They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves

As I mentioned in last Friday's Furo Questus at the Wasatch Front, Amnesty International issued a report last week comparing our facilities at Guantanamo to the Soviet Gulag system.

The reaction was sadly, rather predictable (aside from the Washington Post, which still wrote a rather short-sighted and condemnatory piece); as left-leaning pundits and columnists called for the abolition of Guantanamo to be replaced by... what, they didn't say.

Aside from the infantile insipidity of that comparison, let's look at the people being held. These were men captured in a combat zone, carrying weapons but wearing no uniform, and supposedly fighting for an unrecognized government.

On top of all that, there is this news: an Al-Qaeda instruction book has been found, advising prisoners on how to behave if they are captured - incuding advice to claim they are being tortured and mistreated. To do so weakens American resolve and stirs Muslim resentment - as the fake Koran-flushing story Newsweek printed a couple of weeks ago amply demonstrated.

The irony of a terror group seeking to install a Muslim facist state using American human rights groups to their purpose defies my poor power to describe.

When organizations like Amnesty International take these claims and amplify them, they are doing the enemy's work for him. I am not advocating AI or any other organization stop their work or look the other way - I am asking that they use their judgement. There is precious little evidence of the mistreatments they claim.

There is also little alternative. We can release them, which would help satisfy some of Al-Qaeda's manpower needs; we can continue to hold them, humanely; or we can execute them as outlaws (see: pirates). The first is foolish; the third bloodthirsty.

So use your judgement. Be wary of mistreatment, but also be ware that the inmates are looking to use you for their own ends, and those ends have nothing to do with human rights.

Excellent column by Austin Bay on Amnesty International:
"The collective leadership of Amnesty International –in pursuit of a public relations coup – has demonstrated an inexcusable historical blindness. The false frame of moral equivalency compounds their mistake."