Catch and Release on the Battlefield

“The record is clear: rather than keep us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.”

“It is a rallying cry for our enemies. It sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries. By any measure, the costs of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it.”
~Barack Obama during an address on national security at the National Archives in Washington

The assertion that we are less safe and American national security has been weakened because of enemy prisoners being incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay is a ludicris conclusion concocted from a baseless assessment and lack of evidence. There should be no question that releasing enemy combatants back into the wild or holding them in any other prison would result in further American casualties and a weakening of national security. Furthermore, the ideology that suggests if we did not mistreat captured enemy combatants then our captured military would not be mistreated cannot be substantiated. There are no American POW’s to test this theory. Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremism is not based on Barack Obama’s perceived utopian philosophy and principles. Until now our military members and citizens that have been captured were either rescued or suffered brutal torture before being killed.

Obama was given a round of applause when mentioning that it was he who was responsible for ending enhanced interrogation. Does this mean that national security is now stengthened? Time for the history lesson. The terrorist attacks on our country occurred prior to enhanced interrogation. Daniel Pearl was beheaded prior to enhanced interrogation. Now exactly how will our country be safer with discontinuing the practice of enhanced interrogation?

“When an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.”

“Our government prevented attacks and saved lives. Only detainees of the highest intelligence value were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques.”

“The president will find upon reflection that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come,”
~Dick Cheney in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute

We as Americans should be grateful that Dick Cheney is stepping forward and defending the policies that have kept us safe from further attacks since September 11, 2001. This is a thorn in the side of Democrats who have never been able to dispute this fact much to their chagrin. To see these policies overturned by the Obama administration to satisfy nothing more than political promises and appease a select few attempts to perpetrate a false sense of security to the citizens of our nation.

This speech from the President today falls far short from achieving convincing evidence that our country has been weakened by the Guantanamo Bay prison and that our security would be enhanced by closing this facilty and dispersing the enemy within.

Would not any prison anywhere that contains captured combatants of the United States result in the same “rallying cry”? Will our warriors now adopt the practice of catch and release on the battlefield for fear of offending and enraging our enemies if captured alive and put in confinement? This would effectively end the care and feeding of detainees which would in turn greatly increase our national security under Obama’s theory.