I wonder how Obama knows the terrorists use Gitmo as a recruiting tool? Have Gallup's people been matriculating in madrassas taking the jihadists' pulse? If terrorists do think negatively about Gitmo, is it because of the fabled mistreatment they've received there or the fact that we're demonstrating our weakness by administering five-star luxury treatment to homicide bombers?
The answer is Obama is a liberal and he has deliberately surrounded himself with like-minded, weak-willed leftists who are congenitally incapable of grasping the presence of evil in the world. They are blind to the reality that the terrorists hate us because of their ideology and theology and not because of any alleged misconduct at a detention facility. Do you really think it's plausible that people who engage in the brutal tactics these people engage in would bother recruiting on the absurd bases that Obama claims?
It was bad enough when these liberal Democrats were making such arguments for the cynical partisan motive of undermining President Bush and enhancing their own political positions. That was inexcusable. But now it's even worse. These arguments are just painfully reckless and, sorry, stupid. Oh, how I long for a return of the adults to Washington.
Anyone with the slightest sense knows that the atmosphere has changed in our capital. Obama has unilaterally ended our participation in the war on terror. It is no longer a two-sided war; it's their warriors against our prosecutors and public relations apologists.
The administration is focused on its own image more than it is on our national security, as witnessed by its scramble -- following the foiled attack on Flight 253 -- to prove that a worse incident had occurred during the Bush administration.
Even Politico's Ben Smith and Carol Lee recognize the ineptness of this administration's reaction to the incident. The White House's response, they wrote, "could rank as one of the low points of the new president's first year. ... The episode was a baffling, unforced error in presidential symbolism."
The president's error is worse than symbolic, I'm afraid. And his errors aren't the issue; they are symptoms of a relativistic worldview that doesn't recognize the world as it really is or our enemies for who they really are. If you are not alarmed by his obscene expansion of the national debt, maybe his surrender in the war will get your attention. These are horrifying times.