Last week, President Obama’s advisers told reporters that they’d soon recommend that the president propose a “deal” with Congress on the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Obama would drop his insistence that the detainees be tried in civilian courts and instead let them be tried in military tribunals in exchange for Congress allowing (and funding) the closing of the Gitmo facility and the moving of the detainees to US prisons.
Only in Washington could bureaucrats hatch such a deal to trade one deeply unpopular proposal for another.
Trying Guantanamo detainees in America and moving them to US prisons are indefensible and dangerous proposals and must be rejected. The American people have made it abundantly clear that they do not want these detainees in our country in any way, shape or form. And with our nation facing a growing budget deficit, now is not the time to build new super-secure prisons in the United States for al Qaeda terrorists when taxpayers already paid to build one at Guantanamo.
Unfortunately, some in Congress have bought the idea, including my Republican colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
I am sure Sen. Graham means well, but he hasn’t thought this through. We all want Guantanamo closed. But no good alternative to this facility now exists.
It’s sad that we are again seeing the administration resort to spin and damage control on national security instead of serious policy. This terrorist trial/closing Gitmo “deal” is a distraction at a time when our nation needs clear, consistent leadership on national-security issues to protect our homeland from real threats. Closing Guantanamo won’t protect us from more Christmas Day bombers or other al Qaeda plots. That is what the president’s national-security team should be focusing on.
If this proposal is pursued, it will add to the serious doubts many Americans already have about the direction in which Obama and the Democratic Congress are leading this country.
President Obama, it is time to listen to the American people and face up to the fact that your Guantanamo decision and your attempt to try terrorist suspects in America were both mistakes. You can’t trade one mistake for another.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) is the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Com mittee on Intelligence.