Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Oh!! the Humanity!!!
David Ignatius joins the choir and sings for the closing of the Gitmo detention camp A Prison We Need to Escape. Here’s his reasoning:
“When I hear U.S. officials describe the suicides of three Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday as "asymmetric warfare" and "a good PR move," I know it's time to close that camp -- not just because of what it's doing to the prisoners but because of how it is dehumanizing the American captors.”
Gaaagh!!.
The inspiration for such treacle is that former detainee, Moazzam Begg, has written a book detailing just how awful his experience in the camp was and Mr. Ignatius explains that the book “…came to [his] attention because the publisher asked [him] to write a brief foreword.”
The book was originally published in England and the US version is due in September. I’m sure it was just dumb luck that the publisher came across Mr. Ignatius for the “brief forward” but there is no doubt where Mr. Ignatius’ sympathies lie after reading this “remarkable” book. He helpfully gives us some of Mr. Begg’s background:
“Begg is a radical Muslim, but there is no evidence he was an active member of al-Qaeda or that he engaged in terrorist operations….He drifted toward radical Islam as a young man and began raising money for Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. In 1998 he traveled to Pakistan, and in 2001 he moved his family to Kabul, where he supported the Taliban.”
Sounds like a real sweetheart. Anyway:
“Begg was seized in Islamabad in January 2002. Though he was never charged with any crime, he was held for three years -- at Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo.”
This little factoid kind of glances over the significance of his capture in Islamabad…as in Islamabad, Pakistan. Meaning the US didn’t make the original capture, the Pakistanis did. He’s captured in January 2002 – a scant 4 months after the 9/11 attacks. He’s connected to the Taliban, and he’s moved to Afghanistan – as in the same country then suspected of hiding Bin Laden. He later wanders over to Pakistan after the US goes into Afghanistan. This was not as if he was just some random name taken out of a phone book.
Nevertheless, Mr. Ignatius just can’t get over the fact that he, like so many others there, has not been charged with a crime. He laments:
“That's why due process for the detainees is so important -- because it will allow courts to distinguish between prisoners who are vicious killers and deserve the harshest punishment, and those who may be innocent of any terrorist crimes. We need to stop seeing everyone in the same orange suits.”
Had the prisoners now there instead been caught wearing uniforms while acting under the direction of a commissioned officer, they would properly be considered POWs and treated accordingly. But treated accordingly would not include due process and the right to a speedy trial. So under what theory of detention does Mr. Ignatius believe that foreign-held suspected terrorists should be afforded more rights than a properly-identified POW?
Mr. Ignatius is all atwitter because he fears that the captors have dehumanized the prisoners and thus dehumanized themselves. He then goes on to lump together all the captors at Gitmo because of his Voinovich-like reaction to an official’s post-suicide comments. This despite the fact that he even quotes a passage from the book which seemingly shows no loss of humanity by a least one US soldier:
“He describes a guard named Jennifer from Selma, Ala., who painted her fingernails black and dressed like a Goth on weekends, and who once confided: "I don't know if they've ever accused you of anything. But I know y'all can't be guilty." Begg says of her: "She left me with a lasting impression. All Americans were not the same."
No matter, it is Mr. Begg’s seeming irrepressible humanity that gives Mr. Ignatius hope. In short, he makes this radical and former supporter of the Taliban Muslim out to be the hero in his piece.
Let me offer an alternative viewpoint: Gitmo is not posh duty – it’s an important duty station but it’s also tedious, hard work. Little glamour pervades the place and there is probably a sense that all your actions are now magnified because of the symbolic importance so many critics is putting on the camp. So it would not be surprising if some of the assigned soldiers there developed an ‘us-against-them’ mentality. But by and large we’re not hearing that. We’re not seeing mangled bodies of detainees being carted off the camp. Any wrong-doing by a member of the military is taken as an affront by fellow service members and is simply not sanctioned. In short, if Mr. Begg’s self-serving tale is all you’ve got to counter the body of evidence affirming the professionalism of our troops at Gitmo, then the case for closing Gitmo doesn’t even get you a warrant.
“When I hear U.S. officials describe the suicides of three Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday as "asymmetric warfare" and "a good PR move," I know it's time to close that camp -- not just because of what it's doing to the prisoners but because of how it is dehumanizing the American captors.”
Gaaagh!!.
The inspiration for such treacle is that former detainee, Moazzam Begg, has written a book detailing just how awful his experience in the camp was and Mr. Ignatius explains that the book “…came to [his] attention because the publisher asked [him] to write a brief foreword.”
The book was originally published in England and the US version is due in September. I’m sure it was just dumb luck that the publisher came across Mr. Ignatius for the “brief forward” but there is no doubt where Mr. Ignatius’ sympathies lie after reading this “remarkable” book. He helpfully gives us some of Mr. Begg’s background:
“Begg is a radical Muslim, but there is no evidence he was an active member of al-Qaeda or that he engaged in terrorist operations….He drifted toward radical Islam as a young man and began raising money for Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. In 1998 he traveled to Pakistan, and in 2001 he moved his family to Kabul, where he supported the Taliban.”
Sounds like a real sweetheart. Anyway:
“Begg was seized in Islamabad in January 2002. Though he was never charged with any crime, he was held for three years -- at Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo.”
This little factoid kind of glances over the significance of his capture in Islamabad…as in Islamabad, Pakistan. Meaning the US didn’t make the original capture, the Pakistanis did. He’s captured in January 2002 – a scant 4 months after the 9/11 attacks. He’s connected to the Taliban, and he’s moved to Afghanistan – as in the same country then suspected of hiding Bin Laden. He later wanders over to Pakistan after the US goes into Afghanistan. This was not as if he was just some random name taken out of a phone book.
Nevertheless, Mr. Ignatius just can’t get over the fact that he, like so many others there, has not been charged with a crime. He laments:
“That's why due process for the detainees is so important -- because it will allow courts to distinguish between prisoners who are vicious killers and deserve the harshest punishment, and those who may be innocent of any terrorist crimes. We need to stop seeing everyone in the same orange suits.”
Had the prisoners now there instead been caught wearing uniforms while acting under the direction of a commissioned officer, they would properly be considered POWs and treated accordingly. But treated accordingly would not include due process and the right to a speedy trial. So under what theory of detention does Mr. Ignatius believe that foreign-held suspected terrorists should be afforded more rights than a properly-identified POW?
Mr. Ignatius is all atwitter because he fears that the captors have dehumanized the prisoners and thus dehumanized themselves. He then goes on to lump together all the captors at Gitmo because of his Voinovich-like reaction to an official’s post-suicide comments. This despite the fact that he even quotes a passage from the book which seemingly shows no loss of humanity by a least one US soldier:
“He describes a guard named Jennifer from Selma, Ala., who painted her fingernails black and dressed like a Goth on weekends, and who once confided: "I don't know if they've ever accused you of anything. But I know y'all can't be guilty." Begg says of her: "She left me with a lasting impression. All Americans were not the same."
No matter, it is Mr. Begg’s seeming irrepressible humanity that gives Mr. Ignatius hope. In short, he makes this radical and former supporter of the Taliban Muslim out to be the hero in his piece.
Let me offer an alternative viewpoint: Gitmo is not posh duty – it’s an important duty station but it’s also tedious, hard work. Little glamour pervades the place and there is probably a sense that all your actions are now magnified because of the symbolic importance so many critics is putting on the camp. So it would not be surprising if some of the assigned soldiers there developed an ‘us-against-them’ mentality. But by and large we’re not hearing that. We’re not seeing mangled bodies of detainees being carted off the camp. Any wrong-doing by a member of the military is taken as an affront by fellow service members and is simply not sanctioned. In short, if Mr. Begg’s self-serving tale is all you’ve got to counter the body of evidence affirming the professionalism of our troops at Gitmo, then the case for closing Gitmo doesn’t even get you a warrant.
