Eighteen years ago this week, the first War on Terror detainees were processed at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers described them as the “worst of the worst,” memorably adding that they were the kind of men who might try to chew through hydraulic cables to crash the transport planes flying them from Afghanistan to Cuba.

President George W. Bush took severe criticism for his decision to detain al Qaeda terrorists and senior Taliban insurgents at our Caribbean naval base rather than imprison them stateside. But as his successors soon discovered, it was the least-bad solution. After taking over, President Barack Obama’s desire to transfer these detainees to the U.S. mainland came to naught — for two main reasons.