CLOSING TIME
The title of many country songs, usually used to invoke some type of "last call" sentiment, "Closing Time" has a more current meaning this week. As our new President, Barack Obama, throws himself into the unenviable task of steering our country, one of his first orders, per his campaign promise list, was to shut down Guantanamo Bay, the military complex in Cuba where suspected terrorists are being held.
It is no secret that there has been much public outcry over our detaining battlefield combatants who have not yet received any kind of trial or hearing. Even Senator McCain had promised to close the facility, one of only a few issues on which I disagreed with him.
First, there is no plan in place, never mind an improved plan, to deal with these prisoners. Of the detainees that have been released already, 11% have returned to their terrorist roots and are already a danger to us and our servicemen and women again. How is this a sensible outcome? Lives were lost bringing them in, lives risked keeping them, and now in the absence of a "better mouse trap", we will simply close the facility, and send them...where? Any notion of housing them in a general prison population in the States is ludicrous. Like child-molesters, they won't last long amongst the prison population. Furthermore, Americans are incensed at the notion of housing these people in our own backyard. I could probably be swayed if there were a new facility being built, a plan of what kind of legal course will be implemented, but the idea that these "folks" should receive the same kind of legal opportunities that Americans receive is not just absurd, it's offensive.
Remember, too, that our legal system is the one that allowed O.J. Simpson to walk free after murdering two people in cold blood, but imprisoned him for a botched, half-robbery that would have yielded a suspended sentence with probation for nearly anyone else. Will this make the progressive thinkers happy, to be turning loose Muslim Jihadists on our own soil? They will surely join with their counterparts who are already here, courtesy of our open borders. Truly, our enemies must be laughing all the way to the "Kill Americans Bank" and waiting gleefully to see what next touchy-feely policy our new President will write into law.
I understand that Obama's been in office only a few days. Let me say that he has a few proposals already that I think are brilliant, one being the notion of posting to the public an accounting of the bailout money. This makes sense to me and I applaud the idea, but this guy makes me nervous when it comes to national security. Even through the campaign, and in assessing the folks who supported him fervently, one could sense a "Get Together" type feel, anxious to break bread with our enemies, convinced that all disagreements can be "talked out". I, on the other hand, still recoil in horror at the memory of Daniel Pearl, and the ease and enjoyment with which they severed his head, filmed the occasion, and released it for public consumption. I am at a loss to understand any reasonable person for whom further demonstration of what we are dealing with here needs to be made. They would gladly have Daniel Pearl be you, your wife, your sister, your child, your brother...you need only be American to qualify for the "Cold-Chop Special".
Conversely, one also needs only be American to have the luxury of pontificating military theory over a fine Brandy and a cigar. We live in one of precious few places where our disagreements with government policy can be freely aired, where our lives are free to be lived with such diversity that the word "diversity" barely covers it anymore. And yet, we remain naive, many of us, despite archived evidence that there is a secret underground army, stationed in cells all over the world, whose single most fervent desire is to have this country and its citizens simply not exist any more. Close Gitmo? Sure, Barack. Let's be sure, also, to raise a white flag over the base as we lock up the doors.
Karl From New Hampshire