Don't Close Gitmo
by Monica Crowley (more by this author)
Posted 07/11/2007 ET

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to LOVE the scene in "Knocked Up" when the hero and heroine try to figure out the best sex positions while seven months pregnant. Ramzi bin al-Shibh is gonna bust a gut too.

In a new outbreak of Muslim “outreach,” the Bush administration announced last week that it was going to begin “movie nights” at the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay. Yes, your tax money is now paying for some of the detainees to chill out to a flick. Only the most well-behaved terrorists, mind you (that was a joke about KSM and RBS) and only movies that won’t offend their Muslim sensibilities (Knocked Up was a joke too). But even if they’re shown The Sound of Music and not Showgirls, some of the world’s most hardened jihadists are getting dinner and a movie. In the Caribbean. With wooing like this, Abu Zabaydah might propose soon.

The announcement of Gitmo “movie night” comes just two weeks after the AP reported that the administration was considering closing the facility and moving the suspected terrorists to military prisons in the U.S., including Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they could face trial. When this became public, the administration backed off, saying a Gitmo closure wasn’t imminent. Which means, of course, that they are talking about it.

Who’s responsible for this idiocy? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, longtime adviser Karen Hughes, former First Lady Barbara Bush, and the current First Lady have all reportedly advised the president to close Gitmo because it’s “hurting U.S. credibility and image abroad.” And it looks like this gang and their argument is holding sway. So: they’re giving in to the liberal argument (and the Muslim fundamentalists’ argument) that murderous Muslim fundamentalism is all America’s fault.

The result? The terrorists are winning.

This is NOT about America’s image in the world. This is about fighting a war. Or at least it should be. Instead, we’ve become so distracted by the enemies’ arguments about us that we’ve bought into them AND we’re fighting (or not fighting) on their terms. We’ve let the enemy define the war.

In all of this politically correct kowtowing to the enemy, bending over backwards to accommodate them, we’ve also muddied the reality that they are out to kill us. Al Qaeda is killing American soldiers in Iraq, and meanwhile, we’re going to close the military detention center for them AND treat them like garden-variety criminals instead of jihadist terrorists. After all of the progress we’ve made since 9-11, we’re going to go back to the way we handled terror in the 1990’s under Bill and Hillary and Janet Reno: treating it as a criminal justice problem instead of an international terror problem. And we know how that story ended.

So here’s what’s going to happen: we’ll close Guantanamo. We’ll start to withdraw from Iraq. We’ll begin to put these terrorists on trial, so they can use and exploit our legal system to make political points, recruit new members, and get off. Example: the so-called “20th hijacker” Zacharias Moussoui called his legal defense---which we paid for---“a lot of American B.S.” His fellow terrorists watched that legal circus, laughed, and learned. So let’s do more of it!

This is where we are now: America in retreat, America showing weakness, America enveloped in political correctness, America trying to fight a “gentleman’s war” while the other side fights a holy war.

And then they’ll hit us. They’ll hit us harder than they did on 9-11. And instead of 3000 dead, there will be more. And when we’ve recovered from the shock and horror, we’ll have the exact same conversation we had in the days after 9-11: “How could this have happened?” “Why didn’t we see it?” “What did WE do to encourage it?”

Only this time, we’ll know the answers. We know the answers NOW but we’re too blind and self-flagellating to see them. But we’ll see them again -- after the next attack. And only then might we realize that it wasn’t about Guantanamo, our image in the world, or our “credibility.” Those are reasons made up by the enemy to get us to cut ourselves up. To divide us. To spark a national self-doubt. To undermine our will to fight.

They’ve succeeded, because for the enemy, it’s not about Guantanamo or America’s “faltering moral leadership.” They couldn’t care less about those things, except as weapons against us. They roll their eyes at our arrogance and narcissism when we debate this stuff. For them, it’s much more simple. It’s holy war. It’s about destroying our system, culture, and lives -- and getting us to help them. And we are.

So after giving them everything they scream for -- closing Guantanamo, their “rights” in the U.S. legal system, showing extra sensitivity to their religion -- they will hit us. And we’ll wonder why, even when the reason is obvious right now: because doing everything they ask for doesn’t placate them or buy their “goodwill.” Instead, it shows weakness, equivocation, softness. Secretary Rice thinks we’re showing moral strength by closing Gitmo. The enemy sees it as terrible weakness, and they will exploit it.

So, as horrible as it is, we’re going to have to get hit again before we realize that Guantanamo wasn’t a provocation to the enemy. But closing it will be.

Ellie