I was on a BBC television program yesterday, responding to a call from the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, for the U.S. to close Guantanamo. This is such a curious idea. If the facility were to be shuttered, what would happen to the combatants detained there? Would they simply be set free to return to the battlefield of their choice? Or does Lord Goldsmith believe that every one of them deserves his day in an American court, with an American appointed attorney? And what about other combatants who may be captured in the future? Should they be given stiff warnings if they promise to behave better in the future? Perhaps we should offer the equivalent of traffic tickets? The BBC interviewer also pointed out to me objections to Guantanamo made by the U.N.–as though the U.N. which has any legitimacy anymore on issues of human rights. As it happens, my Scripps Howard column this week is on Melanie Phillips new book, Londonistan , which explores how London became “Europe’s Islamist terror factory,” a place where “al-Qaeda was first forged from disparate radical groups into a global terrorist phenomenon.” For Americans, Phillips says, this should be more than distressing. The special relationship between the two countries “is no less critical today than when they stood shoulder to shoulder against Nazi Germany.”