Back in the Fight

I read today that President-Elect is bent on closing Gitmo when he takes office. Hmmmm. Is that wise?

Let me digress a moment.

Have you ever watched an old favorite movie and caught something that you had missed before?

I had that experience this week. "Saving Private Ryan" - one of my favorites. If you can watch that movie and not get choked up when Tom Hanks - the hero Capt. Miller - is dying on the bridge at the end and he pulls Pvt. Ryan down and whispers "Earn this". Wow.

Here's what I caught that I missed.

There's a scene midway through the movie when Hanks and his squad has to decide what to do with a prisoner. The captain had stopped his squad's mission to find Ryan to engage an artillery battery at a radar site.

"Not smart, captain, considering our objective".

"Our objective is to win the war", says Hanks.

Of course, one of Hank's men gets killed and the squad wants revenge on their one captive. His mousy squad member gets in his face and challenges him. You can't let them kill him, he argues - he surrendered. Hanks sends the captive walking away.

"You just going to let him go, captain?"

"He'll be intercepted by one of our units and processed."

"Unless he finds his Wermacht unit first, and rejoins the fight."

Cut to later in the movie in the climatic battle scene to save the bridge. Captain Miller gets shot as he's trying to blow up the bridge to prevent the German advance, fatally.

What I missed was who shoots our hero. It is, of course, the German captive that he lets go.

Does he get away? No. The mousy soldier who argued for his release steps up and executes him.

Justice, but too late.

It's just fiction, I know.

But consider this: of the 250 high-level threats that were detained at Gitmo and then released under pressure by liberals, 50 or so have been subsequently killed in battle by our troops. How many did they kill of our guys after their release before we got them again.

Would you want to be the one sent to the family of a U.S. soldier KIA to explain that we had the bad guy in custody, but let them go so they could get back in the fight?

Think about it.