The Daqduq Disgrace Obama releases a terrorist rather than send him to Gitmo.
-
One of the most widely photographed acts of President Obama’s first year in office was his symbolic pre-dawn salute to the caskets of U.S. soldiers returning to Dover Air Force Base. In the case of a terrorist named Ali Musa Daqduq, who was released yesterday from U.S. custody in Iraq, the President is letting down those fallen soldiers and their families.
Daqduq is a Lebanese national and top Hezbollah operative who in January 2007 masterminded the ambush, kidnapping and murder of five American soldiers in the Iraqi city of Karbala. Arrested by U.S. forces in Basra two months later, Daqduq is said to have initially pretended to be deaf and mute. But he eventually talked, giving U.S. interrogators an extensive picture of the ways in which Iran was arming and training Iraq’s insurgents.
Now Daqduq is in Iraqi custody—released, according to the Administration, because it could not lawfully do otherwise. “We have sought and received assurances [from the Iraqi government] that he will be tried for his crimes,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
Mr. Vietor surely knows the likelier outcome is that Daqduq will be released or acquitted so that he can rejoin his comrades in Beirut or Tehran. The Iraqi government has already released some 50 other prisoners responsible for attacks on U.S. forces.
The Administration contends that its hands were tied by the U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, which required Iraq’s consent—not forthcoming—to remove any prisoners from the country. But it’s hard to see why that stipulation would apply to Daqduq, who is not an Iraqi citizen.
The Administration also thought of bringing Daqduq to the U.S. for trial in federal court or a military tribunal. Both ideas would have meant taking political heat, but at a minimum it showed that the status-of-forces deal was not an insuperable obstacle to keeping Daqduq in U.S. custody provided the Administration was determined to do so.
Alas, it wasn’t. The one place Daqduq unquestionably belongs is in the prison at Guantanamo, which also happens to be the one place the Administration wouldn’t countenance having him. By now, even Mr. Obama understands that Gitmo serves a vital role in housing terrorists who either can’t be safely released or easily tried. Daqduq, the most senior Hezbollah figure in U.S. custody and a man who conspicuously disdained the laws of war, fits that bill.
But even if Mr. Obama can’t close Gitmo as he promised, neither can he bring himself openly to acknowledge its benefits. Leftist furies are more than he’s willing to face. Instead, the Administration has made the calculation that one more terrorist kingpin on the loose with American blood on his hands is an acceptable price to pay for not establishing the precedent that new prisoners may again be brought to Guantanamo.
In a different world, Daqduq would not be heading for a hero’s welcome in Beirut or Tehran but instead would be on a military flight to Cuba, with the (feigned) indignation of the Iraqi government receding in the distance. In a different world, too, the families of Daqduq’s victims would have the solace that he is behind bars and unable to do further harm. That’s a world that will have to await a different Administration.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Comments are closed.
