McConnell: Lack Of Coherent Counterterrorism Strategy Puts America And Our Allies In Danger
‘The Biden Administration might genuinely believe that outsourcing its responsibility to hold and prosecute those who wish America harm would be more humane… or that it would make America safer. But they’d be dead wrong on both counts. Relying on proxies to detain tens of thousands of low-level suspects in alarming conditions risks inviting a whole new generation of terrorists to put America in their crosshairs.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding combatting terrorism:
“I’ve spoken before about the Biden Administration’s political obsession with closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, even if it means letting terrorist butchers plead out of their just deserts and return to the fight.
“Last month, new reports indicated just how close the President was to shipping eleven more terrorists from GITMO back to the Middle East to a country that is reportedly expelling former terrorist detainees into the wilds of Yemen.
“That is, until Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched their savage massacre of Jews on October 7th. Apparently, the Administration has bowed, at least, temporarily to the political inconvenience of releasing radical Islamist terrorists into the wild.
“The American people didn’t need a barbaric attack on Israeli civilians to remind us that radical Islamist terrorists are targeting us, murdering our allies, and sowing chaos around the world.
“The growth of terrorist threats worldwide on President Biden’s watch is an indisputable fact. And his Administration’s abject lack of a coherent counterterrorism strategy is a damning failure.
“The President may have removed the Iran-backed Houthis from the terrorist list… but the Houthi terrorists clearly didn’t get the memo!
“The Shi’a Houthi terrorists and the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Sunni terrorists of Yemen are both on the march, working to extend the chaos and violence Hamas is sowing in Israel and Gaza across the entire region.
“The White House may have thought they could maintain shoestring partnerships and counter exploding terrorist threats in critical regions. But Russia’s inroads to supplant U.S. influence in the Sahel and North Africa tell a different story.
“They may have bet the farm that ‘over-the-horizon’ counterterrorism operations could replace an active coalition presence in Afghanistan. But the resurgence of groups like ISIS-K and al Qaeda suggests otherwise.
“How many counterterrorism strikes has the US military conducted in Afghanistan since the withdrawal?
“The current state of affairs benefits those who wish America and our allies harm. From the Administration’s paralyzing fear of escalation to its desperate pursuit of détente with the world’s top terror sponsor, the status quo gives our enemies cover.
“And had the Biden Administration’s plan to export another eleven terrorists from Guantanamo Bay gone ahead, it might very well have swelled their ranks.
“We don’t have to imagine it. We saw what happened when the terrorists detained at Bagram Air Base in Kabul were sprung loose. We’ve seen repeated terrorist jailbreaks in Syria, too.
“And in light of recent reporting, we know that 50,000 ISIS suspects and their families are detained by U.S. funded nonstate actors in that country, at the epicenter of terrorist unrest.
“The Biden Administration might genuinely believe that outsourcing its responsibility to hold and prosecute those who wish America harm would be more humane… or that it would make America safer.
“But they’d be dead wrong on both counts. Relying on proxies to detain tens of thousands of low-level suspects in alarming conditions risks inviting a whole new generation of terrorists to put America in their crosshairs.
“Administration officials cannot credibly signal virtue by releasing hard-core terrorists from GITMO while quietly relying on proxies to detain low-level terrorists in such conditions.
“The men who await justice at GITMO are the worst of the worst. Recidivism is a serious concern – and the Democrats working breathlessly to close America’s terrorist detention facility don’t have a serious plan to address it.
“They make it harder to strike terrorists and harder to detain them at the same time. In fact, the Administration is now trying to block any constraints on their ability to empty GITMO from the coming year’s NDAA.
“If any of our colleagues are tempted to indulge the Administration’s obsessive quest, I’d encourage them to request briefings on the nature of the threat before they do.
“The President’s dangerous weakness in the face of hardened killers is well-documented. And his plan to let some of the masterminds of terrorist violence against Americans off the hook is only the most enduring example.”
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Related Issues: Guantanamo Detention Facility, National Security
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