In an otherwise rather dull and dreary press conference, Barack Obama offered this old saw on the need to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as part of a string of reasons — in answer to a question as to why he hasn’t done much at all on his promised closure of the facility. Obama talks about the cost of maintaining Gitmo, even though almost all of those costs were paid up front in the construction of the facility, but then reminds us that al-Qaeda doesn’t much like Gitmo, either:
You can’t underestimate the impact of that. Uh, you know, al-Qaeda operatives still cite Guantanamo as a justification for attacks against the United States.
Well, we opened the Gitmo facility after 9/11, when AQ murdered almost 3,000 people in a series of attacks. Was that a pre-emptive strike against opening Gitmo as a detention facility? Did their attacks on American assets abroad rely on that justification from 1993 to 2000, when they attacked the USS Cole in Yemen? Since we opened Gitmo, AQ has attacked a number of other nations which don’t have a detention facility at Gitmo or one like it. AQ also justifies its attacks on the basis that we support Israel and haven’t converted to an Islamic theocracy. Should we meet those demands as well?
It’s an asinine justification, one that is both intellectually and strategically bankrupt. If Gitmo doesn’t serve our national-security purposes, then make that argument outside of the rantings of lunatic terrorists as a basis for policy. If Obama can’t do that, then perhaps it’s time to move on from the Gitmo debate altogether and proceed with the military tribunals and trials that his administration interrupted and can’t seem to get back on track. As far as working with Congress on those issues, Congress has now three times authorized military tribunals for the 9/11 plotters and other terrorists captured abroad. It doesn’t take Congress to get those trials moving — it just takes an executive that stops interfering in the process.
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