Send Him to Gitmo

Today's Houston Chronicle reports the following bit of perplexing news.

Under growing international pressure, U.S. authorities today seized a Cuban exile accused by Fidel Castro's government of masterminding a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people. He had been seeking asylum in the United States.

Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative and Venezuelan security official, was taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, the department said in a statement.

The department did not say what it planned to do with Posada. But it said that generally, the U.S. government does not return people to Cuba or to countries [Venezuela, in this case --ed] acting on Cuba's behalf. The department said it has 48 hours to decide his status.

This is interesting. Two countries whose leaders continually denounce us and tell their proles that the Yankees are going to invade are demanding that we catch one of their most wanted? More annoyingly, they're calculating that if they claim the moral high ground, our leaders will capitulate.

Venezuela recently approved an extradition request and Castro has made numerous televised speeches calling Posada a terrorist and accusing the United States of a double standard on terror. The United States and Venezuela have an extradition treaty.

Worse still, our leaders may be about to do just this as the Clintonistas did when they sold Elian Gonzales into slavery in the name of "family values." That is, they might contort the "will of the people" until they can equate it with "what Fidel wants." (Although, as a terrorist, Posada would, unlike Gonzales, at least deserve such a fate.)

"The majority of Americans would never be in favor of harboring a terrorist," said Wayne Smith, a former U.S. envoy to Cuba who now heads the Cuba program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy. If the United States were to grant asylum, Smith added, "we will be seen as hypocrites and as being against terrorism only when is suits our purposes."

Who the hell cares if we "are seen as hypocrites" by the likes of Castro and Chavez? That would ordinarily fall under the heading of "badge of honor." And if our politicians are going to be driven by polls over principles, they might consider the idea that "the majority of Americans" probably "would never be in favor of" their nation bowing to pressure of any kind from Fidel Castro and a man known to his own countrymen as El Loco.

What to do? If he's indeed a terrorist, send him to Gitmo! We can't trust Fidel Castro to keep a terrorist behind bars, anyway. And we certainly don't want to set the precedent of letting tin-pot dictators like Castro or El Loco tell us whom to arrest and what to do with them afterwards.... So lock the terrorist up in Guantanamo Bay and inform Castro that Posada is in Cuba as per his request. Something like, "Posada is on Castro's island. Now let Castro come after him," would be nice. This way, Castro is reminded at whose mercy he remains on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest while we solve the little problem he pointed out.

That's my overly-optimistic thought. What we'll get instead is likely either some cowardly concession or some attempt to "bargain" with these goons using Posada as a "chip."

-- CAV