Closing Guantanamo

Predictably, President Obama signed an executive order yesterday to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay where 245 terrorists, oops, I mean suspected terrorists and enemy combatants are held. While the left and the MSM are drooling over this and think it's a great, I think it's a bad idea with no upside.

For starters, where do you put them if not Guantanamo Bay? It's remote. It's not located on US soil. It has the advantage of being surrounded by water on one side and Cuba on the other. Neither one is very inviting if a prisoner were to escape. But if you put them in a federal prison in the US, all of a sudden that prison becomes a high value terrorist target. And they're now on US soil which means they're subject to the laws of the the US Constitution. But they didn't commit a crime in the US. I don't think legally we'd be allowed to hold them without charging them with a crime. And then they are provided the protections of the US system of justice. How do you prosecute a guy you picked up for tossing hand grenades at you in Iraq? There is no CSI Iraq who took fingerprints or such back at the scene during a battle.

So let's say that President Obama figures all this out and actually manages to close Gitmo. What happens when one of those prisoners who was released for lack of evidence - because they got stuck into the American justice system - shows up in the United States and blows something up. What then? How do you go in front of the American people and say oops, I closed Gitmo and it appears that the person who took innocent American lives was one of those people that was released for lack of evidence, but it was still the right thing to do?

One of the things that you have to give former President George W. Bush credit for is that there was not another attack on US soil after 9/11. That's incredible. After 9/11, no one thought that we could go 7 years without another attack. Another attack was taken for granted. It wasn't "if" it was going to happen but "when" it was going to happen. If you're President Obama, why do you want to increase the odds that it will happen on your watch? So you can be better liked by Europe? Before I close it down, I would call every foreign leader who criticized Gitmo and ask them if they would be willing to take some of the people being held there into their country. If their answer was "no" then I would politely tell them to "f off, we're keeping the place open until you change your mind."

I'd rather be safe and have Europe dislike us than have an outpouring of sympathy towards us in the wake of another 9/11.