In another post-election move, the Biden administration’s Pentagon is releasing 11 more “suspected” terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and “resettling” them in Oman, where the New York Times says they will start “new lives.” They include two men suspected of being bodyguards for Osama bin Laden and another man who was believed to be associated with a planned 9/11-type hijacking in Southwest Asia. All 11 “enemy combatants” in the Global War on Terror were held at Gitmo since being apprehended after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

The Biden administration wanted to release the prisoners in 2023 but backed down after congressional opposition. Biden is also reportedly negotiating with the Taliban to release another bin Laden associate in a trade for Americans being held in Afghanistan.
These moves come on the heels of a military judge insisting that the Pentagon must abide by its controversial plea deal that spares the life of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accomplices. Despite the Pentagon’s explanation for the release (to reduce the detainee population of Gitmo), the release of these terrorists aids our enemy in what Norman Podhoretz called “World War IV.”
The Global War on Terror launched by the Bush 43 administration, and continued by the Obama administration, had many flaws, including futile efforts to promote democracy and remake the Middle East in America’s image and a diversion of focus and resources from the then-emerging great power competition with a rising China. But the enemy was real.
Podhoretz called it “Islamofascism,” and its intellectual origins could be traced to the 7th century’s idea of global jihad, which radical Islamists have used to justify wars and conquests since then. Podhoretz subtitled his book “The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” and it has turned out to be a long struggle indeed. Podhoretz labeled it World War IV to place it in the historical context of the two kinetic world wars of the 20th century and the Cold W...