Since the prison at Guantanamo Bay is in the news lately, it might be worth reviewing the Obama administrations actions related to radical Islamic terrorism to see whether Democrats can be serious about protecting America.
Here is a typical case of the Obama administration releasing radical Islamist terrorists from Gitmo.
Investors Business Daily explains:
Last year, the president claimed he only freed five Taliban leaders to free “POW” Bowe Bergdahl, whom he portrayed as a hero. But now the Army says Bergdahl’s a deserter. We smell a rat, and it’s not just Bergdahl.
The Army on Wednesday charged Sgt. Bergdahl with desertion and endangering the safety of a command, which carries a life prison term.
The findings of the military’s six-month investigation corroborate an internal 2009 Army report that found Bergdahl had a history of walking off his post and more than likely deserted. That’s why the Pentagon never listed him as a POW.
The report said he shipped his laptop back home to Idaho, and left a note expressing his disillusionment with the war, before ending up in the arms of the Taliban.
Obama had access to this intelligence long before he made his Taliban deal. So why did he trade a known deserter — and likely enemy sympathizer, if not collaborator — for five enemy commanders that he acknowledged posed a national security risk? And why did he glorify Bergdahl as a war hero?
To justify the release from Gitmo of five hardened terrorists who would never have been released otherwise and to help close down Gitmo.
The goal is not to improve security, it’s to make it easier to close the prison.
And here’s another case reported by the Weekly Standard from earlier this week:
A former detainee hold at Gitmo has been arrested for ties to the Islamic State.
“Spanish and Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested four suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group, including one described as a former Guantanamo detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan,” reports the Associated Press.
“Three people were arrested in Spain’s North African enclave city of Ceuta while a Moroccan was arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, next to Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, statements from the two nations’ interior ministries said.
“One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as ‘a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.’ After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.”
The truth is that releasing Islamic terrorists actually drives up recruitment of more terrorists.
Here’s Andrew C. McCarthy to explain, in National Review:
The second driver of terrorist recruitment is the perception that the jihadists are winning, the conviction that they will ultimately prevail. Osama bin Laden wooed young Muslims with the wisdom that people are always drawn to the strong horse and shun the weak one. While Islamic State “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi follows up each jihadist atrocity by seizing more territory and enslaving more subjects, the president of the United States follows each jihadist atrocity — Benghazi, Paris, and now San Bernardino — by releasing more jihadists from Gitmo.
It’s not Gitmo driving recruitment. It’s our president.
In truth, Muslims don’t care a whit about Guantanamo Bay. I prosecuted one of the world’s most notorious terrorists in the mid ’90s, the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who formed the cell that carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. He got the gold-plated due process of a civilian trial and all the trimmings of top-shelf civilian prison — no Gitmo for him. And you know what? Islamic supremacists continue to condemn his incarceration and jihadists have killed scores of people to try to extort his release. They don’t care where we detain jihadists; they care that we detain jihadists.
Does Obama think we should release all the terrorists in federal penitentiaries, too? You know, to depress recruitment . . .
Because it is Islamic supremacism and the perception of victory that draws young Muslims to the jihad, the brute fact is: It’s not detaining terrorists at Gitmo that spurs recruitment; it’s releasing them. Muslims who wage war against America and are held in our prisons become icons of the jihad. They rise from obscurity to legend, and their status imbues them with authority to command attacks, raise funds, and attract recruits.
The real concern of the left in all of this is NOT to protect America from threats such as radical Islamic terrorism. The real desire is to attack and punish those who make radical Islamists feel bad about what they are doing. Obama wants everyone to accept terrorists as just as moral as we are. Releasing them is his way of saying that they did nothing wrong – which is what he really believes. If anyone is in the wrong, Obama thinks, it’s we Americans. We somehow provoked these innocent terrorists… get off your high horse, and remember the Crusades. That’s his worldview. Terrrorism is your fault, and these innocent terrorists are the real victims, and that’s why we need to release them.
