On today’s “Friday’s with the ‘hammer’”, Dr. K. examines Obama’s almost pathological obsession with closing Guantanamo. Obama’s decision to close it is based purely on left-wing politics and has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. If Guantanamo is a recruiting rally for jihadists around the world, then following the same logic we never would have had the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the U.S.S. Cole, the East African embassy’s bombings, the second World Trade Center bombings and scores of other Islamic attacks against the West since they all preceded Guantanamo. Of course the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 were due to Guantanamo right? /not. This desire to close Guantananamo is our government adopting the enemy’s narrative of what the battle is all about –it is about detention facilities, prisoners rights, water boarding, and “why do they hate us?” foreign policy. We are no longer in the business of asserting America’s national will and defeating our enemies no matter what the cost – instead we are international social workers dealing with the ”feelings” of our maniacal enemies. Elections have consequences!
by Charles Krauthammer
On Wednesday, Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indicted by a Michigan grand jury for attempted murder and sundry other criminal charges. The previous day, the State Department announced that his visa had been revoked. The system worked.
Well, it did for Abdulmutallab. What he lost in flying privileges he gained in Miranda rights. He was singing quite freely when seized after trying to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. But the Obama administration decided to give him a lawyer and the right to remain silent. We are now forced to purchase information from this attempted terrorist in the coin of leniency. Absurdly, Abdulmutallab is now in control.
And this is no ordinary information. He was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, and just days after he was lawyered up and shut up, the United States was forced to close its embassy in Yemen because of active threats from the same people who had trained and sent Abdulmutallab.
This is nuts. Even if you wanted ultimately to try him as an ordinary criminal, he could have been detained in military custody — and thus subject to military interrogation — without prejudicing his ultimate disposition. After all, every Guantanamo detainee was first treated as an enemy combatant and presumably interrogated. But some (most notoriously Khalid Sheik Mohammed) are going to civilian trial. That determination can be made later.
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Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there’d be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London?
Jihadism’s list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions.
Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s No. 2, often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom — in 1492.
Tags: Charles Krauhammer, Guantanamo
