-By Warner Todd Huston
Release Them and They Will Come… Right Back to al Qaeda. Now Even MORE Proof of Obama’s folly!
Obama has long said he wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He even made a play that he will do so by signing an executive order that says he will close the facility in one year’s time… or in one year he will address the closing of the place, which ever you believe he actually said in that order.
But even during the same week that the president has made this big show of fulfilling the campaign promise of closing Guantanamo, though he has not yet actually done so, we have seen several recently released terrorists that have appeared on videos admitting that they are back inside al Qaeda and ready to attack the west all over again.
Releasing these terrorists back into the world is simply a means of repatriating terrorists to their friends to return to their activities as terrorists as opposed to rehabilitating them away from such. The Economist reports that even the Saudis have been embarrassed to find that ex-Guantanamo detainees simply rejoin their terrorist buddies once released.
The Kingdom has had a program whereby ex-detainees are supposedly rehabilitated, given government “pensions” that pay their way for having been “rehabilitated.” Yet, the two recent detainees had quit the “rehabilitation” program and rejoined al Qaeda, mocking the program as they went.
Yet, to the chagrin of the Yemeni and Saudi governments, as well as of an Obama administration that wants Guantánamo closed, the two Saudis in the video happen to be graduates both of the tropical island jail and of a vaunted Saudi rehabilitation programme. The Saudi authorities had freed them last year. Reunited with their families, they had benefited, as had several hundred other repentant jihadists, from state pensions designed to ease a return to civilian life. But the pair vanished a few months ago. In the video they vilify the Saudi counselling programme as a trick, and vow to pursue jihad. Nasir al-Wahishi, the new “emir of the Arabian Peninsula”, a Yemeni, to whom they have sworn loyalty, was himself one of 23 al-Qaeda suspects who escaped from a prison in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, in 2006.
It also looks like Yemen is back in the business of harboring and supporting terror training camps as al Qaeda has produced new videos showing new facilities in that chaotic region.
Interestingly, The Economist proves that George W. Bush’s efforts in Iraq hurt the terrorists badly. Saying that, “The group has suffered sharp setbacks in such places as Iraq, Lebanon and especially Saudi Arabia, where it has not mounted a serious attack since 2006,” The Economist shows that al Qaeda has been materially hurt in those areas. It cannot be denied that in each of the states that The Economist mention have seen intense efforts backed by George W. Bush’s policies that came down heavy on al Qaeda.
Bush’s policies have worked, but we seem to be on the verge of reversing them all with the new administration blundering into office. Obama seems poised to make us all more vulnerable and to look the other way as al Qaeda reconstitutes itself with the welcome support of Yemen.
What will Obama do? Will he crack down on these new terrorist training camps in Yemen? Will he really close Guantanamo and release over 100 Yemeni and Saudi jihadists so that they can rejoin al Qaeda? Will he pull troops out of Iraq and give a Qaeda the breathing space it needs to revitalize there?
What will Obama do, indeed?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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