Best Liberal Idea Yet: Let’s Rehabilitate The Jihadis!

by John Hawkins | December 1, 2009 6:30 am

On a regular basis, liberals offer up appallingly dumb solutions to problems that they created in the first place. For example, there’s no real reason that we need to close the jail for Jihadis we have at Guantanamo Bay. It’s a muddleheaded, completely arbitrary choices that creates more issues than it solves. One of those very obvious issues is: what do we do with the prisoners that are at Gitmo now? Marisa L. Porges has an idea that she has offered up for the Philadelphia Inquirer[1]:

As the Obama administration continues struggling with how to close Guantanamo, it finds itself with few options. The recent announcement of plans to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees in federal court is a positive step, but it also reminds us that little headway has been made on most of the Guantanamo detainees. About 75 are deemed too dangerous to release, and 90 are suitable for transfer but have no place to go.

Without any good choices, rehabilitation has emerged as a possible alternative. A recent trip I took to Saudi Arabia suggested that updated rehabilitation strategies could be a viable, though unorthodox, solution to the Guantanamo problem.

Every debate about whether President Obama can close Guantanamo by his self-imposed January deadline considers the “deradicalization” option, particularly for the 97 Yemenis who make up nearly half the remaining detainees. U.S. officials are actively considering sending the Yemenis to Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program, which seemed tremendously successful until earlier this year, when some “rehabilitated” former Guantanamo detainees joined al-Qaeda groups in Yemen.

And yet the Saudis are still committed to deradicalization. Even Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a leader in Saudi counterterrorism efforts, wholeheartedly supports the program – despite having watched one of its graduates try to assassinate him.

…The Saudis see progress, but they still rely heavily on monitoring detainees, financially supporting them, and keeping in contact with them and their families. Recidivism will remain a concern, especially as more extremists, and more committed ones, join deradicalization programs. For the public, the programs’ most troubling aspect may be that they rely on trial and error, and that they will never be totally effective.

But even with these pitfalls, rehabilitation efforts are still worth supporting. And they provide notable side benefits, including helping to prevent the radicalization of a detainee’s family and friends. While deradicalization is not a perfect solution, it’s ultimately better than releasing a former terrorist and hoping for the best.

So, let me see if I have this straight: According to liberals, the next logical step in the war on terror is to release jihadists into the United States and try to rehabilitate them based on a Saudi program which helped lead to an assassination attempt against a Saudi prince? Perhaps we could get them hired on as baggage handlers at the airport or working construction on the World Trade Center? Then, when one of them inevitably kills dozens of people while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” we could all scratch our heads while the media tries to decide whether to blame discrimination against Muslims or post traumatic stress for the murder spree.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought a big part of the war on terror was keeping people like that out of our country? Oh but wait, I forgot –: we’re not in a “war on terror” anymore because the Obama administration has decided not to use those words. Gee, hope the radical jihadists across the world got the memo.

As to the idea that rehabilitation would be “better than releasing a former terrorist and hoping for the best,” that’s probably true. Happily, those aren’t our only two options. We’re also allowed to leave former terrorists in a cell until some other country takes them or they die of old age. How about we take that option? Granted, it’ll mean more inconsolable liberals writing weepy columns about the shabby treatment we’re giving terrorists, but the body count will also be a lot lower. That would seem to me to be just a little more important.