A better way to fight terror

Quagmire: a position or situation that is unpleasant or hazardous; esp. one from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.

Guantanamo: a quagmire.

Not surprisingly, the inauguration of a president who promised during his campaign to close Guantanamo doesn’t make the complicated task of extricating ourselves from the Cuban prison debacle easy.

Reports that released Guantanamo detainee Said Ali al-Shihri has emerged as the deputy leader of Al-Qaida in Yemen and that he played an instrumental role in the September car bombing of the American embassy in Sanaa  coincided with President Obama’s executive order last Thursday that Guantanamo be closed within a year.

The failure of American law enforcement to anticipate al-Shihri’s path of terror after his release should sober us to the implications of closing the prison that houses 245 detainees.

Reviving a commitment to human rights will force challenging decisions on the Obama administration and the American people. The Bush administration’s policy of detaining suspected criminals without trial leaves us without a convenient precedent to follow as we decide how to prosecute some of the detainees and release those against whom no charges can be levied.

But even in light of tragedies such as the release of al-Shihri, we must remember that prosecuting suspected criminals in the courtroom rather than detaining them without charges is the American way. A court of law must determine whether current ‘evidence’ against prisoners – including owning a Casio watch – is really sufficient for conviction.

Obama’s decision to spend a year reviewing the cases of all the Guantanamo prisoners before closing the prison is judicious, and we will wait eagerly for the day when the last prisoner leaves the place that has so scarred America’s reputation around the world.

Even so, Americans must steel themselves and know that closing Guantanamo won’t prevent future terrorist attacks. Those will have to be addressed through vigilant policing and foreign policy that extends a friendly hand to the impoverished and vulnerable.

What closing the camps will do, however, is restore our American commitment to due process while reclaiming the moral high ground by using justice, rather than waterboarding, to try our transgressors.