Unintended Consequences?

After months of equivocation, Obama finally reached a serious conclusion about our position on terrorism on Thursday.

After calling terrorists everything from "bad actors" to "isolated extremists", the President finally sucked it up and called terrorists terrorists.

And finally, after calling our efforts at national security "overseas contingency operations" against "man-caused disasters" all these months, he stated the obvisous:

"We are at war with al Qaeda."

What an amazing epiphany.

Now, this comment wasnt some "off-the-teleprompter" slip.

It was a carefully scripted, advance prepared, reviewed and vetted statement that changes the basic tenor of Obama's approach.

Historically, Democratic presidents have tended to overcompensate when confronted with threats to U.S. security.

That, after all, is how we got the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and, arguably, a 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan.

Obama, who went so far as to ban the term "War on Terror" in his administration, who has gone out of his way to extend the hand of friendship to enemies who have sworn to exterminate us as infidels, now has a bigger problem.

If we are at war (as George Bush accurately portrayed), then terrorists must be treated as enemy combatants, not civilian criminals.

That means no civil trials, no Miranda rights, no showboating media circus hearings in New York.

It means military tribunals, Geneva Conference rules, and serious problems in closing Guantanamo.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani highlighted just one element of these implications in an interview earlier today:

“This isn’t about whether you convict him or not, this is about whether you get information or not. If you put someone in a civilian court, within a short time a lawyer is appointed and the person shuts up.

If you have a person in the military system you can question him endlessly for as long as you have to, make sure you’ve gotten the full scope of information, and here’s the most important point, you get it timely,” Giuliani said.

One of the most major and immediate issues Mr. Obama will have to deal with is the change his new "at war" status makes in his plans to close Guantanamo.

Moving civilian criminals from a military facility to a Federal Prison is simple stuff.

But moving enemy combatants from Guantanamo to a maximum security prison is a whole different matter.

Combatants get far more favorable conditions than our own, home grown maximum risk criminals.

Guantanamo "detainees", as the administration used to call them, are held in tropical weather with full protection of the Geneva Convention, including the opportunity to socialize, exercise, etc.

The strident left-wing critiques of the Guantanamo facility have all centered around the fact that detainees there are horribly mistreated and unbearable conditions.

Unberable?

Most of the roughly 210 detainees still held at Guantánamo are not in supermax-type facilities at all.

At least 70 percent live in communal settings like Camp 4, where they can play soccer, basketball, or foosball; exercise on elliptical equipment; and consort with their fellow detainees for up to 20 hours per day in the outdoor recreation area.

They can take art classes or learn English.

Detainees that cooperate with interrogations — done on a volunteer basis alone, there are no forced interrogations — are given extra treats, like candy bars.

The detainees even have a liaison from Jordan to make sure that their complaints are heard and that the balance between security and respect for Islam is maintained.

(The liaison said he has never seen a guard destroy or defile a Koran, for example, but the detainees do it on a regular basis.)

Detainees who go on hunger strikes are force-fed… but they are fed through tubes that go through their nose slightly larger than a spaghetti noodle and are even allowed to choose their own flavor.

The detainees have access to several satellite television channels and, as one DoD handout notes, a library consisting of “more than 14,000 books, magazines, and DVDs in 18 languages.”

And, the climate is a tropical paradise.

Moving them to a maximum security prison in Illinois?

Inmates in supermax prisons are allowed one hour out of their cells a day and are usually kept in solitary confinement.

They get their meals in their cells as well.

The cells are usually windowless with furniture made out of poured concrete or metal, so comfort is obviously out of the question.

And then there are the Illinois winters, known to be far from tropical.

Compare the lives Gitmo detainees will have at Guantanamo Bay to the lives they’ll have at their new supermax prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Which sounds more inhuman and cruel?

The treatment of jihadists at the supermax prison doesn’t bother me a bit, but how long will it be before liberals start crying over the inhuman treatment of terrorists in supermax prisons?

When push comes to shove, the concerns about Guantanamo are overblown, and the prisoners there know that being held under the Geneva conventions outside the U.S. is much preferable to a maximum security prison in the U.S.

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff suggests the Gitmo detainees may sue to stay right where they’re at:

"But the fact is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.

Attorney Falkoff notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo.

At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a “supermax” security prison under near-full lockdown conditions.

“As far as our clients are concerned, it’s probably preferable for them to remain at Guantánamo,” he says.

The strident left-wing critiques of the Guantanamo facility have all centered around the fact that detainees there are horribly mistreated and conditions unbearable.

But when push comes to shove, it would seem concerns about Guantanamo are overblown, and the prisoners there know that being held under the Geneva conventions outside the U.S. is much preferable to a maximum security prison in the U.S."


In a wonderful irony, Obama's doing the right thing by declaring war on terrorism may also force him to do the right thing and keep Guantanamo open.

We can only hope.


"The challenge of leading the struggle against violent extremists is more than just hunting down bad guys; it’s distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not, tracking down where threats begin, figuring out the right response and finding a balance between acknowledging danger and projecting confidence." ---  PETER BAKER