Keep Guantanamo Bay facility open

During his State of the Union address in January, President Obama declared that his first priority is “protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks.” 

The American Legion couldn’t agree more. According to the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has a responsibility to provide for the common defense. National security, too, has been one of the Legion’s four pillars since its founding in 1919.

So we’re disappointed at the president’s vow, in the same speech, to permanently shut down the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies,” he said. We disagree, and so do millions of other Americans.

Poll after poll shows that the public is wary of, if not downright opposed, to closing Guantanamo Bay. According to a CBS/New York Times poll conducted in March, 52 percent of Americans want to keep the facility open, including most Republicans and independents. A slim majority of Democrats would close it. 

Let’s consider the administration’s rationale for shuttering Gitmo, starting with the expense. The White House estimates that it currently costs $4 million annually to house each detainee. While that seems high, note that the administration has already reduced the detainee population to 91, as of March. A decade ago, it was nearly 800.

A fair cost estimate would consider the expense of relocating these dangerous prisoners, as well as the recidivism rate, which some in Congress estimate to be as high as 30 percent. The risk of freed inmates returning to the battlefield is quite real. Take Abdallah al-Ajmi. In May 2008, two and a half years after his release from Guantanamo Bay, he drove a truck full of explosives through a military checkpoint in Mosul, Iraq. The blast killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 42 civilians. The cost of releasing such terrorists is incredibly high, especially when remembering that only 19 hijackers pulled off the 9/11 attacks.

Second, Congress has made clear, in a rare bipartisan manner, that enemy combatants housed at Guantanamo are not welcome in U.S. prisons. If we don’t need Gitmo, what is the safe alternative? Alas, we should heed the words of one ex-detainee, who is reported to have said, “All Americans must die. These are the rules of Allah.” If we don’t think they’re at war with us, they certainly do.

Finally, there’s the claim that Guantanamo Bay is a recruitment tool for our enemies. This sounds reasonable until one recalls the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the strike on USS Cole, 9/11 and scores of other terrorist attacks on Americans – all of which happened long before we opened the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. It’s also hard to see how Gitmo was an incentive to attack innocents in Brussels, Paris, Jakarta, London, Bali and other cities in countries that operate no Guantanamo-type detention facilities.

The president got it right the first time. Our top concern should be the safety and security of the American people. Keep dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo.