The Low, Dishonest Road Through Gitmo

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient."
(George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language")

The outpouring of hysterical invective from the likes of Amnesty International, Sen. Durbin, and others of late isn't the problem. The moral equivalence. The lack of any broad perspective. The selectiveness of outrage. The blithe indifference to both corrective measures in place, and the consequences of their conduct to the war effort. These are all traits we've seen, in abundance, at many other junctions in this war.

They are not the problem - they are merely symptoms. Symptoms of something larger, deeper, and more malignant.

That's why Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) has it exactly right in "Gitmo Cocktail":

"Has the Bush administration made mistakes regarding Guantanamo? You bet. The biggest one was attempting to placate the critics. By launching a new investigation every time a terrorist had a toothache, our government played into the hands of its enemies.

The truth is that the terrorists and their defenders have something in common. It's not courage, which is one quality violent fanatics don't lack. It's that neither can be appeased.

Any concession only increases their appetites. The Clinton administration's reluctance to respond to terrorist strikes encouraged al Qaeda. If the Bush administration closed the Guantanamo facility, any alternative holding center would be attacked just as rabidly and dishonestly.

If we put our captives up at the Four Seasons, we'd be condemned because somebody smelled bacon at breakfast.

You can't negotiate with terrorists. And you cannot reason with ideologues - whether they're Islamist fanatics or pathetic old lefties fishing for a cause to give meaning to squandered lives. Terrorists, French and German neo-Stalinists, and our own democracy-hating intelligentsia aren't interested in facts. It's all about the comfort of belief.

Let's get this straight: Nothing we could do would appease those who feel a need for our country to fail. We must stop trying to satisfy them.

There's a military maxim that applies to all the nonsense about Gitmo: Don't let the entire battalion get bogged down by a sniper. By attempting to respond to the wild charges leveled by those who offer no solutions themselves - who have no interest in solutions - we've allowed anti-American basket cases from Harvard Yard to the German parliament to create an issue from nothing."

The accusations and assaults will continue as long as any al-Qaeda terrorists are held anywhere, until they are accorded full Prisoner of War status with the right NOT to answer questions. At which point agitation for their release will begin because holding them "indefinitely" i.e. for the duration of the conflict is somehow wrong. It's entirely legal and expected for the POW status they desire, actually, let alone illegal combatants in wartime. But then, misrepresenting and making up "international law" has been part of their practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The War Against The West

"The events on the battlefield will prove one of the two sides right, and thus bring along with it the undecided and fickle. The latter must be convinced each step of the way that fighting is for the long-term and, tragically so, the safer course of action for the security of themselves and their families. But because we are in a multifaceted war waged over years rather than months, and one broadcast daily and interpreted hourly by those with little knowledge and less objectivity, the administration is forced constantly to remind the public of the vast stakes involved, the enormous success already achieved, and the general-but-difficult goals ahead. To the extent that it tires or relents - for a month, a week, perhaps even a day - the media, the universities, presidential contenders, and a cultural elite will not, and thus will seek to equate the costs and setbacks that are the perennial stuff of war with defeat itself."
(Victor Davis Hanson, 2003/09/05, "Are We at War or At Peace?")

Mark Steyn neatly backs up Peters' - and Hanson's points:

"So, until Guantanamo, America was "viewed as a leader in human rights"? Not in 2004, when Abu Ghraib was the atrocity du jour. Not in 2003, when every humanitarian organization on the planet was predicting the deaths of millions of Iraqis from cholera, dysentery and other diseases caused by America's "war for oil." Not in 2002, when the "human rights" lobby filled the streets of Vancouver and London and Rome and Sydney to protest the Bushitler's plans to end the benign reign of good King Saddam. Not the weekend before 9/11 when the human rights grandees of the U.N. "anti-racism" conference met in South Africa to demand America pay reparations for the Rwandan genocide and to cheer Robert Mugabe to the rafters for calling on Britain and America to "apologize unreservedly for their crimes against humanity." If you close Gitmo tomorrow, the world's anti-Americans will look around and within 48 hours alight on something else for Gulag of the Week."

Let's review: past precedent and real law re: illegal combatants hasn't meant anything so far. Neither have restrictions on interrogation of illegal combatants that are patently ridiculous and endanger both national and global security. Investigations and prosecution when abuses happen, already underway before exposure? Nada. The release of many detainees deemed not be a threat, several of whom have gone right back to terrorist activities?

None of it has made even the slightest dent.

Even as the same media and activists who can't lose their obsessive attention to Gitmo or Abu Ghraib relegate the mass graves of Iraq, the torturers of the Iranian regime, the grisly torture and execution chambers of Fallaujah, even the ongoing populatrity of Hitler's Mein Kampf in the Islamic world to the back pages and the back burner. If they appear at all. Some are honest enough to confess this monstrous inversion of perspective in print. Others have simply made it crystal-clear through their behaviour.

Ralph Peters, again:

"What should enrage every decent citizen is that the real torturers - from Zimbabwe to China, from Syria to North Korea - get a pass from the political left. If terrorists behead defenseless captives on videotape, it's simply an expression of their culture. But if a handful of U.S. troops play an ugly round of Candid Camera, that's a new gulag.

As someone who takes human rights seriously, I'm appalled by the lack of sympathy the left feels toward the victims of any regime other than the Bush administration. Let's shout it to prisoners everywhere: If you're not harmed by an American, your suffering doesn't count.

The left's hypocrisy is immeasurable. The grandchildren of those who defended Stalin are mortified that Saddam Hussein will stand trial. By taking such irresponsible voices seriously, we grant our critics a strength they otherwise lack and simply help them keep their lies alive."

For that is the goal.

Belmont Club's piece "Memory Slam the Door" is a must-read, as he delves into the background of the "Center for Constitutional Rights" which is trying to close down Guantanamo via lawfare. They have a sustained and sordid record, and "human rights" has little to do with their activities. (see also the prequel, "Memory Hold the Door").

These people are not alone.

They hate us because we slew their god-idols, and they're reminded of it every time they look at their cracked altars. It's a concept that increasingly unites the neo-Marxist left and its followers, Islamists, and the neo-nazis of the world into one common idiotarian cause.

Armed Liberal calls it "bad philosophy." Our category archives refer to The War Within the West, a counterpart to and often an enabler of the war being waged outside its privileged walls.

This is not a rational phenomenon. It will not be appeased. It will not be solved by persuasion, any more than the Klan was solved by persuasion. Any more than the Gulags were solved by persuasion. As I wrote in October, 2003 (Islam: "It's the Hate, Stupid!"):

"What's beyond question to me is the fact that the reality and scale of this supremacist hatred must be faced. The alternatives are denial or collusion, both of which are often on display within the West. The wages of their indulgence are the continued growth of that hate, and global-scale death on a scale not seen in decades.

"It's the hate, stupid!" It needs to be confronted, strongly. It needs to end."

The Road To Victory

It does, and we will end it. We will end it by relentlessly pressing onward, to victory:

• Victory in Iraq as the next step in the war, for there is no alternative.

• Victory in the war abroad as a whole. Victory on the war's unpredictable battlefields, while liberty, women's rights, democracy and western culture all aid that victory and sow the Islamists' fields with salt. Victory in order to destroy the ideology that is the source of the threat, and make our triumph a lasting one.

• And victory at home that extends beyond the political sphere, and brings key American institutions back into balance with and accountability to America's public. For the same reason.

The price for these things will be high. The price of losing, on any of these fronts, is everything. Choose.

Those who share these values and goals must be welcomed, even if we disagree on important specifics. We may argue, but ultimately we will fight together - and together we will find the way to victory.

Those who stand with or enable the enemy, however, must pay the price, until their power is diminished or broken. No sanctuary. "Together they guarantee that their places of safety, every media outlet, every school and every place of worship will be transformed into arenas of unparalleled ferocity - to the possible benefit of the world." (Belmont Club, 2004/03/06: "Mordor")

To that end, we will not succumb to hate - we will see our path to victory clearly.

We will not succumb to perfectionism and paralysis - we will walk our path to victory resolutely and relentlessly.

And magnanimity comes only when all is done on each front, and we have won - not before.

That is war. That is victory. Even in "Postmodern War":

"Modern Western man is faced with this awful dilemma, from which he recoils: real peace and successful reconstruction are in direct proportion to the degree that an enemy is humiliatingly defeated and so acknowledges it - the aim being that he will come to feel that he cannot go on being what he has been. To that end, absolute victory may encompass everything from Hiroshima to bombing downtown Belgrade as the price for tranquillity and a democratic and humane postbellum Japan and the Balkans. Not finishing off a defeated Republican Guard in 1991 or sparing looters in April 2003 or breaking off the siege of Fallujah in April 2004 only ensures that more corpses will pile up later. President Bush's so-called Axis of Evil in 2002 - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea - all had in common unfinished business with the U.S. military that had led to a bellum interruptum of sorts. In contrast, the Grenada communists, Noriega, Milosevic, and the Taliban were all defeated, and only after that were their societies rebuilt - and thus Grenada, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan now do not belong to the axis of anything. Perhaps for all the debate over how to fight irregular wars in an age of global terrorism, we would do best to recall the realistic, if inelegant, words of the owner of the Oakland Raiders, the infamous Al Davis: "Just win, baby."

Mobilize. And win.

So, what do we do when things go wrong, as they always will? We follow Ralph Peters' advice:

When comments are unavoidable, try this: "We're human. We make mistakes. We fix those mistakes. And we move on. Nothing will divert us from our mission of defeating terror and keeping our country safe."

Nothing. Mistakes, even big mistakes, are made in every war fought (ask us Canadians about Dieppe) - but we pick ourselves up and fight on. Armed Liberal's has the right of it:

"Why do we take that [perfect war] fantasy into account? Because on some basic level, we assume that we're the TV cowboy, and that the bad guys can fire all the bullets they want and the only thing that will happen is that our authentic Western sidekick will get a hole in his hat. They assume that we're omnipotent and omnisicent.

We're not.

We're never good enough to be perfect.

But we are good enough to win, and to be worth winning for."

We are. As I noted in my September 2002 article, The S.P.E.C.T.R.E. of Terror, Inc.:

"WE are the scriptwriters. Happy endings are NOT guaranteed. And the drama is just beginning."

Onward - to victory.