FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2002 — On Thursday, January 10, an Air Force C-17 containing 20 Hannibal Lecters roared over the dark skies of Afghanistan.

Manacled — and possibly hooded and sedated — and accompanied by armed Marines guards, these Al Qaeda and Taliban "detainees" were en route to the US Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, in Southeast Cuba, where they and up to 2000 of their fellow jihadi will be held for an indefinite period of time. During the flight (the first of many, we are told), the prisoners were not permitted to stand up. They were fed by guards (fingers!) and supplied with portable urinals to make trips to the toilet unnecessary (number-twos, apparently, were out of the question) — a rough ride, even by commercial-airline standards.

It’s no surprise that the security surrounding this bizarre bit of global trade has been so heavy. Transplanted from the frigid, wind-bitten wilds of Central Asia to the sultry Caribbean, where they will be kept in cages that are said to be open to the elements, forcibly shaved (for reasons of "hygiene" — hah), in the clutches of their mortal enemies, and with an uncertain future, to say the least, ahead of them — these guys must be fuming right about now. And you don’t really want a fuming Taliban on your hands. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, "There are among these prisoners people who are perfectly willing to kill themselves and kill other people." Those "other people" being, of course, us.

While international human-rights groups have expressed concern over the conditions aboard Air Taliban, extreme circumstances require extreme measures. We have already seen what can happen when a group of hardened killers takes over an aircraft (in Con Air, the chillingly prescient 1997 movie starring Nicholas Cage). But even if the prisoners reach Guantánamo without incident, we’ll still have 2000 of these guys residing a mere 90 miles away from the US — a mortifying prospect. What if they, you know, escape? (With this question in mind, perhaps, the US Navy has rendered much of its official Guantánamo Web site inaccessible, or "under construction.")

After all, these terrorist types have already proven themselves to be a slippery, obdurate bunch when you take them into custody — in late November, remember, they staged a bloody revolt at the Qala Jangi fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif, an incident that led to the slaughter of an estimated 400 Taliban, 150 Northern Alliance fighters, and a CIA operative. We do not want a repeat performance at Guantánamo Bay. No, sir. Ninguno.

Guantánamo, the heavily fortified, 45-square-mile base — which was founded in 1898 — was originally designed to keep people out, not in. We refer, of course, to the treacherous Cubans, whose heavily armed troops continue to stare menacingly through the tinsel of razor wire at the gringos within. Ah, but times have changed. Just how complete these changes are was underscored in today’s Boston Globe — published exactly four months after Al Qaeda kicked off its jihad against America — where the story of the prisoner transfer was abutted by this headline: "Terror Risk Put above Missile Risk."

Different times indeed. It was over the geopolitical card table of Cuba that John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and Fidel Castro stared each other down in 1962 — back when missile risks were the terror risk. Today, while the Afghans grumble about the injustice of it all, Fidel is said to have no problema with the US plonking a couple of thousand murderous jihadi — "the worst of the worst" according to a Navy spokesman — on its shores. Indeed, the Cuban military declined to beef up its presence around the base "because the Americans are taking security measures already."

If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s that there is no grudge — no matter how deep-seated, how bitter, how longstanding — that cannot be overcome given enough time. If Fidel Castro, the Osama bin Laden of the 1960s, can throw his arms open to the Guantánamo Home for Retired Terrorists, then anything is possible. Who knows, maybe a few decades down the road these Taliban chaps will be sitting in the cafes of Havana sipping mojitos and nibbling fried yucca. Perhaps they’ll marry Cuban women, have a few niños of their own. Maybe they’ll even flourish out there in the Caribbean sunshine, establish the West’s only Islamic state ...

Holy crap! Blockade, anyone?