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Special Report
Rehabbing Jihadists
Every once in a while, just when you think you've seen all there is to see of the liberals' fecklessness, they surprise you again. This time it's the idea for replacing Guantanamo with a program to "rehabilitate jihadists."
The idea has surfaced as President Barack Obama's announced plans to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay by next January. This will "restore our respect in the world" and "prove that we live by our ideals of…" what? Of not incarcerating people who try to kill us? Well, never mind, there's supposed to be lots of torture going on down there. So let's do something different.
Exactly what? Well, there are still 240 hard-core jihadists down there. Nancy Pelosi doesn't want them moved to Alcatraz and most people feel the same. So what are we going to do with them?
The answer has come, "We'll rehabilitate them." The Saudis have a program they claim has a 90 percent success rate in turning jihadists into good citizens. It was described in the New York Times Magazine last November. "There are right jihads and there are wrong jihads," the instructor -- a pudgy, mild-mannered imam, was reported telling his class of a dozen or so sulking young men. These are the young warriors who went off to Iraq or Afghanistan, then became disillusioned -- often because they were asked to become suicide bombers. They have returned home, often by way of foreign prisons. Some were even veterans of Guantanamo.
"Some of our young people don't listen to the right scholars," the imam confided to Times contributor Katherine Zoepf. "First they start to think that they have the right to go to jihad at any time. After that, they start to think that we have the right to kill any non-Muslim. Then they start to say that our leaders are kuffar, infidels. After that they start to say that our scholars, too, are kuffar. Before long, they've declared war against the whole world" -- including, one might presume, their pudgy, mild-mannered instructors.
So instead of imprisoning them, the Saudis present them with a bundle of gifts, including a digital watch, and put them through two short months of instruction. Then the reformed former jihadists are presented with a car (often a Toyota) and helped by the Interior Ministry in finding an apartment. As much as possible, they also try to find them a wife. "Getting married stabilizes a man's personality," said the program administrator, in an observation that has been noted since the days of the Bible. If there is any moral hazard here -- people joining the program just for the benefits -- no one has yet noticed.
Not every rehabilitation has been a success. In January, Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, formerly prisoner #372 at Gitmo, was identified in a jihad video as a senior official of al-Qaeda in Yemen, a group involved in attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen and Syria. Standing beside him was Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, formerly prisoner #333. Both graduated from the Saudi program in 2007. When challenged, Saudi officials confessed that nine more graduates had also been arrested for subsequent terrorist activities. "When they were released from the program they were O.K., but in one way or another they were recruited again," explained Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Still, the Saudi record is better than Yemen, where -- as the Weekly Standard reported last week -- the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh actually seems to be funneling its rehab inmates back into the international jihad movement.
In pursuing the illusion that terrorists can be rehabilitated, President Obama and the Saudis are following a well trodden, centuries-old path of idealistic optimism. When Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831, he was investigating a new system of prison reform for the French government. The word "penitentiary" is a 19th-century invention in which prisoners were put in solitary confinement so they could do penance for their crimes. (Many went insane instead.) The Blythedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne's gentle satire of 19th-century liberalism, features a character who spends his entire life trying to found a prison that will cure criminality.
The 1960s were a huge era of prison reform. Driven by the latest sociological fashion of "deviance theory," criminologists became convinced that jail inmates were only innocent "stumblers and bumblers" and that the "real criminals" were too smart to be apprehended. Prisons only turned the poor deviant bumblers into hardened criminals. The resulting "deprisonization" movement quickly triggered the greatest crime wave in American history, producing an additional 500,000 homicides from 1965 to 1995, when law enforcement finally began to assert itself again.
The public's dissatisfaction with prison reform reached a crescendo during the 1988 Presidential campaign when it became known that Willie Horton, a Massachusetts inmate convicted of killing a gas station attendant, had kidnapped and raped a Maryland woman while on a weekend furlough for prisoners serving life sentences without parole. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune had dug out the story, winning a Pulitzer Price in the process. When the Massachusetts legislature had tried to repeal the program, Governor Mike Dukakis vetoed it on the grounds that the furloughs were a legitimate "rehabilitation" effort. The revelation sunk Dukakis's presidential campaign.
The initial deflation of rehabilitation theory had actually comes nearer the outset, when Robert Martinson, a noted political scientist, was commissioned by New York State to find out the best regimen for reforming state prisoners. Martinson did a complete survey of all the studies ever written in English and all the experiments conducted anywhere in the world after 1945. His findings so shocked New York State officials that they refused to publish them. They even denied Martinson access to his own data, until he finally freed them with a court case.
Eventually published in the Public Interest in 1974, the article was entitled "Nothing Works." "[I]t is possible to give a rather bald summary of our findings," Martinson concluded. "With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." Group therapy, occupational therapy, probation, parole, stamping out license plates -- all produced the same result. No matter what was tried, a predictable 65 percent of released prisoners return to crime after they were released. The only strategy that seemed to make any difference was psychotherapy. That increased the rate of recidivism.
Today the issue is pretty much settled. Few people -- even the most ardent civil libertarians -- make much of an argument that criminals can be reformed. The only thing that seems to work is passing the age of 35. If young criminals reach this milestone -- and especially if they settle and marry -- they may lead fairly normal lives.
But all this is predicated on a society where young men have a chance to lead normal lives. As Charles Murray has written so famously, most men in American society can be assured that if they "get a high school education, get married and get a job," they can lead a reasonably stable and productive life. Criminals, on the other hand, are young men who aren't satisfied with these options but go for the "big score" through burglary, robbery or other illegal activities such as dealing drugs. (Murder is usually incidental to any of these -- only a handful aspire to be professional killers.) Aging out of crime is the only successful rehabilitation program ever devised.
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Karsten| 2.10.09 @ 6:57AM
I can think of a programme that would have a 100% success rate.
GreginOkinawa| 2.10.09 @ 7:40AM
Karsten...hmmmm, I like!
Andrew Batten| 2.10.09 @ 8:07AM
When asked what to do with jihadists, nobody really has an answer. Liberals shriek "What are we going to do, keep them in prison FOREVER?"
The simple answer is yes, and there is a good historical precedent for just such a program.
When the British authorities in India discovered the presence of a murderous religious ideology, whose members were pledged to unending bloodshed in honor of their god, the British took just such a course. The religion was Thugeee, and the British rounded up thousands of followers into prisons. Some were rehabilitated, many were not. Those who were considered to be an ongoing threat lived out their lives in confinement, tending their vegetable plots and eventually dying out.
Anyone heard much about the Thugee threat recently?
Ryan| 2.10.09 @ 8:53AM
Though a little off-topic, my understanding is that education DOES affect the recidivism rate - to a point where I've come to believe that a condition of release for anyone should be getting a GED.
That's western thinking, however - there's a certain ideology ingrained in the Muslim extremist mind that probably cannot be shut out, though I wonder - do we actively try and evangelize the Muslim extremists in prison?
Gill O'Teen| 2.10.09 @ 8:58AM
I posted very similar comments last month as “George”; however, I believe my perfect solution to this problem, at least to my now disposable brain, bears repeating:
Obama's mansion in Chicago is currently vacant. He could rent it out to the heros so unfairly incarcerated in Cuba. In Chicago they would be neighbors of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dorn. They'd feel right at home and Obama could earn some much needed cash with which to stimulate the economy.
Furthermore, those of you who might be jealous that I appear to be singling out Chicago for the honor of being a sanctuary for those Gitmatized paragons of virtue, you shall not be ignored. Undoubtedly your own communities are also blessed with such great citizens as Rezko, Mr. and Mrs. Ayers as well as yourselves. Not to mention such magnificent religious institutions as Trinity United, the Nation of Islam, the numerous Catholic (54% Obama) parishes and Jewish (78% Obama) synagogues which would surely be welcoming to these God-fearing men. It is so unfair that only the Windy City enjoy the economic stimulus of hosting these Martyrs for Muhammad. But I am sitting here in my office shivering - a poor victim of global warming. Since I’m hundreds of miles south of the Hog Butcher for the World (I hope not a problem for those who practice Halaal), it’s remotely possible its location on the shores of Lake Michigan would be inhospitable at this time of year and for the foreseeable future to those from a desert climate, especially those who have been living on a tropical island for any recent length of time. So why don’t we each open up our own homes to serve as half-way houses for these gentlemen while they learn to live in a free and open community once again? Need I point out that being shackled and tortured in U.S. government institutions for any period of time is surely a fate worse than death, so these saints have truly earned on Earth the Heavenly rewards promised them by their recruiters. Let’s see, that’s 72 virgins at the going rate of $3.7 million per. I may have to waive the black-eyed stipulation for these women. It would be so unfair to those burdened with amber, gray, blue, green, brown, hazel, bloodshot or other eye color to be excluded from this once in eternity opportunity. I am also concerned that nobody, in the midst of all this discussion about habeas corpus, right to an attorney and so forth, has spoken up for the second amendment rights of these upstanding individuals. I found some nice Glocks for sale on the internet for a unit price of only $499 and a box of lead free ammunition for $50.81. Let me see here $3,700,000 X 72 + $499 + $50.81 + $100 per diem to cover food and clothing for a year or $36,500 (so they have some walking around money), I think there are about 250 of these persecuted souls, which comes to a trifling $231,259,512,452.50 or a mere $925,038,049.81 apiece. Even if I can negotiate a bulk rate, the cost of assisting these potential pillars of society is steep by any outside the Beltway measure, and with the government already printing gazillions to pay off political obligations, I doubt that Congress will offer more than a token million or so to offset the expense of relocating any of these exemplary and handsome young men, even though it is way less than the trillion or so the government is offering capitalist criminals. I doubt Tim Geithner will bail us out. He’s much too busy looking for his misplaced tax forms. This is where I boldly step forward by offering each of you as advocates for Truth, Justice and the Obama Way this once in an election cycle opportunity. Don’t wait for your legislatures to impose a carbon offset fee (not a tax - a fee). Step forward. Share your wealth. Show Joe Biden just how patriotic you are. Open your homes and wallets to those misplaced by the Evil Bush. Simply email me the following information from the face of your credit card: your full name, account number and expiration date. Include your home and billing addresses, plus your home and mobile phone numbers. From the back of the same card also send me your credit card issuer’s 800 number and the security code. Add a personal note to The All Merciful Obama that you are willing to adopt one of these persecuted souls and will open up your home to him. You will also need room for all those virgins, though I think one bed will suffice for all 73 people. Keep in mind that my proposed budget failed to account for food or clothing for the girls, so you might have to include their nutrition requirements in your own grocery list. I doubt they will require a wardrobe - certainly a welcome savings since you will also need to pay any and all expenses that Nancy Pelosi and her friends fail to cover. For my part, I solemnly promise to each and every one of you that I will bill a token $99.99 to your credit card for my personal use to offset my expenses for initiating this movement, unless you kindly authorize I charge more. Further I will compile a monthly list of all the above information and snail mail it to the White House, so Our Lord and Savior will be able to place these war orphans in friendly habitats for humanity. You are all Great Americans, and surely God will suitably reward you for doing His work here on Earth.
May the Peace and Blessings of God’s Anointed Obama descend upon you and yours forever.
Please join me in prayer:
Heil Obama, who art in Washington,
Hallowed be your Fame.
Your kingdom won.
Your will be done,
In the red states as it is in Congress.
Give us this day our mortgage paid.
And forgive us our conservative talk radio,
As we condemn those who speak out against You.
And lead us not into great depression,
But deliver us from the evil Bush.
For Yours is the kingdom,
and the media, and the podium,
for at least another 4 years.
Amen.
Curly Smith| 2.10.09 @ 9:29AM
It seems to me that these two lines from the article:
"every Islamic society has a large surplus of young males whose frustration and anger must be redirected."
"Criminals ... are young men who aren't satisfied with these options but go for the "big score""
are indicative of the problem. Both concern individuals who are looking for the easy way out, they don't want to do the hard work necessary to succeed in society. And, in both cases, the individuals are conned by manipulators who convince them of the vast rewards that await them outside the bounds of decent society. Unfortunately for them, crime really doesn't pay, the "big score" never happens, a job a McDonalds would generate higher lifetime income and the 72 virgins are hairy young men who've blown themselves up.
If we were concerned about crime then we'd sanction those who glamorize criminal behavior. Can you imagine Dragnet being produced today? Instead, we get movies that feature highly successful criminal ventures and media that worships celebrity drug use, neither of which are very helpful. If the Saudis were actually concerned about the jihadists then they'd silence the "wrong scholars" instead of pretending to rehabilitate the indoctrinated.
Consequently, I must conclude that there's a powerful segment of society that wants the upheaval associated with high crime and wants the vast number of lost souls who are incapable of living normal lives. By the same token, it's evident that the Saudis want the results that they're getting from the jihadists.
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Dennis Koziel| 2.10.09 @ 12:51PM
I advocate a prison mentor program, where every Jihadist will be "paired" with a mentor in a prison cell. These mentors will mostly be ex-NFL linemen serving life terms for sodomizing everything from the pizza boy to road kill. Names like "Big Percy" and "Yo Mama's Daddy" come to mind. In no time, the once-souless killers will be lacing up the jail cell curtains and changing their names to Alice al-Safir and Melinda ali-abbas.
David Govett| 2.10.09 @ 1:01PM
Misunderstood Jihadists don't keep liberals out of power. It's those evil Republicans who do.
gary swenchonis| 2.10.09 @ 1:04PM
We are sick and tired of watching our sons killers go free in Yemen as our government does nothing. Except to drop the charges against a-Nashiri here in American where had hoped that at least one of his killers would be help responsible. But it now appears that justice has been hijacked by politics.
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ashok| 2.10.09 @ 3:42PM
Reading these comments, I see that many of you are taking at least the question of rehabilitating a terrorist seriously. I think there's very good reason to believe that the Saudi "program" is intentionally a fraud designed to dupe stupid liberals and bleeding hearts all over the world. If you need proof: Saudi Arabia preaches jihad, as we all know, of the most violent stripe. They only lost their monopoly in the hate business to Iran b/c of the war on terror.
Anthony| 2.10.09 @ 4:38PM
The Rev. Gil O' Teen. Prayer we can believe in!! Can I get a Amen!! I'll be looking for you this Sunday morning, Joel who??
Jeremiah| 2.10.09 @ 5:09PM
This piece suggests that there are Americans -- Democrats in particular -- who favor "rehabilitating" terrorists.
This is absurd and extremely dishonest. No person in Obama's administration has proposed anything like this.
You guys need to go back to journalism school and take a class on the ethics of your profession.
This piece is sloppy and foolish.
Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, guys.
Work harder.
Todd| 2.10.09 @ 6:22PM
So tell me Jeremiah and jharp, tell me exactly what Obama and Holder intend to do with the Gitmo terrorists when they close it down? Please tell me what their ingenious idea is because I would like to hear it. We have already freed several hundred only for a number of them to return to terrorist activity like the author points out. The ones that remain in Gitmo are the most dangerous of them all and they will have to go somewhere if they actually close down Gitmo. I still have not heard what they intend to do so maybe you can help me with that. You are right that our country is in trouble jharp but it is because of imbeciles like you and Jeremiah who insist on closing Gitmo with no plan.
Jeremiah| 2.10.09 @ 8:02PM
Todd --
What makes you think Guantanamo Bay is so special? What makes you believe that there are "terrorists" there at all?
Because some official at the Pentagon told you so?
We rounded up hundreds of people based on rumors and hearsay. Hundreds have been freed by the Bush administration after being detained and abused for years.
Of those remaining, on 5% have been charged with any crime. (Terrorism is a crime, by the way. You indict, you try, you punish, as with any crime.)
Your credulousness is simply shocking.
Grow up, man.
stmichrick| 2.10.09 @ 8:07PM
Everyone here knows that what politically drives the idea of closing Gitmo is the notion that there is a better, smarter (read: non Bush) way of dealing with these animals.
There are signs that reality has given even the Chosen One pause about how to actually do it.
Jeremiah and jharp can deny all day the gist of this story but anyone eho has observed the left since the sixties knows better.
Where else exists the idea that the incarcerated are victims of society? One can only hope that if anything is actually done, the worst are sent to Murtha's district and might actually shake his grip on elective office.
stmichrick| 2.10.09 @ 8:13PM
Wow; I just read Jeremiah's doubts about their even being terrorists at Gitmo and those unfortunate innocents who are there have been abused.
This discussion is now in fantasy land.
Jeremiah, how convenient it must be to create alternative facts.
stmichrick| 2.10.09 @ 9:57PM
jharp;
I suppose we just rounded up a few convenience store owners and decided to build them a prison. Maybe someday you'll get a chance to speak with someone who has first hand knowlege and can tell you who they are. In the mean time I'll trust General Petreaus over Keith Olber-bite and you should too.
The American justice system is not equipped to deal with international fighters bent on its destruction and the society that supports it. Tell me why they deserve the rights of U.S. citizens.
Why were POWs in other wars not tried that in U.S. courtrooms?
It is hard to imagine what my opinion would be after being picked up on a battlefield or in the process of undermining a civil society by plotting to murder its citizens . I suppose I selfishly would want to be tried by the court with the most loopholes so I could return and continue the fight.
Get it?
Jim| 2.10.09 @ 10:37PM
"Hi, I'm Jeremiah and this is my life partner jharp. We will be happy to answer all of your questions as soon as we recieve the correct responses from our controllers at the DNC."
Todd| 2.10.09 @ 10:53PM
You are such a tool Jeremiah. Yeah, all those lunatics were just sheep herders who just happened to find themselves on a field of battle with explosives on them. You are the one that needs to grow up and face reality if you really believe that, not even Obama and Holder claim most of them are innocent and should just be set free. The fact is they have no idea what to do with them but they want to grandstand on closing Gitmo. Yeah, you are some winner Jeremiah living in your little apartment with no apparent social life to speak of but to troll around all day on a conservative website.
Do you really think jharp it is a good idea to try these terrorists in a court of law instead of a military tribunal? Let me refer you to the blind sheik fiasco of the 1st World Trade Center bombing if you want to see how great that works. And where would you put these lunatics once Gitmo is closed? Still no answer for that one from what I see. You think you know better what to do than our military leaders just like Obama but you don't have a damn clue.
Todd| 2.10.09 @ 11:00PM
Since there is no really telling the nonsense of Jeremiah and jharp apart, I mistakenly thought it was Jeremiah who called himself a winner when it was jharp but the comment applies to the both of them. I wouldn't waste my time on liberal sites like Daily Kos and Huffington Post but I got a life rather than being some stupid troll like you losers.
Michigan-Matt| 2.11.09 @ 7:48AM
For all the "Let's just rehab the terrorists" folk out there with Dorothy, Toto and the Scarecrow, the Bush Administration already started supra-military trials --which the Obama rehabbers put on hold. Intelligent, thoughtful people who have been working on this problem for 7+ yrs ought to be livid.
To suggest that Obama's folks are "Just rehab the terrorists" idiots is to miss the reality of our american criminal justice system run by, guess who, yep --Liberals.
S.L. Toddard| 2.11.09 @ 10:08AM
Jeremiah and Jcrap here you go again, spewing nonsense on a conservative blog! It's because of libturds like you, farting out wimpy stuff and belching surrender that we got 9-11. You've been betraying your country since you were born, a.ssholes! You're a disgrace and the only reason you're still allowed to be alive and betray your country is because soldiers are fighting to protect you. You make me puke. Dumb liberals.
Islam is a disease. There's no such thing as a nice compassionate Islam. Therefore all Gitmo inmates are guilty. We know what we should do with them and release is not an option. Case closed. Bye bye Jeremiah, close your eyes if you like, it's not gonna be for sissies.
stmichrick| 2.11.09 @ 3:34PM
jharp;
You silly she-man.
Your responses to my comments were truly bizarre. Isn't it nice how the internet provides an isolation ward for those of you who choose to live in an alternative reality.
So you think General David Petraeus is not to be believed. Believe this; you need help.
Now go take your medicine.
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