First as Tragedy, Second as Farce

As liberals took unseemly pleasure in reminding us after 9/11, we supported the Islamic militants who went on to wage a terror war against us when they were fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. But back in the 1980s, we didn’t know these people were our mortal enemies. Now even the State Department knows it. Yet we read this:

DARNA, Libya — Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay have stepped to the fore of this city’s military campaign, training new recruits for the front and to protect the city from infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

The presence of Islamists like these amid the opposition has raised concerns, among some fellow rebels as well as their Western allies, that the goal of some Libyan fighters in battling Col. Gadhafi is to propagate Islamist extremism.

Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna.

Mr. Hasady’s field commander on the front lines is Salah al-Barrani, a former fighter from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which was formed in the 1990s by Libyan mujahedeen returning home after helping to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and dedicated to ousting Mr. Gadhafi from power.

Osama bin Laden had a similar resume. Another beneficiary of our unexplained military intervention actually worked for bin Laden:

Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden’s holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan, is training many of the city’s rebel recruits.

Both Messrs. Hasady and Ben Qumu were picked up by Pakistani authorities after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and were turned over to the U.S. Mr. Hasady was released to Libyan custody two months later. Mr. Ben Qumu spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before he was turned over to Libyan custody in 2007.

They were both released from Libyan prisons in 2008 as part of a reconciliation with Islamists in Libya.

A worst-of-the-worst Gitmo terrorist becomes a US ally. Obama promised a fundamental transformation and that’s what we’re getting. Kaddafi, in contrast, hasn’t given us any trouble for decades.

This is why in the past you didn’t get to be president unless the public had reason to believe you meant America well.

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Who are they going to be dying for?

On a tip from Jodie. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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