As sure as the sun rises hot and bright in the Syrian Desert, President Barack Obama has used another tragedy as cover for what is possibly his latest act of treason.
As Parisian’s weep and spread flowers and memory flames around a half dozen sites in their City of Light, Obama has released five more detainees from the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This time the list includes Ali al-Razihi, body guard to Osama bin Laden.
There is no shame at the White house. There is no etiquette. There is no stopping them releasing unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us, not even as the fresh blood stains remain on pavement and floors where just days ago victims of terror lie wont and motionless in the time-frozen shock of sudden death.
When will Obama and his cronies awake to the reality of the Global War on Terror?
Releasing detainees will not win the Global War on Terror, nor will it degrade or defeat the Islamic State, who have the world on its heels. Despite many tons of munitions dropped on suspected Islamic State targets, they remain a deadly and viable force.
Bombing, missiles, rockets and drones only treat the symptoms of a murderous disease known as Islam.
Until all Islamists are dead or no longer have the means or will to kill us, we must defend ourselves.
In order to begin to defeat this enemy we must return to Iraq and Afghanistan in force, and then stay. We must implement a Middle East Marshall Plan and be as committed to it as we were at the end of WWII with helping to rebuild Europe and Japan. We are still in countries we defeated in WWII, not as occupiers, but as liberators and friends. Without our leadership and commitment, incidents like the one in Paris will continue and grow in their devastation.
No one wants to say it, but how many internal attacks from the Imperial Japanese did the U.S. experience during WWII? None that I know of. Was it because of the internment camps set up by a reluctant but determined President Franklin Roosevelt?
We contained Japanese Americans during WWII in order to prevent insurrection, sabotage and terrorism. It worked. A human rights indignity now was an act of survival then.
Remember, it was Japanese posing as tourists who photographed and marked out targets in Hawaii prior to the launch of the attack on Pearl Harbor, one rationale for the internment.
Is bringing unknown “Syrian” refugees to the United States (or anyplace) a prudent thing to do given the mounting evidence that other “Syrian” refugees participated in the Paris attacks?
Should countries now place suspected Islamists in custody as an act of survival?
In the end, isn’t that what war is all about, survival?
Isn’t that why Gitmo exists in the first place?
NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 11: Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the south tower of the World Trade Center and explodes at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001 in New York City. The crash of two airliners hijacked by terrorists loyal to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and subsequent collapse of the twin towers killed some 2,800 people. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
As unlawful combatants, all Gitmo detainees could have been lawfully killed on the battlefield. Instead, we captured them and then began systematically questioning and then vetting their stories. According to former President George W. Bush, in his autobiography, “Decision Points,” a handful of detainees were waterboarded, which saved many lives. Information obtained from detainees at Gitmo is also suspected to have contributed to locating and then killing Osama bin Laden.
This photo made during an escorted visit and reviewed by the US military, shows the razor wire-topped fence and a watch tower at the abandoned “Camp X-Ray” detention facility at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 9, 2014. AFP PHOTO/MLADEN ANTONOV (Photo credit should read MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)
At the time, waterboarding was an approved Enhanced Interrogation Technique, and did not meet the internationally accepted definition of torture.
When Obama took office he unilaterally declared waterboarding torture, and it went on the list of banned torture techniques. Waterboarding still does not meet the definition of torture, and it is still used as a training technique for those American service people who may be deployed overseas and may be at risk of kidnapping.
Waterboarding works. Maybe it saved YOUR life.
There are other things that work, too, that this administration is averse to using, such as boots on the ground. But for some reason, instead of doing things that work to protect the people of the United States, as every president is sworn to do, this president releases deadly detainees so that they can fight and kill again.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence reports that at least 30 percent of all released detainees are either known or suspected to have returned to the battlefield. My question is, what about the 70 percent of released detainees we don’t know about, where are they, YOUR neighborhood?
And what about those recently sent to the United Arab Emirates? How long will they be held there, and under what conditions? Where will they end up? Paris? New York? Your hometown?
What has happened to the five Taliban leaders released by Obama in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, the American deserter? Are they still in Qatar?
I know one thing, if you’re fighting a war to win, you don’t release the enemy.
And therein lies the rub. Can releasing the enemy be considered treason – giving aid and comfort to the enemy?
The Obama administration must believe that the President is not responsible for what horrible things detainees may do after they are released from Gitmo. I beg to differ.
If you release a tiger from the zoo, shouldn’t you be held accountable for whatever the tiger does?
With regard to the release of detainees and the Global War on Terror, we seem to be caught on the caboose of a runaway train, only able to see where we’ve been, and there are demons at the switches.
What will it take for us to gain control and then get ourselves back on the right track?
I am a three times mobilized Army Reserve major (Ret.), and former ranking U.S. Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, February to June 2002, and author of “Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior.”
Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay 