WE made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield.
The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed.
Terrorists don’t have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity’s borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals.
And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don’t pose legal quandaries.
Captured terrorists, on the other hand, are always a liability. Last week, President Obama revealed his utter failure to comprehend these butchers when he characterized Guantanamo as a terrorist recruiting tool.
Gitmo wasn’t any such thing. Not the real Gitmo. The Guantanamo Obama believes in is a fiction of the global media. With rare, brief exceptions, Gitmo inmates have been treated far better than US citizens in our federal prisons.
But the reality of Gitmo was irrelevant — the left needed us to be evil, to “reveal” ourselves as the moral equivalent of the terrorists. So they made up their Gitmo myths.
Now we’re stuck with sub-human creatures who should be decomposing in unmarked graves in a distant desert. Before reality smacked him between the eyes, Obama made blithe campaign promises and quick-draw presidential pronouncements he’s now unable to fulfill.
Everything’s easier when you’re campaigning and criticizing, but the Oval Office view is a different matter. And suddenly your old allies, who rhapsodized about the evils of Gitmo, no longer have your back.
Odious senators, such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, damned Gitmo to hell. But they don’t want to damn the prisoners to Massachusetts (given that few al Qaeda members can swim, Cape Cod seems a splendid place for a prison). Don’t the icons of ethics want to solve the problem?
Or should we send the Gitmo Gang to California’s Eighth Congressional District, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s constituents could guarantee an end to waterboarding? The good voters of San Francisco could put up their new guests in a grand Nob Hill hotel and stage teach-ins to explain why America’s so nasty.
Another option — which would save taxpayers millions — would be to encourage a coalition of MoveOn.org, Code Pink and ACORN to sponsor an “Adopt a Terrorist” program.
The only requirement would be that the terrorist has to live full-time with the sponsor’s family so he’d always get plenty of hugs.
On a serious note, it’s not just voter NIMBY-ism that makes this problem so difficult. The practical catches came home to me when last I visited Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.
The grounds of a massive federal penitentiary adjoin that venerable Army post. One Washington-isn’t-thinking proposal would park the terrorists right there in the Big House. But here’s the catch: Ft. Leavenworth’s home to the Army’s Command and General Staff College, attended each year by hundreds of elite foreign officers.
At CGSC, our officers build international relationships that benefit our country for decades to come, while allies and partners learn how to work together. But with Islamist terrorists confined next door — hardly a mile as the crow flies from the Staff College — Muslim countries would withdraw their students from the program under pressure from Islamist factions at home — who’d claim that Ft. Leavenworth was the new Gitmo.
Do we really want to sacrifice our chance to educate officers from the troubled Muslim world? Do we want to destroy an educational program that’s been of tremendous benefit? One that’s advanced the rule of law and human rights?
Other proposed prison locations have their own challenges (although Cape Cod still looks pretty good to me). Meanwhile, our foreign “friends” who shuddered at the imaginary horrors of Gitmo are unwilling to share the burden.
Which brings us back to this column’s opening credo: Terrorists are anathema to civilization and the human race. By their own choice, they’ve set themselves beyond the human collective. Better to eliminate them where you find them than to let them live to become a lunatic cause.
Telling them that we’ll just lock them up and treat them really nice is a better terrorist recruiting tool than Gitmo ever was. Why not become a terrorist, if the punishment’s three hots and a cot, along with better medical care than you’ve ever had in your life?
Plus, you get your own fan club.
Those who worry about the rights of terrorists ensure that these beasts will continue to slaughter the innocent. In your back yard.
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Looking for Trouble.”