So a recent article posted on the White House website claims that President Obama's "steady diplomacy" has given America a renewed moral authority.
So what's the recipe for their self-proclaimed success? Obama's clumsy and misguided attempt to close Gitmo. According to Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications (nice title), "By prohibiting torture and working to close the prison...we are denying Al-Queda a recruiting tool."
So lets analize this theory for a moment. If Gitmo is a great tool for the bad guys to recruit more bad guys, it means the place must be upsetting enough to turn men toward jihad. Translation: the very idea of it ruins their day. Gitmo represents treating terrorists like enemies, using every tool to extract information from them, and using that info to destroy their cause. So it's not waterboarding that pisses them off, but the fact that we're trying to beat them.
And this upsets them, much in the way Leno pisses off Conan, Nicole Ritchie irked Paris Hilton, or the troubling way in which Hulk Hogan undermined the Ultimate Warrior. But even more so, I think.
To me, it's both naïve and scary that the Administration thinks closing down Gitmo will reduce jihad - as if suddenly terrorists will stop terrorizing once a tool of war is removed. As John Bolton noted, America is, and will always be, the primary recruitment tool for all jihadists - Gitmo or no Gitmo. And if anything, closing Gitmo tells terrorists that their strategy worked - that these murderers can influence our decision-making - which only encourages them to step up their game.
How the Administration can call this Sally Field diplomacy a success is beyond me.
But a lot of things are beyond me. Which is why I own a sponge on a stick.
