The Gitmo agenda
LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson
Politicians make promises and mean them sincerely, or maybe not, depending on whether accountability is pending.
The measure of accountability hinges on exposure.
No revelation, no liability.
There has been wee criticism of Barack Obama’s obsession with closing Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Naval base where threats to America’s security have been held for years following the 9/11 attack.
No one was imprisoned there without a reason; indeed Gitmo has housed some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world on the correct assumption if they were locked down, they couldn’t murder innocent people.
The decision to keep terrorists there was an acknowledgment that America was at war with fanatical terrorism.
During the 2008 campaign and since, Barack Obama has made Gitmo an issue of nonsense.
He promised to close the base, arguing the detainees had not been tried for crimes against the U.S. and that detaining them was a recruitment tool for organizations such as Al Qaeda.
It is true detainees were not tried in a court of law, but they were captured in situations that predicated attacks or were part of atrocities already committed.
Lives and property were saved under war conditions.
These prisoners are non-citizens of the U.S. captured in other countries and are, therefore, ineligible for the legal protections of our civilian or military judicial systems. The liberal notion of spending millions to try terrorists before returning them to Gitmo to serve time for their crimes is ridiculous.
Obama often mentions the enemy recruitment angle, but I have yet to hear his explanation on how he knows the Gitmo center is a gathering tool for more fanatics.
It is hard to imagine how any statistic could be collected without interviewing active Al Qaeda or IS members. Therefore, his argument seems more a convenient justification for closure than one supported empirically.
Obama’s claims go largely unchallenged, but his attempts to move detainees from Gitmo to prisons within the mainland were met with stiff resistance by governors who did not want terrorists housed in their states. It appears the governors have won this point, but that didn’t stop Obama.
The president has begun releasing prisoners a few at a time. The claim is these fanatics have been vetted by a board and have been determined to no longer be a threat to Americans. Men released have been returned to Muslim countries with the understanding they will be monitored closely and not allowed to return to their work of killing indiscriminately.
One such person released was Ibrahim al-Qosi, once an aide to Usama bin Laden. He is now a senior Al Qaeda leader in Yeman.
The conclusion al-Qosi was benign is absurd. He was released to kill again by the Obama government.
His watchers weren’t watching. He slipped away. Easy as pie.
Another released recently was Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri. This dandy was part of the cell that plotted and carried out the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in which 17 sailors were killed and another 39 injured. Al Sabri was trained by Al Qaeda.
This terrorist was declared not a threat and sent to Saudi Arabia to be watched, even though it was determined in 2008 he was high risk and a likely danger to America. A 2014 report changed this assessment.
Paul Rester, former head of interrogations at Gitmo, has stated the language toward detainees has softened in recent years. This posture corresponds with the Obama tenure and his determination not to rid the world of terrorists but to honor an irrational promise to shut down the American facility used to detain them.
Gitmo has gone from 600 detainees to 80. All will be gone soon, scattered about the world to eventually return to whatever job they choose, including, like al Sabri, a renewed career in terrorism.
Now, all this is clearly tied to Obama’s insistence that the world is a dangerous place because of American screw-ups. With the Left, everything is America’s fault, including imperialistic symbols like Gitmo.
Gitmo has a lot to do with Obama’s politics of retreat. Our behavior toward communist Cuba falls into this domain too.
Obama’s goal isn’t merely to close Gitmo so he can artfully fulfill a silly campaign promise. His aim is also to return the base to Cuba, thereby fulfilling the demand of the Castro brothers, Obama’s new best buds.
Watch for that. It’s going to happen as Obama edges toward the exit.
Security of Americans at home and abroad is secondary to a political promise restlessly tossing in the very heart of Leftist pronouncement.
