Our detention center for jihadis at Guantanamo Bay is a humane facility--under the microscope of the world--so friendly to jihadis that they gain weight while there and have access to some of the finest America-hating lawyers that ideology can provide. Yet still the global left agitates for its closure:
The U.N. human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.
That's just stupid, of course. It isn't our fault that our enemies won't stop trying to kill us. We are allowed to keep prisoners for the duration of the hostilities. Indeed, trying them for crimes can be a violation of international law under most circumstances. Perhaps the UN could focus on ending the jihad that we resist.
There's a problem from the point of view of the "human rights" community that desperately wants to save the detained jihadis--just misunderstood poets, don't you know.
I noted that problem some years ago. I explained that if we aren't allowed to hold jihadis, we have the option of simply killing them on the battlefield:
Our Supreme Court may keep trying to limit our ability to hold those jihadis we capture, but we are under no obligation to accept the surrender of unlawful combatants.
We can still kill our enemies, can't we?
This is the UN and not our Supreme Court, but the logic still applies. I further noted:
We need rules of engagement that let our troops kill the enemy. Any jihadi we fail to kill this year is just another jihadi we will have to kill next year.
As Peters notes, most of the enemy won't have information we need to get to stop future attacks. So if our enemies want to wage war in court rooms over every damn detail of confinement, just kill them all.
Let Allah sort them out.
And here we are, six years later, and we have rules to kill jihadis instead of putting them in Guantanamo Bay. Funny enough, President Obama gets to sort them out (quoting the Washington Post):
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”
The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.
As I commented on this kill list matrix:
From outreach to reach out and kill someone.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm on record as thinking the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi. But what about our left that used to drone on (until January 2009) about "no endless wars?"
I wasn't upset about the concept of "endless" war, preferring to think of it as fighting "until we win"--and that we can hardly be blamed for not being able to predict how long that will take.
But again, I'm supposedly the knuckle-dragger in this debate.
Now we have a matrix of terrorists to kill or capture. Because they won't love us. And there is no end in sight. Huh. And our left is fine with this? Again, huh.
So the UN chief is getting his wish. They really don't think these things through, do they?
One day, we may actually close Guantanamo Bay--by unloading a plane full of detainees in a Yemen desert air strip and giving them a 20-minute head start before we upload the matrix to the armed drones flying the friendly skies of Yemen.
The global left says these guys are good jihadis. And they finally will be.
UPDATE: The left doesn't get it:
“The idea that this president would leave office having dramatically expanded the use of drones — including [against] American citizens — without any public standards and no checks and balances . . . that there are no checks, and there is no international agreement; I would find that to be both terrible and ultimately will undermine a great deal of what this president will have done for good,” Anne-Marie Slaughter, director of policy planning under former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, said at the same event.
“I cannot believe this is what he wants to be his legacy,” Slaughter said.
One, the fact that you are an American citizen abroad fighting America does not give you a personal force field to deflect the consequences of waging war on America. If an American fighting us abroad wants due process, he can turn himself in and get an enthusiastic lawyer to defend him. Stay in the field? Well, enjoy your jihad. Your new buddies will try to gather up enough of your corpse to give you a proper burial.
Two, our president doesn't want his legacy to be the slaughter of Americans at home on his watch. He's already had Fort Hood and a couple (at least) close calls. I may have issues with the president on many policies, but on the drone issue he at least shows he wants to kill enemies before they can kill Americans. So good on that. I hate that the president is trying to fit what should be a straightforward war issue into a law enforcement template--that will twist domestic law enforcement. But he does want dead jihadis.
I can't believe that some on the left are willing to risk letting jihadis live by gutting the drone strikes.
The drone strikes are the legacy of the left's relentless campaign against the fully humane Guantanamo Bay detention facility. We couldn't risk letting jihadis go (many of those who have been released returned to the fight), and President Obama learned that lesson. So unable to put more captured jihadis into Guantanamo Bay because of pressure from the Left, our president told our military and CIA to simply kill jihadis the most effective way we have--drone strikes.
Welcome to your legacy, global Left. I can't believe this is what you want to be your legacy. But there you go.
