I wrote about President Obama’s determination to close Gitmo today in Politico:
Obama makes a practical and moral case against the prison. The practical case is, as he said Tuesday night, that terrorists use the prison to recruit. At times, he has called Gitmo “probably the No. 1 recruitment tool that is used by these jihadist organizations.”
That is laughable. The president won’t say that violent extremists are motivated by Islam, but he is absolutely certain that they are motivated by Guantánamo Bay. To believe his rhetoric, radical Islam isn’t a threat, but radical opposition to Guantánamo Bay is.
Addressing this contention in 2010, Brookings Institution expert Daniel Byman wrote, “Al Qaeda and associated movements do mention alleged abuses of prisoners at Guantánamo in their propaganda, but this is not a major theme — and certainly not one that Al Qaeda recruits regularly cite as a reason for joining up.”
Of course, terrorists don’t lack for justifications for terror. They were attacking us well before anyone had thought of Gitmo, and they will be attacking us once it is shuttered.
Remember when the Iraq War was the greatest terrorist recruiting tool? Since we have gotten out of Iraq, there are probably more terrorists, who are certainly better equipped and hold more territory, than at the height of the war there.