Here’s an idea: Let’s stop keeping money in banks in order to remove the incentive for people to rob banks. When asked decades ago why he robbed banks Willie Sutton said, “because that’s where the money is.” So why not just stop keeping money in the banks? Because it’s a stupid idea. We don’t need banks if we can’t put our money there for safe keeping. We need to deter bank robbers by capturing them and dealing with them severely, not by giving in to them.
But that’s exactly what President Obama wants to do in closing Gitmo, give in to elements that want to harm us. He says that it has become a symbol that helps Al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. He provides no evidence to support that claim but so what if it is true? Should we cease to defend our country when doing so encourages our attackers? Should we not punish our attackers when doing so infuriates their supporters? No, the only effective way to deal with them is to punish them hard and often.
Placating the enemy is never an effective strategy; it is only seen as a sign of weakness. Irritating them as often as possible is better; when angry they will make mistakes.
It’s interesting that Obama apparently believes that the radical elements around the world are stupid enough to not notice that he is just moving the detainees from Gitmo to other prisons in the US. That is, he plans to close Gitmo, not release the detainees. Or, he thinks that the radical elements are upset about the symbolism of Gitmo itself rather than the fact that their comrades are incarcerated.
Anyway, I’ve long questioned the idea that there is an endless supply of hothead fanatics ready and willing to give their lives for the cause of destroying the US. If Gitmo has been such an effective recruiting tool where are they and what have they done? To the US homeland, that is. I think it’s more likely that immediately after 9/11 they celebrated a lot and then started to ask themselves what they really accomplished. The US mourned the loss of the victims but hardly skipped a beat on the whole. And they recognized that things were now a lot tougher on them. They all had to leave Afghanistan and go find new digs (literally) in Pakistan.
Perhaps too they came to believe that the 9/11 attack just turned out to be a huge recruiting tool for the Americans.
LOVE your last line. That says it all.
Thanks.
It irritates me that so many in government and the media believe that our foreign or domestic policy is the cause of certain elements hating us so much. They despise our whole culture. They hate what and who we are. They have no tolerance for the concept of freedom of religion. They aren’t attacking us just to punish us for some slight or insult; they’re attacking us because they want to conquer us.