Guantanamo Terrorists Leave, Threat to America Grows
WashingtonTimes.com
In this March 1, 2002,
file photo, a detainee is escorted to interrogation
by U.S. military guards at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo
Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Andres
Leighton, File)
The legend (and it’s only a legend) is that
George Washington could not tell a lie, even when
his father confronted him as he stood over the stump
of his father’s favorite cherry tree, hatchet in
hand. The cherry tree story was a bit of Parson
Weems’ harmless hyperbole. The hyperbole about
Barack Obama is not likely to be flattering or
harmless. He has established himself as the
president of deception, with one important
exception: his words and deeds about the American
prison for terrorists at
Guantanamo.
From Day One in the Oval Office, President
Obama has been clear about his intention to
close the terrorist prison, and though he dares not
do it in one conclusive deed he is slowly
accomplishing it by shrinking population, one or two
or five at a time. The president for once means what
he says, even if what he says and does puts
Americans at risk.
The U.S. Defense Department announced Wednesday
that it would transfer five
Guantanamo prisoners to
Kazakhstan. The five, three from Yemen and two
from Tunisia, have been imprisoned at
Guantanamo for more than a decade. All were
captured in Pakistan and their lengthy stay as a
guest of Uncle Sam suggests they were among the
worst of the bad lot.
A new home in remote
Kazakhstan sounds like exile to a far corner of
the earth, but it recalls Joel Chandler Harris’ tale
Bre’r Rabbit, who cleverly pleaded with Bre’r Fox
not to throw him into the briar patch, knowing that
the fox would be thus persuaded to do exactly that,
and where he would be right at home. Once in “exile”
in
Kazakhstan, the Gitmo Five would be free to
resume their deadly mischief-making. There would be
little the United States could do to prevent their
return to battle against America.
What sign did these terrorists give that they were
no longer a threat to the United States? Did they
renounce their commitment to jihad? Did they
promise, cross their hearts, to seal a promise to be
good, and board the plane with a salute to Old
Glory? Why should they? It was not they who changed
their tune, but
Mr. Obama. To draw closer to his goal of closing
down
Guantanamo, the president raises the risk of
violence by Islamic terrorists. The president is
well-protected; the risk is not his, but ours.
Recidivism, the clinical term for the tendency of
criminals to return to their evil ways, is a
phenomenon that cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant
statistic. Of the 431 detainees who have been sent
back to the Middle East, a third by some reckoning
have returned to killing and terrorizing their
neighbors.
The number of enemy combatants, or terrorists,
that the Obama administration has taken to
Guantanamo for interrogation over the
president’s six years in office is zero. The
president’s aversion to sending captured terrorists
to
Guantanamo leaves American military forces two
choices: take no prisoners or take them, with the
evidence of their evil, to the United States for
prosecution, an arduous and often ineffective
process. Going easy on terrorists is a betrayal of
the men and women who risk their lives to protect
America.
The United States didn’t start the war against al
Qaeda and their ilk, but it must finish it. Simply
releasing the enemy to satisfy an ideological
objective is as foolish as unilaterally declaring
the end of a war, as the president has done in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama can sleep soundly at night, but as the
remaining 127 inmates trickle out of
Guantanamo, bound for re-enlistment in the war
against the West, vigilance must be the order of the
day.