The margin was “razor-thin,” but a Democratically-controlled Senate (59-40, awaiting the Coleman/Franken result which will likely make it 60-40 Democrat) rejected the Obama administration’s plan to bring Gitmo terrorists to the United States. The vote was 90-6.
Democrats are caught in a trap of their own making. The party which, for the last eight years, elevated political opportunity over national security, have suddenly–and painstakingly–realized they no longer have “someone else” to blame if terrorists launch another successful attack on America.
Not that they wouldn’t try. No doubt many of them still believe “blame Bush/Cheney” has a somewhat extended shelf life, at least until the next election in 2010. Any terrorist attack between now and then would most assuredly be blamed on the “inflammation of anti-American feelings in the Arab world” attributable to the “immoral” and “illegal” tactics used by the former administration to prevent such an attack.
Yet even now, reality intrudes. Democrats have made it clear they don’t want these hardened Guantanamo thugs on American soil. Ironically, as good a reason as any for such a stance was provided by what is euphemistically known as “events on the ground:” four terrorists intending to blow up NYC synagogues and shoot down military planes with missiles were convicts converted to Islamic jihadism while serving time in American jails.
One can only imagine the kind of influence the true believers at Guantanamo Bay would bring to any jailhouse teeming with discontents. One can only imagine the reaction of the American public if they learned a terrorist attack was carried out by someone “enchanted” by the teachings of a Gitmo “missionary.”
Apparently even liberal Democrats have that much imagination. And I suspect as time goes on, as Democrats’ self-fashioned noose of self-righteous indignation is placed upon their OWN necks and drawn ever tighter, they will discover that the safety of the American public correlates precisely with their survival as the majority party.
In other words, as Benjamin Franklin once remarked when Americans were also in a fight for their survival as a nation, “we must indeed hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
atahlert@comcast.net
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