Playing games at Gitmo
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008
The human rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. Their brains have not been "stimulated" enough, according to the facility's "cultural advisor." Which is why this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the "notoriously Spartan" detention camp with basic sustenance including movie nights, art classes, English language lessons, and "Game Boy-like" electronic devices, according to the Miami Herald.
Next up: Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macramé. Anything less would be uncivilized.
On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren't the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisors and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the President-elect's absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites – and Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office – and they haven't even taken office yet. While Obama paid lip service to the "Close the Gitmo gulag!" agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information. Information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.
Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: "You can't be a purist and say there's never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone." Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: "I'm afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things."
Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to the Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, "Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight."
Next thing you know, they'll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.
Next thing you know, they'll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backwards to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.
Next thing you know, they'll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.
Funny, when President Bush and his homeland security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media, and the Left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended these administration's counter-terrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a "tyrant." And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was branded a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.
Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of "regain[ing] America's moral stature in the world," as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al Qaeda killers don't strike on American ground again.
Viva la Hope and Change!
Two things. First, the next time you hear someone whining about how evil America is for keeping Gitmo open, you should really point out some of these awful things that the terrorists have to deal with there. Movie nights and video games?? It sounds more like a vacation resort than a prison to me! My guess is that pretty much everyone who thinks Gitmo is akin to torture of poor innocent people has their head in the sand. Maybe a little reality will help them. Second, this is another instance where Obama appears to be failing on one of his key campaign promises. Don't get me wrong - I love seeing all of these particular failures, because the things he promised and proposed while on the campaign trail were, in my opinion, disastrous. Even coming back on a few of them are good news to me. For him to come around to the side of sanity, especially on something as critical as fighting terrorism, is absolutely good news, and I applaud him for it (if he follows through, of course), and any other measures that will keep Americans safe.Still, it illustrates a couple of key points that reveal a very thorny problem. First, that Obama is already heading toward outright failure as a President. The Right is going to oppose him pretty consistently unless he really comes over that center line, which just isn't going to happen. The Left, on the other hand, will probably tolerate some moderation from his radical campaign promises, but if he moves too far to the center, they'll discard him as a traitor, too. We've seen how rabid the far Left is, even to the point of cannibalizing their own, so their support is not a given for Obama. At that point, Obama becomes an outcast from both ideological sides, and, with a run-amuck Congress like we will probably have, he'll be unable to do anything at all other than go along with whatever they want. I could be wrong, of course, but I just don't see how he can become anything other than an ineffective President at best, and a disastrous one at worst. Of course, the media won't tell you that since they sold their souls to get him elected - you'll have to feel the effects yourself through your pocketbooks, your lessened freedoms, and your lessened national security.
This also shows us that Obama is a flat-out liar with zero integrity. How many issues has he backpedaled on so far? And he hasn't even been sworn in yet! So, this shows us that he will say anything to anyone, as long as it's what needs to be said at the moment. There is no leadership there, only political expediency. That's the problem. Can we trust anything this guy says? He has not shown us any indication that we can. If Obama talks tough with our enemies, will they buy it? They're already planning to test him, so you draw your own conclusion there. If Obama commits American aid to our allies, can they count on it? Israel is already preparing to go it alone, and the EU is taking measures to strengthen themselves.
This is why integrity matters. When a man or woman of integrity commits to something, the world understands what is at stake. When a man without integrity commits to something, no one much cares because the commitment doesn't matter beyond the current conversation. How can a man without integrity possibly be an inspiration and a true leader when no one can count on them to follow through on what they say? There is nothing worse for a politician than becoming irrelevant, and that's exactly what will happen.
This is going to be a rough four years for all of us. I'm beginning to wonder if it's going to be even rougher for the Obamessiah himself.
Ehh...probably not.
There's my two cents.
No comments:
Post a Comment