Say Anything Blog

If Obama really wants to close Guantanamo Bay he’s going to have a hard time doing it because it seems nobody in the world wants the detainees currently at Gitmo in their country:

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia has told the United States for a second time that it will not resettle detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the acting prime minister said Saturday.

Julia Gillard said President George W. Bush’s administration was told Friday that a request made in early December to resettle an unspecified number of detainees had been rejected.

“Assessing those requests from a case-by-case basis, they had not met our stringent national security and immigration criteria and have been rejected,” said Gillard, who is filling in for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd while he is on vacation.

She said the government had rejected a similar resettlement request in early 2008.

The Bush administration made the latest request after President-elect Barack Obama promised to close the prison.

I’m sure al Qaeda and/or other terror organizations around the world would be happy to have these monsters back.  Of course, I don’t think even Obama is naive enough to want to put them in a situation where the Gitmo detainees could go back to those groups.

During his campaign Obama made a lot of noise about closing down Gitmo, and I think that noise is going to come back to bite him.

On one hand, if he follows through and closes down Guantanamo - thus releasing the noxious terrorists kept there back into the world - I’d be willing to bet that it’d be a matter of a few months before those terrorists were making headlines again by having been caught participating in more terrorism and attacks.

On the other hand, if Obama doesn’t follow through and close Guantanamo - or if he pulls a Clintonesque move like closing that detention facility but moving the detainees to some other location, well now that’s not really the sort of hope ‘n change he campaigned on now is it?  Remember, Gitmo has become an issue so important to the left that the orange jumpsuits worn by the detainees there have become de rigeur at anti-war events across the country.

I’ll readily admit that there are no simple solutions for Gitmo.  I think the status quo is far from optimal, but I think Obama is about to learn that throwing rocks at the decisions other people have to make is much easier than having to make those decisions yourself.