Yes, they're recidivists

Not so shockingly, a solid percentageof released Gitmo inmates go back to the front to try to kill Americans. Again, not so shockingly, Matt Yglesias thinks America’s to blame for creating the terrorists who are trying to kill Americans:

One thing that I don’t think gets discussed enough in the context of former Gitmo detainees doing radical stuff post-release is that being unjustly imprisoned in a legal netherworld for years is exactly the kind of thing that would radicalize someone.

He then goes on this long, incredibly hypothetical tangent about the Soviets and the Mujahadeen. Here’s another counterfactual for you:

In a raid, someone who’s on the fence about whether or not he should join al Qaeda gets swept up and thrown into Gitmo. Let’s posit that he was just visiting a terrorist camp, or on the way to or from a terrorist camp, possibly hanging out with some buddies who joined up in the hopes of beheading Americans. So this “innocent” guy gets thrown into Guanatanamo, where he’s *gasp* allowed to pray as much as he wants and *shock* given three squares a day and *shudder* treated with kid gloves and *horror* learns that Americans are now trying people in civilian courts.

So this guy says “What the hell, my buddies are doing it and even if the Americans capture me, they’re going to treat me like a bank robber or a crack dealer. Might as well go and kill me some heathen capitalist running dogs while the killin’s good!” And all because liberals like Matt Yglesias think we should handle Gitmo like a normal prison and the people therein as normal criminals instead of war criminals and terrorists. For shame.

That sounds pretty ridiculous, but it’s no more ridiculous than the idea that radicals captured on the battlefield were radicalized by Gitmo. None whatsoever. For a look at what Gitmo’s actually like, Tom Joscelyn, over at the Weekly Standard, has the goods.