The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, begins its 11th year on Wednesday, with President Obama legislatively hamstrung by Congress and no closer to fulfilling his campaign pledge of 2008 to shut down what has become a reviled symbol of U.S. omnipotence and unfairness.

Closing the island prison, which this Editorial Board has advocated for years, would not mean that the global fight against terrorists is finally over, or that America can afford to let its guard down. It isn’t, and we can’t. But surely, 10 years after the first prisoners arrived, Guantánamo has outlived its usefulness. Some 80-plus detainees out of 171 remaining inmates have been cleared for release by the Pentagon, CIA and other security agencies, but current rules devised by Congress won’t permit it.

The remainder could be transferred to maximum security prisons in this country, which have an excellent record of keeping inmates behind bars, but Congress has also made that virtually impossible.

Closing the prison would send a message that the crisis atmosphere of the desperate post-9/11 period is behind us and that the country is determined to reclaim its devotion to accepted standards of liberty and justice. Keeping it open, on the other hand, gives terrorists a strong recruiting tool and undermines America’s claim to uphold moral values.

Instead of celebrating a return to our ideals, though, the country is headed in the opposite direction. Case in point: a necessary defense spending bill that President Obama signed on New Year’s Eve, to which grandstanding members of Congress attached odious provisions that cast a shadow over the freedom of individual Americans.

One rider in the bill makes indefinite military detention without charge or trial a permanent feature of the American legal system. President Obama said upon signing the bill that he would never “authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” but that should be of little comfort to anyone. Now it’s the law. Someday someone else will be president. As long as this provision remains on the books, the freedom of all Americans will be diminished.

The bill also expands the range of activities that can lead to indefinite detention, including undefined “substantial support” for terrorist activities. Under the bill, Mr. Obama — or any future president — will be required to place non-citizens suspected of links to al Qaeda or suspected of terrorism under military detention, even within the United States.

So far, federal courts that observe constitutional procedures have been far more successful than the military commission system at Guantánamo in obtaining convictions. Yet that did not prevent Congress from requiring that military detention, not the criminal justice system, must be used in the future for terrorist suspects.

All of this is too much power to place in the hands of this or any president, and utterly needless to boot. It’s not enough for Mr. Obama to say, “Trust me.” A more aggressive president, less respectful of civil liberties, would have a powerful tool at his or her disposal in the future should they choose to wield it against real or perceived enemies, domestic or foreign.

Given the hostility between the White House and Republicans in Congress, this election year will bring no solution to the civil liberties crisis, or a resolution of Guantánamo. It’s up to Mr. Obama to make the case for restoring respect for the law and the need to limit the power of the executive to deny Americans their basic freedoms.