« Previous · Home · Next »
"Gitmo Do"
By Maj P
One of my favorite bloggers, Michelle Malkin, continued a thread of discussion on the latest Gitmo detainee suicides in her post, Boo Freakin' Hoo. She writes, "The manipulative detainees at Guantanamo Bay reportedly used the generous civil liberties protections we gave them to plot their suicide pact. Are you surprised?" No Michelle, I'm not, and I'd like to add my comments for the education of all who were surprised.
The Gitmo detainees are warrior ideologues, completely indoctrinated in a totalitarian resistance philosophy. They make war upon the infidel wherever they find him, be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gitmo, London or Manhattan. If they must, they will resist from inside a prison camp, and they will gleefully use our civilized system of laws to beat us. The quicker we understand this, the more capable we will be to defeat them.
(For a similar episode, see T. R. Fehrenbach's This Kind Of War, specifically Chapter 35, "Koje Do." This describes the revolt of North Korean prisoners at a POW camp. Having been equitably treated under Geneva Convention rules, given all sorts of facilities for recreation and betterment, the NoKo prisoners secretly organized and then captured the American camp commandant. It is not a pleasant tale. There are multiple lessons contained in the story, and I commend it to you if you want to understand totalitarian warrior ideology.)
I wonder if we have to endure a "Gitmo-Do" before we understand truly what we're dealing with. There are many courses of action open to handle the Gitmo detainees. Treating them like normal prisoners isn't the right one. Let them suffer the consequences of their actions, and let them regret the day they took the field against the United States. Hard measures are in order. I, for one, won't lose sleep.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://op-for.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/337
Comments
My mom was chatting with one of her Navy doctors not long after he returned from Gitmo. He related that in the course of treating the detainees, he struck up a loose acquaintance with one of them. This man spoke decent English, well enough that the two of them could have a conversation about nearly any topic, in English. At one point the detainee admitted that the doctor had treated him well, but that even though he bore him no personal animosity whatsoever, the detainee would not hesitate for a second to kill the doctor where he sat. merely because he was an infidel.
Treating them humanely makes us feel better, but does nothing to stem their deep seated hatred and loathing of our very existence. OUr undoing will be our failure to comprehend and internalize this apprent truth.
There's a few things to keep in mind here. On one side of the issue, we must always remember that civilization is not a suicide pact - we are civilized because it makes life better, not because it's a goal in its own right.
On the other hand, though, as long as we don't go overboard with it, it *can* be beneficial to treat people well. It's less the case in this war than others, but if you're decent to people, you stand a lot better chance of winning them over than you do with brutality.
We can't win this war through savagery alone, unless we resort to genocide of some variety, because the fighting will never stop so long as we make it seem like it's in their best interests to fight us. Really, let's be honest here - if the US actually did become as nasty as the Chomskyites say it is, a hell of a lot more people would be taking up arms against it, and I wouldn't object if they did.
So, we have to give our enemies a way to end this war that doesn't require us to find and kill them all(because that's a hell of a lot more work than any invading army has ever been able to pull off), and that means we need them to see some sort of peaceful resolution as being not only possible but acceptable. A strong part of that will always be convincing them that we can kick the shit out of trhem if they want to do things the hard way, but a bit of decency actually has a lot of benefits too.
I'm not sure I'm actuially making any real points here, but yeah...hopefully I'm intelligeble and not just rambling.
Just like any wild animal we can either putting them in a cage, or kill them. Which is the more humane thing to do?
The fact that we can rise above their hatered in this conflict speaks volumes about our true nature, versus their true nature.
In treating these terrorists humanely we send a message to other civilized "allies", or those civilized people's we wish as allies.
Who would you want to ally with? Them or us?
The peaceniks simply will not allow the war to be fought efficiently and expect some sort of fairy-tale conflict.
I, for one, won't lose sleep.
Neither will I but that's mostly because I get to sleep in my own bed while you and your compatriots go out and fight this evil in godforsaken places around the world.
Thank you.
I could care less for the detainees at Gitmo but as far as American prisoners of war are concerned, it is their duty to escape.
Chip
Post a comment
Potential comment conditions listed here. Oh, and you may use basic HTML for formatting.
It's not that we don't understand. It is that we don't want to believe.
It is too outrageous, from our perspective, to accept that other humans can be such "warrior idealogues". What this means, if we do accept, is that we must admit we could also become "warrior idealgues" in pursuit of our own goals. Whether those goals be conservative, or liberal, or whatever.
Our liberal establishments, especially, become blinded by their own high-minded ideology.
So, it couldn't possibly be the detainees fault for killing themselves. It must be someone else that "caused" them to kill themselves. And it is very easy to make excuses and blame the guards/government/president.
After all, it is all Bush's fault. Regardless. Right?
{tongue firmly in cheek}