Order to close Gitmo a big mistake

As expected, Barack Obama issued an executive order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year. This is a huge mistake and is Exhibit "A" that the new president is interested more in appeasing the masses and currying favor with the rest of the world than in sound national security policy.

Remember the spontaneous global outrage when it was first announced that Islamist terrorists and unlawful combatants captured on the battlefield would be taken to Gitmo? Yeah, me neither. That only came later when the media, ever eager to portray George W. Bush in the worst possible way, decided that detaining seriously dangerous individuals without access to due process was immoral. With a steady drumbeat of fabricated outrage, the media machine got huge numbers of people to agree that ruthlessly violent, murderous jihadis should, for reasons never explained, have their status elevated above that of a prisoner of war.

"Close Gitmo!" makes a great rallying cry for the leftist freaks who believe the US can do no right while a head-chopping Islamist terrorist can do no wrong, and pandering to that ignorant, know-nothing pacifist mindset to garner votes makes a certain amount of political sense, but we count on our elected officials - especially the president - to do one thing above all else: make the country safer, not put it in more danger.

The decision to close Gitmo poses the immediate problem of just what to do with the 250 or so prisoners currently held there. Obama has issued an order with absolutely no plan on how to implement it. If the media wasn't so infatuated with the guy, the first question asked during yesterday's first White House press briefing under the new administration would have been "How does closing Gitmo improve the security of the United States?". The question, of course, went unasked as far as I can tell.

The longer term problem of closing Gitmo with no plan on what to do with existing detainees and those yet to come is the implication it has for troops in the field. What do military authorities do with enemy combatants captured on the battlefield after they've wrung out of them whatever intel they can (in accordance with the Army Field Manual, of course)? Kick 'em loose? Ship them to the US for trial? Execute them?

I have to admit to a certain amount of ignorance, myself. I actually believed that Obama did take national security seriously and that he'd find a way to placate the idiotic masses who don't.