wrong.