The liberal media has beat a steady chorus for years about the need to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (aka: Gitmo) wherein are housed some of the most “high valued” captured alleged perpetrators of heinous acts against innocents, including the master mind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. For reasons that may only become clear with the passage of time, the Bush administration has been virtually silent against the claims of unlawful treatment, torture, and the illegally imprisonment of these 250 or so purveyors of evil. Both John McCain and Barack Obama pledged during their campaigns to close the facility. With the election now behind us, the reality of fulfilling campaign promises awaits, and Obama apparently has the support of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom he intends to keep on, to follow through with his pledge to close Gitmo.
In recent years, thousands of pages of government files regarding these “enemy combatants” have become publicly available. Curiously, the New York Times chose to wait until Nov. 2, 2008, two days before the election to release a very somber assessment of the real challenges of closing Gitmo and releasing or moving the detainees. “The next president will have to contend with sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees,” wrote the authors, William Glaberson and Margot Williams for the NY Times. They cited the opinion of Daniel Marcus, a Democrat who was general counsel of the 9/11 Commission and held senior positions in the Carter and Clinton administrations who said, “It would be very difficult for a new president to come in and say, ‘I don’t believe what the C.I.A. is saying about these guys.’ ”
Now comes an extensive six month assessment of the detainees and the problems of dealing with them under historically established legal norms within military or civilian, domestic or international codes of law. Thomas Joscelyn led a six month effort for the Weekly Standard to review the Gitmo situation. His findings are chronicled in an extensive article entitled “Clear and Present Danger.” The subtitle contains his concluding warning; “The Obama administration is about to discover that the terrorists detained at Guantánamo are there for good reason.”
Joscelyn encapsulates the problem: “…when President-elect Obama spoke of regaining ‘America's moral stature in the world,’ he was endorsing the widespread perception of Guantánamo as an American sin that originated in the Bush administration's overreaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”
Obama is no longer a candidate, he is our 44th President and has the obligation and solemn responsibility as Commander-in-Chief. Here’s a critical passage from Joscelyn’s feature for Obama’s consideration:
“The most dangerous men currently incarcerated at Guantánamo are the 14 "high value" detainees. The Bush administration gave them this designation because they are uniquely lethal, having planned and participated in the most devastating terrorist attacks in history. Their collective dossier includes, among other attacks, 9/11, the American embassy bombings (August 7, 1998), the USS Cole bombing (October 12, 2000), and the Bali bombings (October 12, 2002). They are responsible for murdering thousands of civilians around the globe, from the eastern United States to Southeast Asia. Had they not been captured, they surely would have murdered thousands more.”
“The 14 were originally held not at Guantánamo, but at even more controversial black sites. And the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that have sparked international outrage were principally designed for them. One may doubt the necessity and morality of these techniques, including waterboarding, while still recognizing a fundamentally important point: The 14 high value detainees are not ordinary criminals, but perpetrators of an entirely different order of evil.”
“It is because of these men, in particular, that the Bush administration initiated the preventive detention regime of which Guantánamo is a part. Processing them as mere lawbreakers would not have advanced the war on terror. To read them their rights and provide them lawyers would have been to throw away their intelligence value. It would have allowed them to carry to the grave many details of still active terrorist plots. The Bush administration chose a different route-harsh interrogations designed to ferret out al Qaeda's current operations before it was too late to stop them or capture those involved.”
Many great minds have already opined on the facility and practices employed at Guantánamo Bay, and there will be more. Maybe history will offer a fair assessment, and more importantly a clear road map to follow for future leaders and defenders of Freedom and the people who long for her comfort. We hope, however, that history doesn’t forget that George W. Bush had to deal with the realities of 9/11 and the knowledge that it – or worse – could happen again. As Joscelyn says, the captured detainees were “not ordinary criminals, but perpetrators of an entirely different order of evil.” Whatever, our next President does with them, we pray he comprehends that fact.
