Biden to Close Down "Gulag"

Recently, I discussed Amnesty International's insistence that our prison for terrorist enemy combatants in Gitmo is like a gulag. I concluded that Amnesty International, qua leftist organization, was making a desperate move to regain some measure of the influence it formerly had back in the heyday of the left. Like Newsweek, Amnesty International is reflexively appealing to an old, unexamined ideology and tactics that stood a better chance (I hope.) of working back in the sixties. Unlike Newsweek, Amnesty International is refusing to back down, and is playing a game of "moral chicken" with the Bush Administration as it attempts to influence our nation's policy on Gitmo to render the prison ineffective.

This blatant attempt to raise a drumbeat over Gitmo could work if Bush lets it. I hope the President sticks to his initial dismissal of this inane charge out of hand. These terrorists are imprisoned for a reason. Some of them doubtless can be dangerous if even allowed to pass messages. We can't simply permit unsupervised, unlimited contact with these prisoners. We will have to draw the line somewhere and when we do, Amnesty International will have the green light to cry foul. This is what Amnesty International ultimately wants and this is why they are sticking to their guns. If Bush caves on this, then maybe I'm wrong and the sixties, after a fashion, are still with us. This is what Amnesty International is banking on. They are making a desperate move, albeit one that will require the moral sanction of our government to pay off.

I appear to be correct. According to the Houston Chronicle, some Democrats -- foolishly I hope -- seem to think that by accepting Amnesty International's accusations as worthy of consideration, they might be able to shut it down. Among them is Senator Joe Biden (D-DE).

A leading Senate Democrat said today the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

Worse still, at least some Republicans are treating this issue as if it actually deserves attention, playing right into Amnesty International's hands! "The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, plans hearings this month on the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects at the prison camp." Regardless of whether these hearings have been planned for some time or this is a new development, it is positively ludicrous that our government is dignifying allegations such as those made by Amnesty with congressional hearings.

What I find most alarming of all is the second paragraph in the block quote above. It has been scarcely four years since the atrocities of September 11, 2001. We have since waged an overly mild, yet nevertheless mainly successful series of military campaigns, intelligence operations, and antiterrorism actions throughout the Middle East. This was done over a cacophony of objections that military action would "enrage the 'Arab Street'." And yet, here's Senator Biden chirping to the same tune over the much milder matter of a few savages enclosed in a pen where they belong! I submit that Biden's alternative, be that freeing the goons altogether or putting them up in the Ritz-Carlton, would be a better "propaganda tool" for "recruiting tersorists" than locking them up and throwing away the key. But what do I know?

It was our appeasement of the Arab/Islamic world over a span of fifty years that got us into our current predicament in the first place. It was Bush's willingness to at least begin reversing this policy that has lent it the success that it has had so far. Certainly, neither Biden nor Amnesty International for that matter have forgotten this. But they hope you have. And the more I think about this and see it develop, the more concerned I get that Amnesty International et al. might just succeed in their objective of making it impossible for us to imprison enemy combatants at Gitmo.

Here is what I find so disconcerting about this. Bush's policies have enjoyed some success, but Bush's greatest failing as a leader is that he is bad at communicating his agenda to the people, or of reminding them why it is important to pursue his agenda, specifically with terrorism. I recall seeing him debate Kerry leading up to the election and thinking how I could have easily mopped up the floor with Kerry where, too often, Bush seemed perplexed, hesitant, and inarticulate. He could have easily lost the election to a decent opponent. He could now end up fumbling away our nation's wartime resolve.

Why is Gitmo a big deal? For the same reason that the "Newsweek Riots" occurred: the Bush administration failed (and is failing) to make a clear, principled stand for what we are doing in this war. As a result, public opinion is unfocused and easily distracted from the war effort by such trivial, inconsequential matters as a Koran getting sprayed with urine. Instead of making a principled stand, Bush only briefly dismisses the Amnesty International charges as "absurd" -- which they are. But this is followed up by a Pentagon report on Koran "desecration" -- as if the matter is worth our consideration at all. And this was all brought on by our overly-indulgent policy of handing out Korans to these prisoners to begin with. (And this policy, by the way, could only be meant to placate the likes of Amnesty International in the first place. Maybe Amnesty is right to smell blood....)

If there was a silver lining at all to that terrible day in 2001, it was that our leaders (and most Americans) finally achieved moral clarity on the issue of terrorism. Unfortunately, that moral clarity is being eaten away slowly because our leaders lack the proper moral foundation to fully understand and articulate what we all experienced on a gut level that day. And as that day recedes back in time, the likes of Newsweek, Amnesty International, and Joe Biden are seen crawling out of the woodwork again, confident that our memories have sufficiently dulled and that our leaders are intellectually unarmed.

The missing part of the equation -- missing because a philosophical grasp of the underlying issues is crucial to see it -- is that the pacifist left is even more of a danger to us than the terrorists. For if we begin to tread lightly lest we upset them, we will begin doing their bidding. And their bidding, clearly in the case of their drive to close Gitmo, will make us unable to continue defending ourselves from terrorists much longer.

-- CAV

PS: Update: In a news story headlined to imply that Amnesty is backing down are the following quotes. Biden pops up there, too.

Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag." [This is not backing down, but a demand to inspect the prison. --ed]

Executive Director William Schulz said Amnesty, often cited worldwide for documenting human rights abuses, also did not know whether Secretary Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved severe torture methods such as beatings and starvation. [For that matter, I don't know whether William Schultz is a member of an al Qaida cell. --ed]

Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an "apparent high-level architect of torture" in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

"It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea," Schulz told "Fox News Sunday."

Crossposted to the Egosphere

Updates

Today: Added PS.