Guantanamo Is No Blot on U.S. Honor

The president still hasn't said where to hold the worst of the worst.

• By BRET STEPHENS

President Obama's decision to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay within a year is being hailed as a necessary step in restoring the good name and moral hygiene of America. Fundamentally, it tests the proposition that self-esteem can be a form of self-defense.

Nobody ever actually liked Guantanamo. It was a strange growth on the body of American law, made necessary by extraordinary circumstances that existing institutions were ill-prepared to handle. Even Donald Rumsfeld had reservations: In his excellent memoir, "War and Decision," former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith writes that his boss recoiled at turning his department into "the world's jailer."

But the best case against Guantanamo was always inherently odd. It came down to the view that its benefits as a holding pen for the world's most dangerous men could not outweigh the inevitable PR disaster of removing such men to an exotic locale, a step removed from ordinary conventions of law, prone to lurid speculation about Papillon-like goings on, corroborated by the testimony of inmates trained to cry "torture" whenever incarcerated.

In other words, the smart case against Gitmo is that the stupid case against it was bound to prevail, with first-order consequences for America's image and self-image, and second-order ones for our ability to inspire, lead and be followed.

Is this true? Paradoxically, the case for Guantanamo is only becoming obvious as the clock ticks toward closure. Consider, for instance, the recent career of Said Ali al-Shihri.

According to an unclassified June 2007 document from Guantanamo's Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, Mr. Shihri "was identified as an al Qaeda facilitator in Mashad, Iran, for youth traveling to Afghanistan"; "wanted two individuals to assassinate a writer based on a fatwa by Sheikh Hamud bin Uqla" (a favorite of Osama bin Laden); and "trained in urban warfare at the Libyan Camp north of Kabul, Afghanistan."

Charming résumé. But what's remarkable here is that the dark lords of Gitmo justice nonetheless found sufficient exculpatory evidence to release Mr. Shihri from detention. "The detainee stated that he was just a Muslim not a terrorist"; that he "denied any involvement or knowledge of assistance provided to jihadists traveling to Pakistan or Afghanistan"; and that, upon his release, "he would attempt to work at his family's furniture store, if it is still in business" in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Maybe the store had gone out of business. Last week, Mr. Shihri, who had undergone a "rehabilitation course" courtesy of the Saudi government, resurfaced as al Qaeda's deputy chief in Yemen, alongside an accomplice named Mohamed Atiq Awayd al-Harbi, a colleague of Mr. Shihri's from Guantanamo who was released the same day.

Mr. Shihri's role with al Qaeda hasn't been merely ceremonial. According to reports, he was involved in a September attempt to bomb the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a. No Americans were killed, but 16 others died in the attack. It's a pity we don't know their names.

Yesterday, Reuters reported that the embassy had again "received a threat of a possible attack." Some such attack is probably bound to succeed in killing Americans one day, perhaps in a big way, and possibly with the fingerprints of one of the 60-odd Gitmo graduates the U.S. believes have "returned to the fight." What lessons shall we draw in that event?

No doubt some will conclude that the Gitmo ordeal is what turned a random collection of Peshawar holiday-makers and itinerant Saudi carpet salesmen, who made their way to the Afghan frontier on the eve of 9/11, into raging jihadists. Similar arguments were heard a generation ago in favor of deinstitutionalization, on the theory that psychiatric institutions manufacture insanity.

There will also be those who argue that the death of innocents is the price free societies pay for freedom. They will argue, too, that the price is actually a bargain, since the moral stature gained by shutting down places like Guantanamo earns us the kind of moral and political credit we need to broaden America's appeal in the Muslim world.

In his inaugural address, Mr. Obama noted that "our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint." All this is obviously true.

Then again, our security also depends on doing what we can to keep the likes of Mr. Shihri -- far from the most dangerous of Gitmo's prisoners -- away from his would-be victims. To do so is neither a violation of conscience nor a blot on our national honor; it should not be a violation of the law. And a president sworn to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution should know this.