[Rhodes22-list] Politics: Gitmo

[brad haslett]

Here is an excellent article from Slate (hardly a Red
State rag).  Brad

fighting words
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Plus, Amnesty's amnesia.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 13, 2005, at 3:30 PM PT


A favorite slice of reality TV in today's Iraq is the
melodramatically named program Terrorism in the Grip
of Justice. Aired on state-run Al Iraqiya, which
doesn't require a satellite dish, it shows the
confessions of captured "insurgents," mainly foreign
fighters. When possible, it also shows the videos that
these people have made, so that, for example, a man
can be viewed as he slices a victim's throat and then
viewed, looking much less brave, as he explains where
he comes from, how he was taught to rehearse
beheadings and throat-slittings on animals, and other
insights into the trade. On occasion, these characters
are confronted with the families of their victims. At
other times, they have been able to tell the families
of the missing what happened to their loved ones. The
aim is to demystify the holy warriors and also to
encourage civilians to call in with further tips.

Some of the confessions, such as one from an alleged
Syrian intelligence officer who said that the
insurgency was run by Syria, are a little too
convenient. And the possibility exists that other
confessions are either staged or coerced. Nonetheless,
the program, which originated in the northern city of
Mosul, has been very influential in exposing the
origins and character of the forces that are bent on
wrecking Iraqi society. 

Terrorism in the Grip of Justice could only be shown
once the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi
government had been made. The United States could not
have put any of these people on television, because
the Geneva Conventions forbid the exhibiting of
prisoners. (I don't know what the law would say about
showing the program on U.S. television, and in any
case the video-beheadings recorded by the captured
perpetrators would be too hideous for mass
consumption.) In my opinion, at any rate, the elected
Iraqi authorities are well within their rights in
using this means of propaganda. Indeed, they are
entitled to all the presumptions of a war of
self-defense.

The position of the United States is different,
because not only is it a signatory to the Geneva
protocols, it is also the power that has pressed other
nations to both sign and observe them. (It was also
the United States that pressed all member states of
the United Nations to sign Eleanor Roosevelt's
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the
Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia at first declined to
do.) Any wavering on the part of Washington thus has
consequences far beyond itself.

The forces of al-Qaida and its surrogate organizations
are not signatory to the conventions and naturally
express contempt for them. They have no battle order
or uniform and are represented by no authority with
which terms can be negotiated. Nor can they claim, as
actual guerrilla movements like the Algerian FLN have
done in the past, to be the future representatives of
their countries or peoples. In Afghanistan and Iraq,
they sought to destroy the electoral process that
alone can confer true legitimacy, and they are in
many, if not most, cases not even citizens of the
countries concerned. Their announced aim is the
destruction of all nonbelievers, and their avowed
method is indiscriminate and random murder. They are
more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers—three
categories of people who have in the past been
declared outside the protection of any law.

The administration therefore deserves at least some
sympathy in its confrontation with an enemy of a new
type. I should very much like to know how a Gore
administration would have dealt with the hundreds of
foreign sadists taken in arms in Afghanistan. I should
also like to know how other Western governments, which
are privately relieved that the United States assumed
responsibility for the last wave, expect to handle the
next wave of fundamentalist violence in their own
societies. No word on this as yet.

An axiom of the law states that justice is more
offended by one innocent person punished than by any
number of guilty persons unapprehended. I say frankly
that I am not certain of the applicability of this in
the present case. Mullah Omar's convoy in Afghanistan
was allowed to escape because there was insufficient
certainty to justify bombing it. Several detainees
released from Guantanamo have reappeared in the
Taliban ranks, once again burning and killing and
sabotaging. The man whose story of rough interrogation
has just been published in Time had planned to board a
United Airlines flight and crash it into a skyscraper.
I want to know who his friends and contacts were, and
so do you, hypocrite lecteur. 

You may desire this while also reserving the right to
demand that he has a lawyer present at all times. But
please observe where we stand now. Alberto Gonzales
was excoriated even for asking, or being asked, about
the applicability of Geneva rules. Apparently,
Guantanamo won't do as a holding pen until we decide
how to handle and classify these people. But
meanwhile, neither will it do to "render" any suspects
to their countries of origin. How many alternatives
does this leave? Is al-Qaida itself to be considered a
"ticking bomb" or not? How many of those who express
concern about Guantanamo have also been denouncing the
administration for being too lenient about ignoring
warnings and missing opportunities for a pre-atrocity
roundup? I merely ask. I also express the wish that
more detainees be brought, like the wretched American
John Walker Lindh, before a court.

About Amnesty International's disgraceful performance,
however, I can tell as well as ask. I was at one point
quite close to its London headquarters, and I used to
both carry and return messages for the organization
when I went as a reporter to screwed-up countries. The
founding statutes were quite clear: An Amnesty local
was to adopt three "prisoners of conscience," one from
either side of the Cold War and one from a "neutral"
state. Letters were to be written to the relevant
governments and to newspapers in free countries.
Though physical torture and capital punishment were
opposed in all cases, no overt political position was
to be taken. (I remember there was quite a row when an
Amnesty "country report" on Argentina went so far as
to describe a guerrilla raid as "daring.") By adhering
to these rules, AI became a credible worldwide group
to which even the most repressive governments
sometimes had to pay attention. All honor to its
founder Peter Benenson, who died earlier this year.

And now look. I think it is fairly safe to say that
not one detainee in Guantanamo is there because of an
expression of opinion. (And those whose "opinion" is
that all infidels must die are not exactly prisoners
of conscience.) Morally neutral on this point,
apparently, Amnesty nonetheless finds its voice by
describing the prison itself as "the gulag of our
times." No need to waste words here: Not everyone in
the gulag was a "prisoner of conscience," either. But
if an organization that ostensibly protects the rights
of prisoners is unaware of the nature of a colossal
system of forced labor and arbitrary detention—replete
with physical torture, starvation, and brutal
execution—then the moral compass has become disordered
beyond repair. This is not even neutrality between the
fireman and the fire. It surely expresses a covert
sympathy with the aims and objectives of jihad and an
overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United
States. If only this were the only symptom of that
tendency.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of
America.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2120810

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