National Review posted an article by Andrew McCarthy on the plan to close Guantanamo so that terrorists cannot use it as a recruiting tool. Andrew McCarthy was the man who headed the prosecution of the 'Blind Sheikh,' the man responsible for the first bombing of the World Trade Center.
The Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other terrorists were tried in civilian courts for conspiracy to levy war against the United States -- Section 2384 of the federal penal code. They were never held at Guantanamo, and they received all the rights of American citizens. When they were found guilty, the appeals process began, followed by claims that their civil rights were not upheld or that the prison conditions were inhumane.
Please read the entire article to be reminded of some of the terrorism that happened as a result of this man being found guilty and send to prison. Guantanamo did not even exist as a terrorist prison at that point.
Andrew McCarthy concludes:
"From the prison where he serves his life sentence, Abdel Rahman was able to announce to the world: "The Sheikh is calling on you, morning and evening: Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! And he finds no respondents. It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to come to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail." That he was in a nice civilian jail after a nice civilian trial didn't make any difference. Of Americans, the sheikh decreed: "Muslims everywhere [must] dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them." Osama bin Laden later called this the green light -- the necessary Islamic fatwa -- for the 9/11 attacks. It was four years before there was a Gitmo for Dick Durbin to blame. So should we shut down all the civilian prisons, too?"
Closing Guantanamo will make the world less safe--it shows weakness to the terrorists and takes away the possibility of being isolated in a prison until the war on terror is over. It makes the price of committing terrorism lower, and I don't think that is a good idea.
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