Game Boys at Gitmo
My syndicated column today examines the fascinating change of heart over Gitmo by some Obama liberals mugged by War on Terror reality. Better late than never, I guess. Perhaps they’ll all have a deeper appreciation for the thankless job that men like George W. Bush, Michael Mukasey, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and so many others have had to do while enduring unhinged and ignorant taunts of “terrorist” and “tyrant” the past seven years.
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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!
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Related must-read: Clear and Present Danger
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Trackbacks
- Lesson learned? | Cold Fury
- Gitmo two-step | TALON
- Random Jottings
- miamipress.net | miamipress.net
- Closing Guantanamo A Priority For Obama - Maybe Not | BigMouthFrog
- This ain’t Hell, but you can see it from here » Blog Archive » Gitmo two-step
- Gitmo Detainees Chanted “Obama” « al-Obama
- Liberals: On Second Thought, Guantánamo Rocks! « Jane Q. Republican
- WO’s Daily Roundup | Without Objection
- Obama to Close Down the Horrors of Holiday Club Gitmo - What Guantanamo Bay is Really Like « BUUUUURRRRNING HOT
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- The Skepticrats » New Splash Page on Obama Website Reflects Policy Reversals
- Bush y Obama, cerrar Guantánamo, y la dificultad de hacerlo « Sarah Palin en Español
- The Skepticrats » Don’t stop R.S. McCain, he’s on a roll . . .
- Michelle Malkin » Obama: Gee, this Gitmo thing is more complicated than I thought
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- Michelle Malkin » “…they worried that the administration might yield to pressure to display its toughness in dealing with terrorism in its detention policies.
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Well said, Michelle.
I am relieved to see that the Obama Administration may ultimately be peopled by grown-ups. I do not intend to reach any conclusions until I see the confirmations in place and the executive orders that issue.
As for the ultimate disposition of the detainees, I am looking forward to a comparison between the actual procedure of adjudication proposed by this administration, and the procedure proposed by John Ashcroft’s office. Just for grins.
All these appointments are moot since Obaby will be shown to be ineligible to hold the office.
What’s plan B? GWB gets a waiver to continue to serve while the Dims convene an emergency convention to nominate someone qualified to run in the special election in the Spring?
They pilloried Ashcroft because of his Assembley of God background. Like Palin. Neo-bigots.
So the Obama Presidency is going to be a third Bush term. How sweet the irony.
I am assuming then that the Obama bashing by the usual suspects on the left will start soon.
The Obrother Presidency (if there is one) seems like it will actually be a blend of Clinton and Bush. That’s Change you (suckers) can believe in!
You have the latitude to bash when you have no adult responsibilities.
I assume the reverse. The usual suspects will now be “very supportive of the new strategy to finally combat AQ with intelligent thoughtful blah blah blah”.
That’s the truth! Take all of Obummer’s policy positions, put Bush’s name on them and show them to a Lefty and guess what?… instant bashing.
I say, good, give them video games. Get them hopelessly addicted to them. Then take the games away. Offer “game time” for every useful piece of information they give us.
On November 26th, 2008 at 1:57 pm, Dexter Alarius said:
I like the edit.
That would be funny if it were not so sickeningly true.
You’re inventing arguments again.
To wit, saying “You can’t…say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone,” is not the same thing as doing an about-face on Guantanamo. It’s simply an acknowledgment of fact (e.g. people with mental disorders who have not committed any crimes are often detained for public safety reasons), and the NYT article you cite states so. A blanket policy against detention without charge is simply not feasible, and as such the Obama administration has to be nimble when cleaning up the mess Bush made in Guantanamo. You either did not read the entire article or are being intentionally misleading.
Creating an environment where smart people engage in constructive debate over important issues was one of Obama’s main selling points. You may have caught that had you not been so busy whining about who he “pals around” with.
Nothing like being in power, and thus being held accountable for your actions to help one grow a brain. This is a big slap in the face to the far left nutjob constituency, who may now realize that they were pandered to and patronized by their candidate; a candidate who (lucky for us) is quickly jettisoning the extremist lefty agenda, in favor of some common sense.
You know, those terrorists at Gitmo really don’t deserve to have any GameBoys to play with. Cards maybe, but not GameBoys.
I just don’t agree that we expect others to follow the Geneva Convention and we refuse to.
We did. These weren’t traditional soldiers so had no protections under that section. It was a different section of the treaty. However I would have labeled them POW’s because then we would still legaly have all of them, not trial required, untill we decided the war was over.
Please cite one example of non-compliance.
You want to explain your position to the parents of every American POW taken captive after May 2003?
The “others” not only ignored the Geneva Convention they BUTCHERED everyone of our people WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
These people are foreigners, without ID cards, dog tags, uniforms, etc. etc. etc. engaged in armed combat against usin Iraq and Afghanistan. THEY DO NOT QUALIFY under the existing Geneva Convention. Further, based on their treatment of our people why should we give them any quarter whatsoever other than to gather intelligence?
BTW are you glad we are going to release these guys to they can join thier brothers in india who killed 78 and wounded 900 today alone?
Yes, 400 miles west of the Azores is the release point.
I knida like the idea of dropping them all on a deserted island with 1 years worth of food for 1 person, and a combat knife each. Darwinism has its uses.
fmfnavydoc said (#77):
Irrelevant. We are judged by our maker (and by other peoples) by what we do, not by what AQ does.
Guantanamo is full of people who were picked up because someone told someone the were dangerous. Some genuinely are dangerous. Some are innocent. We’re holding innocents with the guilty. Better that a hundred guilty should go free than one innocent … (T. Jefferson). These are the principles America was built on. If you don’t like them, you’re an America hater.
Oh yeah, I remember how we just picked people up based on rumors when I was overseas….NOT!! I love how people who have spent their entire lives spent in the comfort of a living room have so much to say.
Not once did a unit I worked for pick up people based on what their neighbor said. Home and body searched, yes. Name kept on a list, yes. If they were caught on a battlefield with a weapon, then they were apprehended and locked up. Lefties, seriously…turn off Hollywood entertainment. It is not like that in the real world. The MSM lies…okay, it is being proven in front of you by the choices your poster child is making right now.
Let’s not be too hasty in assuming that Obama and his ilk have replaced “feeling the love” [of crapweasels in the EU and UN] with security as priority number one foreign policy wise.
After all, even though he holds the esteemed position which accords him the Office of the President Elect, he can’t do squat until January 20, 2009. If he hasn’t closed Gitmo by February 1, maybe I’ll become a believer.
Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh!
What is the difference between these terrorists and the illegal alien gangs of terrorists who are allowed to kill our citizens daily? None except the GITMO ones are not yet able to illegally vote.
Can solve this problem easily by executing terrorists on the battlefield, no need for long term storage then. Well, a long term dirt nap but that’s a different story.
Unless they are some of the ones that handed out “due process” to kidnap victims. Would you let those animals free? More, would you let them free in your backyard? Would you invite them in for a soft drink, cookies, or a nice little sandwich? Would you hold hands with them, sing a nice little song, and then give them a hug?
lgm, you can do that if you want.
Not me.
lgm,
I take offense with you comment…I’ve served this country, in uniform, for 26 years…to imply that I’m an American hater is well over the line. My point was that AQ does not give anyone they capture due process – they kill because their opponents are “infadels” and don’t have the rights that the detainees in GITMO do. Are there probably innocent people there, I’m guessing there are, but they were “picked up” on the battlefield or aiding the enemy. As for my comment being irrelevant – tell that to the families of servicemembers that have been captured and executed by AQ…
Would you like to see the USA go back to the style of warfare of the late 18th century? Where the yell of “NO QUARTER” could be the difference between life and death? The problem today is that we are dealing with a force that has the ability to “fade away into the population”, so the rules have had to change to the situation. Is it messy, yes…but until someone comes up with a better means of separating guilty from innocent detainees, this is probably the best way of doing it.
For the others that have corrected me about Japanese internment during WWII – I stand corrected. There were national security issues, especially during the early days of the war that necessitated this action. Thanks…
Doc,
lgm is a REMF. Nuff said.
Meanwhile, a THIRD case challenging the Constitutional eligibility of the candidate known as Barack Hussein Obama II (also known as Indonesian citizen Barry Soetoro) has been docketed at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Is Obama Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of POTUS?
America Must Know.
Thanks, Fly..I figured as much….
The Greatest Fraud in U.S. History
Do They All Know?
(H/T: Ted)
Obama, as I always thought in the beginning, will say or do anything to gain political power. Once he has it, he will do whatever he wants and justify it later, knowing that the left will agree with him. Of course, with the MSM covering up whatever “mistakes” he makes, it will be easy for him. Such paths have been trodden many times before, in history, by tyrants.
Sounds like a Democrat to me.
lgm, please provide us the breakdowns. 90% guilty and 10% innocent? Is it 80% guilty and 20% innocent? What’s the number.
BTW, we all assume that you currently support Gitmo detention for the guilty.