Love America? Free a terrorist.

A grass roots effort started about two years ago to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The idea was that if the US closes the base it would start the long process of repairing the world’s view of the United States. The fact that the US military was holding slightly over 200 prisoners without trial was portrayed as a black eye on the face of democracy and human rights. The effort was given further legitimacy when leftists began comparing Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, and when then presidential nominee Obama promised he would close the prison.

This whole effort was based on a profound misunderstanding of world politics and terrorism. And what was not considered then, or now, was the impact closing the prison would have on the world. In an ironic turn of perspective those who fought most ardently to repair America’s image were actually preparing to tarnish it even more.

In mid 2008 President Bush ordered the prison to begin the disposition process on those prisoners who were deemed to no longer be a danger, or had been rehabilitated from their terrorist ways. The goal was to repatriate the prisoners in their own countries thereby avoiding further imprisonment or trials. Countries around the world were asked to take in former terrorist without any explanation on what to do with them. Some of the prisoners were let go and were immediately arrested in their countries of origin, some were tortured, and some were denied re-entry. Near sixty former inmates found their way back to the battlefield and brought with them a new hatred of America, a new list of victims.

The whole process was akin to releasing 100 rabid dogs from a pound into a neighborhood simply based on the reasoning that they hadn’t bit anyone since their incarceration. Foolish? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely.

Time has shown that the fundamentalism needed to wage acts of terror does not dwindle with imprisonment, if anything it grows and festers like a diseased wound. The Russians found this to be true then they released several former terrorists in 2003. Some of them returned in 2004 and murdered over 180 school children in Beslan. And Beslan is not the exception; it is the rule, especially when dealing with Islamic terrorism. This is what happens when you pit an image against an ideology.

The question should not be how fast can we close Gitmo, it should be, how are we going to deal with the fall out when these prisoners go home and kill again? America will then become the “paper tiger” Osama Bin Laden described after Mogadishu. We will appear weak in the face of danger, and unprepared to deal with the new global jihad.