Yesterday the U.K. Mail posted an article about President Obama’s plan to release at least eighteen more Guantanamo detainees before he leaves office in two weeks. Four of those detainees will be sent to Saudi Arabia, not exactly a hotbed of moderate Islam.

The article reports:

Obama will likely focus on moving detainees who have been ‘cleared for transfer’ – a group that includes the alleged head of al Qaeda‘s bomb-manufacturing operation in eastern Afghanistan, the head of al Qaeda’s Tunisian faction in Afghanistan, and senior weapons trainers.

Those held in Guantanamo in recent years have been dubbed ‘the worst of the worst’ by military and intelligence officials. 

…The list of ‘recommended for transfer’ prisoners includes a number of top al Qaeda operatives and commanders.

…Some of the recommended transfers have also vowed to return to jihad if they are ever released, according to reports from US military officials. They have also threatened to assassinate the U.S. president, kill American citizens, and attack other world leaders who are allied with the West.

Please follow the link above to the article. The article includes a list and details of the prisoners now cleared for release. Anyone with an eye toward national security should be appalled by that list–these prisoners include an expert bomb-maker  and others who are skillful at planning terrorist attacks. If they were run-of-the-mill prisoners who had done the things they had done other than in the context of terrorism, they would never be let out of prison, so why is President Obama so anxious to set them free? There is little doubt about their crimes and tendency to continue in terrorism. In World War II, they would have been tried in a military tribunal and executed.  In America, they would have been sentenced to life without parole.

How would an American who had purposefully killed innocent Muslims be treated by the Saudis, the Iranians, the Afghans? Would he be treated humanely? Would his religious dietary requirements be met? Would he be given tennis courts? How long would he stay alive?

Guantanamo serves a purpose. Intelligence sources outside of the Obama Administration have stated that the recidivism rate among Guantanamo prisoners who have been released is probably higher than thirty percent. We need to remember that many of these terrorists have been trained in terrorism from a young age (see THE BLOOD OF LAMBS by Kamal Saleem). Terrorism is all they know how to do. It is unrealistic to believe that they can be retrained. The culture they have been raised in is brutal, and that culture has become part of who they are. To ask a country such as Saudi Arabia, which is steeped in that culture, to retrain them is ridiculous. That’s like sending a thief to a pickpocket convention to learn how to make a living. He might not learn the lesson you wanted him to learn.

The actions of President Obama as he leaves office make the world less safe for all of us.