Closing Gitmo, the terrorists' paradise of the West

By JR Dieckmann

The synthetic president, Obama, never passes up an opportunity to blame President Bush for the failures of the Obama administration. Whether it's the recession, the failed stimulus program, or the war on terror, it's always Bush's fault. When it comes to recent terrorist attacks on our own soil, it is blamed on failures within the departments set up or reorganized by Bush, if not Bush himself.

The way Obama tells it, you would think Bush was a Democrat. As is typical with the liberal mindset, Obama refuses to take responsibility for anything he or his administration does, but often credits himself for bogus accomplishments.

Maybe if Obama had left the Bush appointees in charge of the Homeland Security departments, 2 terrorist attacks within the past year wouldn't have happened. I refer, of course, to the Fort Hood massacre and the Fruit-Of-The-Loom bomber who nearly assassinated 280 air travelers over Detroit.

Although the explosive failed to bring down the plane, it was considered a success by al Qaeda in that it did terrorize the country and disrupt air travel procedures for millions of Americans. It also proved that they can still bring bombs aboard a commercial airliner with indifference to airport security.

I see many articles pointing to this "blame Bush" character flaw in Obama, but rarely does anyone point out that it was Bush and these same Homeland Security departments that prevented any and all attacks on America for the last seven years of the Bush administration.

Now, after just one year of Obama we have had two attacks right here on our own soil. And this is supposed to be Bush's fault? Or is it more likely that they resulted from a long standing policy of political correctness, and changes in the laws and personnel made by Obama?

Terrorists try to bring liquid explosives onboard a plane, we react by banning liquids onboard planes. Richard Reid hides a bomb in his shoe, we react by inspecting shoes. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tries to detonate a PETN explosive hidden in his underwear during the last hour of the flight into Detroit, we respond by banning the use of restrooms or covering one's lap during the last hour of any flight. Is this the best the Obama administration could come up with? Next time, al Qaeda will simply detonate their explosive in the next to the last hour before landing.

We need to stop profiling objects and patterns, and start profiling people. Al Qaeda will never use the same method twice because they know we will have defenses in place to deter it. The simple answer to that is for them to use different methods and materials every time, for which we are not prepared.

We are not likely to see another shoe bomber or Fruit-of-the-Loom bomber. The next attack may be executed by something as innocent looking as an exploding sandwich. Will we then ban sandwiches on all flights? Time to profile the people, not just what they bring on board.

But of course, that would be unthinkable to the Obama administration. Much of their agenda depends on political correctness becoming law, and profiling people just wouldn't fit in to that agenda.

Gitmo is scheduled to be closed this month by an Obama January 2009 executive order. Gitmo was ordered closed because of the alleged negative image it has in the world, according to Obama. If true, how did it get that image?

Clearly, it was by liberal Democrats calling waterboarding and loud music "torture" and comparing Gitmo to the incident that happened at Abu Ghraib, despite the lack of any supporting evidence to the claim. Ever since Guantanamo Bay was opened as a prison for enemy combatants under the Bush administration, it has been used as a propaganda tool of the left in their fight against the war on terror.

In fact, prisoners at Camp Gitmo are treated better, and with more respect and benefits than prisoners in any stateside prison. We spend more money on their care and feeding, person for person, than we do on any stateside prison. A few hardcore terrorists have been subjected to harsh interrogation procedures such as waterboarding, but no one at Camp Gitmo has been tortured, according to the definition of torture.

Perhaps one of them should have been tortured, with full documentation and video made public, just so that liberals could see what torture really is. They obviously haven't a clue. And who but hardcore libs would object to seeing a terrorist get some of his own medicine anyway?

The Obama administration now wants to move these prisoners to a U.S. federal prison and treat them as common criminals. These prisoners at Gitmo are no ordinary prisoners — they are prisoners of the worst kind. Their intent is not just to kill as many Americans as possible, but to take over and destroy our entire country. The civilian court system is not set up to deal with war crimes and enemy combatants. These are military issues and need to be dealt with by the military courts, and these terrorists need to be kept way from American soil.

There is no safer or more reasonable place in the world to house these prisoners than Guantánamo Bay, and with our military watching over them, security is a lot less expensive than it would be with unionized, civilian prison guards. But then Obama's home state wouldn't be able to get billions of taxpayer dollars to build a prison and house them. We have to keep those political payoffs coming — right, Obama?

You cannot protect the country by making nice with our enemy. When Japan attacked our navy at Pearl Harbor, presidents Roosevelt and Truman destroyed their navy and annihilated two of their cities. When the Soviet Union tried to set up nuclear missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy forcefully stood up and said "over my dead body," the Soviets backed down. Later on, President Reagan put the fear of total destruction into them with his proposed "star wars" program and brought the soviet leaders to their knees.

And finally, when Islamic terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush aggressively went after them in Afghanistan and prevented possible future attacks coming from Iraq. The message that all of these presidents sent was "don't mess with us, or you will lose!"

That message has been completely lost on the Obama administration. How's that hope and change thing working out for us?

In all its naiveté and lack of understanding of how the world works, the Obama White House has earned a negative image among Americans and the world. World leaders are laughing at the boy wonder and rejecting his policies. A majority of us simply cannot identify with this man. He doesn't represent us or our values. He appears to be something foreign to Americans, and probably is.

His poling numbers have been in steady decline as his negative image grows larger. He is an embarrassment to our country both domestically and internationally. He is destroying our capitalist republic, and is spending us into utter financial collapse. He is giving America a bad reputation throughout the globe.

He says we must close the Guantánamo Bay prison because of its negative image around the world. In view of Obama's reasons for closing Gitmo, perhaps it would be wiser to close the White House instead. Just think of all the money, lives, and liberties we would save, and still have an ideal and safe place to house enemy combatants.

© JR Dieckmann