Closing Gitmo is a no-go

Shutting the doors to the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison is not feasible

Last month, President Barack Obama made the trip across town to deliver his State of the Union address. The audience for this speech was very different from the one a year ago — the president now looked at a Congress dominated by Republicans.

Yet, his address seemed to be out of touch with the newest developments in the country, both domestically and internationally. Probably the most alarming statement the president made came early in the night: “America, for all that we’ve endured, for all the grit and hard work required to come back, for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: the shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.”

Never mind the recent terrorist attacks in France, the continued expansion of ISIS, Iran’s plans for developing nuclear weapons or the race issues that have consumed the news over the last few months. We can all feel reassured that “crisis has passed.” As George Will commented after the speech had ended, “ignoring reality is part of the job description of being a progressive.”

This purposeful rejection of what is truly happening in the world extends to the president’s plans for emptying the prison at Guantanamo Bay. This is nothing new to those who have followed his tenure as president.

In his first term, Obama signed an executive order in an attempt to empty the prison. After being stymied by Congress, he renewed his efforts after his re-election. In the State of the Union address, he defended this plan with two very unconvincing arguments.

First, Obama declared that terrorists use Gitmo as a recruiting technique for their organization. National Review Editor Rich Lowry, in his article titled “Obama’s Foolish Gitmo Fixation,” writes “They (Al Qaeda) were attacking us well before anyone had thought of Gitmo, and they will be attacking us once it is shuttered.”

Second, Obama articulated a moral reason for shutting down the prison — namely it is against the civil liberties our country defends. According to this argument, we cannot rightly keep prisoners we do not intend to try in court.

“We have a profound commitment to justice, so it makes no sense to spend $3 million dollars per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit,” Obama said.

Yet, the study the president commissioned early in his first term concluded that there were close to 50 prisoners who were “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution.”

It is important to remember that the director of national intelligence reported that of the prisoners released earlier in the process — those who were presumably the least dangerous — between 15 and 20 percent returned to the battlefield. It is frightening to think about how many of these most hardened terrorists will begin plotting terrorist attacks when Obama releases them.

In a Politico editorial, Lowry wrote about the story of Cato the Elder, the famous Roman politician who was obsessed with the destruction of Carthage. He was so focused that at the end of every speech he gave, no matter what the topic, he would cry, “Carthage must be destroyed!” In the same way, the president has been proclaiming for six years, “Gitmo must be destroyed.”

This plan may serve Obama’s political commitments, but it may also be one that the American people will rue in years to come.

SUTHERLAND is an opinion writer.