Good thing Obama is closing Gitmo, eh? There has been a great deal of skepticism over the rate of Gitmo recidivism, but that skepticism is based on dogmatic and tendentious Leftist assumptions -- chief among them the idea that the Gitmo inmates were simple farmers and townsfolk picked up by a rabid, imperialist and Islamophobic American war machine in an attempt to justify its rapacity. Recently I was on a BBC show with an advocate for the Guantanamo prisoners who insisted that the Uighurs (yes, the ones who were ultimately released to a perpetual Bermuda vacation) were just poor tribesmen unjustly arrested and imprisoned. She completely ignored the fact that they were not arrested in Xinjiang, but in Afghanistan -- and why would Muslim Uighurs in Western China travel to Afghanistan in the first place? For the waters?
Obviously, they went to Afghanistan to wage jihad. And then when they got to Guantanamo, because of political correctness and the prevailing and unquestionable dogma that Islam is a religion of peace. nothing was done to disabuse them of their jihadist assumptions. On the contrary: those assumptions were reinforced by the respect and reverence that American personnel were ordered to show for the Qur'an -- the very book that had inspired these men to wage war against the United States in the first place.
In light of that, it is no surprise is that any Gitmo inmates return to jihad. It is only a surprise that more released Gitmo inmates don't return to jihad.
"Mullah Sprung From Gitmo Jail Now Leads Foe In Afghan Campaign," by Seth G. Jones in the New York Post, July 5 (thanks to Rosanne):
KABUL, Afghanistan -- As Marine Corps forces roll into southern Afghanistan, they face an enemy familiar to US officials -- Mullah Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who now leads a reconstituted Taliban.
Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is from Helmand Province and has taken a circuitous route to become head of the radical Islamic group.
Zakir was a senior fighter during the Taliban regime in the 1990s. In a memorandum prepared for his administrative review board at Guantanamo, Zakir apparently "felt it would be fine to wage jihad against Americans, Jews, or Israelis if they were invading his country."
And he acknowledged that he was "called to fight jihad in approximately 1997," when he joined the Taliban.
In 2001, he surrendered to US and Afghan forces in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif as the regime was collapsing. He spent the next several years in custody, was transferred to Guantanamo around 2006, then to Afghanistan government custody in late 2007, and was eventually released around May 2008. American officials won't say why he was let go and have not released a photograph of him.
Zakir wasted little time rekindling his relationship with the Taliban, especially its inner shura, or leadership council, based in Pakistan. According to some accounts, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar appointed Zakir as a senior military commander in mid-2008. He quickly developed a reputation as a charismatic leader....
