Said Ali al Shihri

It was bound to happen. A Guantanamo prisoner named Said Ali al Shihri was released, and is now apparently actively involved in terrorist activity in Yemen. Al Qaeda websites have gleefully announced this, and with good reason. They know that Guantanamo is one of the strongest propaganda tools they have, and anything they can do to delay the release of those prisoners is to their advantage. Al Qaeda's dysfunctional co-dependents, the Republican Noise Machine, will triumphantly exclaim that this justifies keeping these guys locked up forever.

If Obama were a Clinton, he would say something like "of course, we'll make sure that something like this never happens again." I'm hoping, however, that he will bite the bullet and say something like this.

"A Court of law found this man innocent, and so we released him. Perhaps he really was involved in terrorist activities before, and it was impossible to prove it. Perhaps he was innocent, and was so embittered by five years of torture and imprisonment that he became what we thought he was. Either way, this is an inevitable part of the rule of law, and must be accepted. Freedom doesn't come Free. The cost of Freedom is a willingness to live with uncertainty. If we lock up everyone who might commit a murder or a burglary someday, we might have fewer murders and burglarlies. But we also would lose the freedom that once made this country an inspiration to the rest of the world. If we are to earn that respect again, we must not retreat to a willingness to compromise all of our freedoms in order to acquire security. These sacred principles of justice under law must not be compromised, even if they do make us somewhat less safe.

However, equally importantly, it is likely that when we make such a compromise we are paying for something we are not going to get. It is highly plausible that every innocent prisoner creates a hundred new terrorists. To ignore this risk is to be not only immoral but impractical. Let us hope that if we return to the principles that we hold dear, the terrorists will lose the ability to recruit new members, and will be easier to manage and capture. This strategy does not have the satisfying simplicity of 'kill everybody who might be a bad guy". But it has a much greater chance of success, and promises us both liberty and security."