World War II Lessons for Gitmo
America should remember how it dealt with Axis prisoners.
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With the recent Supreme Court decision granting detainees held at Guantanamo Bay the right to legal counsel challenging their imprisonment, one might look back at the treatment of spies and prisoners of war held stateside during the 1940s for lessons to apply in today’s post-9/11 environment.
First, there was the treatment of Nazi spies entering the U.S. during the summer of 1942. The plan was Operation Pastorius and the story is fascinating, worth the investigation of any World War II buff. George John Dasch would lead it. He was a German who’d served in the German army in World War I, moved to America, and then enlisted in the American army. He would live in New York working as a waiter. Then in the 1930s Dasch decided Germany needed him and returned home. With his American background, he was assigned by the German High Command to lead a group of saboteurs to terrorize America. The grandiose plot was to bomb vulnerable spots along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, destroy bridges in New York City, and blow up a railroad depot in New Jersey and aluminum plants in Tennessee, New York, and Illinois. If possible, he would conduct strikes for the pure terror of it on New York’s Broadway.
Transported by a German U-boat submarine, four of the spies including Dasch walked ashore in Long Island. Four others landed on the beach outside of Jacksonville, Florida.
To make a long story short, Dasch’s “American side” evidently motivated him to tip off the FBI and abort the plan.
The lesson is what the government under FDR did in this case. All eight were put on trial in July 1942 by a military tribunal. Six were executed by electrocution by August 1942. Dasch and a second member were spared the death penalty and eventually returned to Germany after the end of the war.
Second, it would be fair to say few countries ever treated their prisoners of war better than we did. German and Italian prisoners interned in the U.S., many in Arizona, were fed as well or better than we fed our own soldiers. These prisoners had the freedom to indulge in artwork, form musical groups, and have recreation. In fact, many prisoners, especially the Germans, were becoming so friendly with the Americans that their hard-line Nazi members would retaliate with beatings in private and threats of death.
Third, we had the Japanese internment camps, taking hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese descent along the West Coast — including Star Trek’s George Takai, otherwise known as Captain Sulu — and holding them for the duration of the war. One cannot imagine a duplication of such an event today.
What lessons can be drawn and applied to Guantanamo, Islamic terrorists, and the modern world?
First, there is a place for swift, cold, hard, brutal action. FDR didn’t keep the spies in place for years hoping to extract every last morsel. He saved the repentant ones and removed the rest. No hesitation. No second-guessing. No question about the strength of America.
Second, there is a place for showing kindness and humanity towards your enemies. Not only did we respect the Geneva Accords; our spirit went beyond the rules of international law with our prisoners of war. Our conduct changed German and Italian opinions about Americans and turned enemies into friends. There have even been reunions of prisoners with guards over the decades. Would such an approach work with Afghan and Iraqi prisoners? Why wouldn’t it? If the Guantanamo detainees were treated far better than expected, given less fuel to feed rumors of torture or anti-Muslim hatred, how would we not be better off? We might even get more information with less effort to defend America.
The broad lesson is to live without illusions yet practice measures consistent with our better historic values. All of these prisoners must be interrogated in ways that are both effective yet consistent with international law. I began with the question of whether the Supreme Court went too far granting rights to those at Guantanamo. I think history will show the ruling was a reasonable response and an indictment of our current approach at Guantanamo Bay. An approach of indefinite incarceration that never commits to charges against the accused. One that behaves as though incentives and rewards are dirty words, “coddling terrorists,” instead of legitimate tools to use in our interests.
If our objective is to drain the feeders of the pool of terrorism, we should at least seek to earn the friendly cooperation of our captives, and not to crush and humiliate their spirits. Therein is one more lesson from the past to apply to our modern world. It is relearning what we did right in World War II in our treatment of prisoners stateside. We need to apply that part of America the world knows and loves best, that part that values all human beings as having rights given by God, to convert Islamic enemies into Islamic friends.
Mike Shelton was a National Urban Fellow from Baruch College CUNY and a former PBS producer/director. He's a public speaker, freelance opinion writer, and lifelong comic book collector, living in Yuma, Arizona.
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28 Comments
fred:I have questions about Mr. Shelton’s experience of Islam and his knowledge of it. If he has not read the Islamic scriptures (Qur’an), traditions (ahadith), and the words and deeds of the Prophet (Sira) then his claims that if we kill them with kindness they will apostacize and eschew jihad. Also, he presumes that the psychological/spiritual/ideological inner thought/feeling processes of this enemy are the same as those of German and Japanese soldiers.
I don’t want to reach the point of sarcasm and derision of Mr. Shelton’s views, since it will invite the Leftist trolls to jump all over me and defend him (and I’m betting that they are similarly lacking in the background reading they should do, as I recommend he undertake).
I would dearly love it if Muslim apostates like the former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat or former Shia Islamic cleric Ali Sina would engage Mr. Shelton in a discussion like this. People like Shoebat and Sina have deep, thoughtful experience of being inside the mindset of these people. Plus, they deep and extensive, particularly Mr. Sina, education in the Islamic scriptures and theology.
But, hey, this is America and anyone can hang out a shingle and hold forth about what they think is a solution to a problem.
Aug 6, 2008 - 10:37 am Azores:Anyway POWs were not allowed to leave before the end of the war.
Aug 6, 2008 - 10:52 am Fidel, MD:If you treat kindly someone your behaviour can be interpreted two ways: (1) your are kind and you deserve to be treated as a friend; (2) you are weak and you deserve to be treated as a slave. It depends on the people on the other side.
Great. Lets follow the conventions to the letter.
Anyone bearing arms, not in a uniform is presumptively a spy, and can be summarily executed.
Just think how much time and money that would have solved?
Aug 6, 2008 - 11:02 am 11B40:Greetings:
I think Mr. Shelton’s analysis fails on a demographic basis. Are the Islamic terrorists more like the Nazi saboteurs and the Nazis who punished their fellow prisoners or are they more like the larger population of the German and Italian armies?
Here’s an ex-infantryman’s analysis of the POW calculus:
1) You don’t ever want to fight anyone twice;
2) Some POWs may have useful information;
3) Capture, relocation and detention of POWs requires the
use of scarce resources.
I’ll do the math.
Aug 6, 2008 - 11:06 am fred:The shaheeds and jihadis already believe that they are better than us. They are in Allah’s good graces, while we are consigned, in the very words of Allah in the Qur’an, itself considered a divine dictation, to hellfire. So, no amount of attempting to win them over with our - as they perceive it - obeisance will change how they think.
They come from a culture that does not even know of or understand The Golden Rule. In fact, they look down on it. Kindness is an obligation reserved only for one’s co-religionists or tribe. And that’s it.
You cannot win a war when you refuse to get inside the head of your enemy and understand how he thinks. Maj. Stephen Coughlin was phased out of his job at the Pentagon for attempting to remind the government and defense establishment of the centrality of jihad within Islam. That it has ramifications for their doctrine and it should force us to re-evaluate our doctrine. If you cannot name your enemy accurately, how can you put together a strategy to defeat him?
Aug 6, 2008 - 11:56 am DavidN:This discussion brings up one question that I have had since the whole thing started back on 9/11, and we started the fight in Afghanistan and soon had prisoners. The Taliban in Afghanistan doesn’t wear uniforms, doesn’t use a rank system or have an organized military structure at all. While their government was in power pre-9/11, various government ministers would arbitrarily decide that they should go to the front fighting the Northern Alliance, and do so. They would stay at the front for several weeks, then return home on their own initiative. No one kept track of who was where, or when anyone was going to go or come or anything else. None wore uniforms, had any authority over anyone else, formally, had any responsibilities other than those they took on themselves, and those lasted for as long as the person desired.
The point is this: how do you fight such an army? If you capture a soldier in it, do you treat him as if he’s a member of an organized military, like the Germans or the Japanese? This leaves aside the foreign soldiers we’ve caught in Afghanistan who have come to that country to fight the infidel, and who aren’t part of an organized military. We’re currently giving Taliban members status as prisoners of war, so their lack of uniforms isn’t held against them, even though it allows them to hid among the locals.
No one has given me an answer to my main question, though, and this troubles me greatly. To quote the article above: **The lesson is what the government under FDR did in this case. All eight were put on trial in July 1942 by a military tribunal. Six were executed by electrocution by August 1942. Dasch and a second member were spared the death penalty and eventually returned to Germany after the end of the war.** Where do we send people from the Taliban when we’re done with them? If we kill all those we capture, very few will surrender (meaning higher Allied casualties, because soldiers who fight to the death are sometimes very costly to kill). If we let them go, some of them will return to their old ways, fighting and perhaps acting as terrorists. If we send them to another country (where perhaps they’re from) civil rights advocates will go ballistic, because in many of those other countries, torture is de rigeur for anyone who opposes the government, and most of these guys qualify because they see their governments as insufficiently Muslim.
You see the dilemma I’ve outlined. We’re not fighting a war in the sense of the conflicts with the Axis powers during World War II. No one wants to hear this, but the conflict has been completely different. It’s much cheaper, less invasive in our daily lives, less costly in lives (by a long shot), but will also take longer, and raise serious questions about how you fight someone who refuses to play by your rules. No one yet seems to have all the answers.
Aug 6, 2008 - 12:39 pm Bill N:Mr. Shelton doesn’t understand the fact that the German, Italian, and Japanese people (as opposed to their brutal governments) were civilized.
Aug 6, 2008 - 12:42 pm WJ:Questions for the author?
Roughly what percentage of those captured Axis soldiers, Italians, Germans, and Japanese that we had in prison camps wore uniforms in battle? Please compare that to the percentage of Islamic “soldiers”/terrorists that wear uniforms?
Did any captured soldier in WWII, WWI, Korean War, Vietnam War, etc get habeas corpus rights? Was any captured soldier tried in a civilian court with a US government paid lawyer with the assumption of innocence until proven guilty?
I’m with Fidel. Unless the enemy is in uniform, they should be considered spies.
Aug 6, 2008 - 12:43 pm John Samford:What Fred said….
Shelton is clueless. A better comparison from WW2 would be Kamikaze pilots. Or even the Japanese instead of the Germans. Only if Mr. Shelton used Japan instead of Germany, it would lead to concentration camps full of illegally detained Japanese-American citizens and the fact that the average Japanese solider preferred death to surrender. Since that might alert the unwary to the dangers America faces with Islam, it wouldn’t achieve Mr. Shelton’s goal, which seems to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy by downplaying the threat they pose.
Once the average American figures out just how serious the threat is, Islam has a limited lifespan. The Mad Dog Mullahs know that and must really appreciate the efforts of traitors such as Mr. Shelton.
Or at least that is my opinion ( legal disclaimer).
“The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities…It is best to win without fighting.”
Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
Winning without fighting requires the enemy to surrender. You do that by affecting their will to fight. THAT is why the Constitution makes ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’ a high crime called treason.
Aug 6, 2008 - 12:51 pm Kevin:Just because the current administration lacks the moral courage to put it to the test doesn’t mean it’s not treason to give aid and comfort to the enemy. When our enemy is incapable of defeating us using military force, then propaganda is their main weapon. When you assist the Muslims in their propaganda efforts, you are committing treason.
The whole purpose of the Geneva Convention is to provide a framework for which you can pursue warfare and not be branded a war criminal. The whole point of treating POW’s humanely is to encourage nations to fight, “fairly”. I know it seems rather oxymoronic but that is the purpose. The fight, the military proponent, is against an enemy that is not fighting for any nation, but rather a deadly philosophy. As such they have no protection under the Geneva Convention. Further, those who seek to destroy us have no concern about how we think of them. You treat the bastards like we did the German POW’s, they’ll just laugh and spit in your face for being so foolish. Besides, they are treated a damn site better than they treat any of their prisoners. And where has that gotten us? No, treat them as the irregular combatants they are, drill them for all the info you can, put them before a tribunal then execute the sentence. Time to quit screwing around with these barbarians. These are enemy irregular combatants that are not covered by any international agreement and also not covered by the Constitution. They needed to be treated as such.
Aug 6, 2008 - 12:51 pm John Moore:The prisoners in WW-II were uniformed combatants, not violators of the rules of war!
Aug 6, 2008 - 1:38 pm fred:The problem that the Boumedine SCOTUS decision, and the solicitude that our legal establishment seems to summon for these 7th century savages, creates is that it continues the momentum towards exactly the kind of treatment that Mr. Shelton wants.
But our military, law enforcement, and the free peoples of the world are put in jeopardy because of it.
Those of us who are military veterans understand what the Geneva Conventions are and why they exist. But this enemy does not reciprocate and will never reciprocate. It’s a concept beyond their comprehension. Our guys in uniform have instincts that are hard wired by our culture: when someone shows a clear sign of surrendering, we take them as prisoners under guard. I’m reading a fascinating book about the Meuse-Argonne Offensive right now (”To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918″ by Edward G. Lengel) and in the book there’s a story about a unit that was approaching a German defensive trench system. The Doughboys observed dozens of Germans clearly indicating that they wanted to surrender. As they approached this group, the Germans jumped back into the trenches and the interlocking machine gun fire mowed down our boys. Thereafter, the survivors and the others in this particular division of the AEF were no longer inclined to take prisoners. Gee, I wonder why?
But that is how we are. We believe in ethical behavior and we have paid a price for it all throughout the history of our conflicts. But now we have the academic, legal, and even elements of the political establishment who want to tie or hands and then give jihadis Miranda and Habeaus Corpus rights, with access to the justice system.
You had best be prepared for the unintended consequences of this kind of direction. Our boys just might decide that it is best to shoot, shovel, and shut up.
Aug 6, 2008 - 1:44 pm TomJW:A friend fought in WWII. He said during the Battle of the Bulge, they captured 3 SS officiers out of a group of 100 that they killed. Intelligence came up and said they only needed 1 prisoner to interogate. Bang. Bang. 1 prisoner now. Intel;igence stripped him and tied him to the wire breaker welded to the front of their jeep and took off.
That’s still better than what terrorists deserve. But whatever the services say gets them the most information, is the best way to go.
Then tie them naked to the front of a jeep and drive them through a harsh winter woodlands.
Aug 6, 2008 - 2:33 pm Paddy:I am old enough to have witnessed how POWs were treated during WWII. They were all uniformed enemy combatants. They could have refused to do anything but sulk in their cells per the Geneva Convention, but chose not to.
My father was CO of the Norfolk Army Port of Embarkation in 1943-44. Italian POWs volunteered to work, as did some of the Germans. The Italians were happy to be in the US. They performed well doing everything from loading ships to being chefs at enlisted and officers clubs in the area. They did not try to escape. Many Italians wanted to stay after the war ended.
The Germans were more difficult. Some were escape risks. However, I recall that thousand of German POWs worked on inland farms throughout the country during their captivity. The point is that WWII POWs were entirely different than captive Muslim terrorists.
Mr Shelton is correct on his first point about WWII. Spies were dealt with summarily by military tribunals and often executed. SCOTUS never blocked nor even considered how POWs and spies were treated and the extent of their rights under US law until after WWII had ended. When they did the court deferred to the actions of the President during time of war.
Shelton’s second point is based upon the false assumption that we are mistreating prisoners at Gitmo. We are treating them as if they were POWs even though we are not obliged to do so. Harsh interrogation methods (not torture) are essential because useful intelligence is essential for effective counter-terrorism and asymmetrical warfare.
Furthermore, Shelton is delusional if he truly believes that fanatical Jihadists can be civilized. No rational person would want these monsters in the US where they could escape and murder and terrorize until they are killed. The difference between them and the rest of us is that they are prepared to die in order to kills us.
Terrorists who are interred at Gimtmo and elsewhere always have the option of voluntarily renouncing their Jihad and proving that they are no longer a risk. I suspect that they would be beaten or killed by their fanatical brothers if they attempted to reform, not unlike fanatical Nazis did to their fellow POWs during WWII.
Aug 6, 2008 - 3:44 pm bill:They are being treated humanely, for an undetermined amount of time. What is the issue?
When Al Qaeda decides to organize itself as a nation-state, sign the Geneva Conventions, join the United Nations, and recognize the sovereignty of all nations, the USA will then sit down and review it’s policies regarding detainees at Gitmo.
Until that moment, these men are not due any rights other than the humane treatment they are currently experiencing, and they should be lucky we have not sent more of them back to their home countries like Pakistan, Egypt and others, for interrogation.
Aug 6, 2008 - 4:21 pm pashley:Following the rules of war depends on following the rules of war. Imagine that. Developed over hundreds of years to mitigate the horror and civilian casualities, it is an agreement, a mutual restraint.
Breaking the rules of war leaves their protection. Again, maybe that’s too simple, but that’s it. No point in one side restraining their conduct, and the other side doesn’t. Unless you are trapped in self-justified la-la land whose only purpose is to show one’s own virtue to oneself.
Another example. German-French border, Dec 44. Germans capture and crucify an American soldier. Next night, Americans capture and crucify 3 German soldiers. End of antics, rules of war restored.
Aug 6, 2008 - 5:14 pm dmh0667-LGF:When I look at the above, I see pretty much what I expected: conservatives who don’t agree with a presented writer’s viewpoint, and proceed to show thru evidence and argumentation why they disagree with that viewpoint. Not “Nazi!”, “Fascist”, or “McChimpyHitlerCheneyHalliburton Robot!”, as you might see a different viewpoint greeted with on HuffPo, DaliyKos, DU, etc.
This is one of the many reasons I am a conservative.
A “Hooah!” to 11B40, from an ex-11B10…
Aug 6, 2008 - 5:34 pm John Samford:how do you fight such an army?
IT IS NOT AN ARMY. They are terrorists and part time irregulars. The historical and legal solution is to hang or shoot them. Please not that FDR got around this issue doing the same approximate thing Bush II did. He called them something besides POW’s. Disarmed enemy soldiers, IIRC. That was to skip around the GC requirement that POW’s be sent back home.
The USA had millions of POW’s from all over Europe. The Nazis would grab any able they could find in ‘45 and send them to the front, which wasn’t that far away. Most surrendered ASAP. The Bulk of them were kept in the ETO as DP’s.
FDR remaned them all so he could keep the ones here in the sates for a little while longer. Until the troops came home. That way he didn’t violate the letter of the law while pissin all over the spirit of the law.
What is forgotten by most is that there was a considerable bit of resistance in Germany in ‘45 from those last few die hard Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army
{snipped}
“An army (from Latin Armata “act of arming” via Old French armée), in the broadest sense, is the land-based armed forces of a nation.”
NO Nation = not an army.
Aug 6, 2008 - 6:19 pm cedarford:John Samford - Germans. Only if Mr. Shelton used Japan instead of Germany, it would lead to concentration camps full of illegally detained Japanese-American citizens…..
The lie that Japanese-Americans were illegally relocated has been said so often that even brainless conservatives with no knowledge of history now repeat it.
The relocation was for 40% of West Coast Japs who were enemy alien nationals. A minority fanatically devoted to the Emperor Hirohito, and no one exactly knew who were the true threats. The J-As were for the most part the children dependents of the enemy Jap aliens, and the Japs themselves opposed NOT sending their kids to Relocation camps - and splitting them from parents by placement in foster care homes and centers.
Which is just what white born-American children did in WWI and WWII internment camps. One of my wifes great grandmothers was born in a WWI internment camp to a German father and an American mother.
Elsewhere, the enemy Jap alien was controlled by placing him under martial law along with all the whites, blacks, Chinese, Filipino Americans or not - in Hawaii, Alaska, Puget Sound Naval Reserve. And, in WWI, people of all color briefly Puerto Rico…
Nor was that “illegal”. In fact, despite all the grievance industry money and apologies offered, what was deemed needed to be done in WWII was challenged legally and affirmed as being of proper legal and constitutional authority in war time in the Supreme Court Korematsu decision…though liberals and brain-dead libertarians morally condemn it and declare SCOTUS got Korematsu wrong.
Aug 6, 2008 - 6:26 pm AnnieB:THe problems with your logic is:
1) By all valid observation, the current Gitmo croud is better treated than the German POW’s of WWII. (I have actually been though one of our WWII POW camps - although for restoration work many years after the prisoners had gone. The rooms were closer to a jail - with bunks and shower rooms - than the college-dorm-room that cooperative prisoners get at Gitmo. Also, WWII prisoners there grew their own food - and did not gain pounds the way the Gitmo crowd does.) So if treating them well will have a positive effect similar to that of WWII internees? Then that should already be taking place.
2) Culture counts. Some cultures think that if you treat them kindly you are good people. Other cultures teach that if you treat them kindly *they* are therefore good people ( and have no reason to change.) Some cultures believe that kindness is to be repaid. Others… believe that they ‘deserve’ all you can do for them and more. Still others believe that any attempt to show mercy is in fact proof that you fear them.
3) Truth counts. Well, to some people. Other cultures and sub-groups believe that inventing negative stories is just a fair tactic against an opponent. In some cases it is even a religious doctrine.
You can figure which one is which.
Aug 6, 2008 - 9:58 pm dan:Very good comments here, thank you.
What I do not understand is the obstinacy of the proposition that these jihadis, particularly declared members of Al Qaeda and similar groups, qualify as prisoners of war under the specific elements of the Geneva Convention. They are not uniformed, regular members of the standing military force of a legitimate and acknowledged sovereign. That they are not is self-evident. They therefore do not qualify for Geneva treatment.
The Geneva Convention is not a civil rights document, it is an agreement among sovereign nations to engage in reciprocal behavior with respect to the conduct of war, including treatment of captured soldiers. The Bush Administration’s memo arguing that neithr this purpose nor these terms nor these intentions comprehend what Al Qaeda and the Jihad is or its members are is absolutely compelled by the letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions. That such clarity has been thrown into controversy is simply a measure of the success of the aktivnaye meropriyatia - active measures - of the domestic and international Left, who often resort to using such moralisms as weapons of demoralization and confusion.
The only interpretation of Geneva under which Al Qaeda & Co. could conceivably regarded as enjoying the rights of lawful enemy combatants is under Protocol II adopted in the early 1970s, to which the US is not a signatory, and which provides such treatment for, essentially, indigenous revolutionary groups. This is self-evidently a measure adopted by the socialists in support of the Soviet Union’s policy of exporting revolution and non-Communist sovereign destablization throughout the world.
By neither legal reason nor common moral instinct do Al Qaeda *deserve* Geneva treatment; in fact, they deserve summary execution, or to be squeezed like dolls for information and then discarded in a landfill. It rather undermines the system - not supports it - to regard these men, who have chosen their own paths and have chosen to evade the rather enormously wide road laid down to accomodate the most people, have placed themselves entirely and with no little ingenuity and effort outside and against these very humane measures which require so little self-restraint, reasonable moral intuition, and institutional legitimacy to follow. So I say let’s treat em according to their choice, and execute the motherf*ckers.
Aug 7, 2008 - 6:38 am dan:*…accomodate the most people, as fellow “world citizens” according to the Convention. They have placed themselves…*
Aug 7, 2008 - 6:43 am Mike Feightner:Remember in WWII we were fighting a political idea Fascism.
Aug 7, 2008 - 10:01 am Parabellum:Now we are fighting against religious fanatics.
You can’t compare the two.
Anyone think the author is reading any of these spot-on comments?
Nah, me neither.
Aug 7, 2008 - 12:24 pm fred:“Anyone think the author is reading any of these spot-on comments?
Nah, me neither.” by “Parabellum”
Yep, it sure seems to be the case. And the author only impoverishes his own mind by not reading what we’ve posted.
Aug 7, 2008 - 2:06 pm ReCon USMC:Remember there are { 40} different ”INTERPRETATIONS “of the Koran .
From Suicide bombing for Allah to it is a Sin in the name of Allah to suicide Bomb .
Women’s clothing is great example .from show no skin to show all skin and only your eyes are not covered .
Removing Young Girls you know what is another example like Young African girls have to suffer from as well .
Egypt under the 1950’s President wanted to make Egypt a Secular country but the 6 day war with Israel ended that idea and with his death .
Aug 7, 2008 - 3:03 pm Bob Nichols:I sure you’ll know that Iran under the Shaw with a very none Religious country until CARTER got the SHAW kicked out and replaces him with 30 years of TERRORIST SCREW BALL NUTS AND CRAZY CLERICS .
You cannot carry a Bible in your hand in Saudi A. but in the Moslem Far east you can not only carry a bible you can have churches there of all religions .
I strongly suspect that Mr. Shelton has a much better background and knowledge as a possible military history buff than he does on the ideological and theological mindset that is Islam.
Aug 9, 2008 - 1:21 pm WJO:Firstly, those detainees at Gitmo are NOT members of any state government’s overt or covert military forces. The Geneva Convention was designed with the treatment of those personnel during times of war. These are bloodthirsty zealots of the worst kind. The idea of killing women and children is no different in both their minds and their intentions than is the killing of men, civilian or otherwise. Their supremacist driven religion makes no such distinctions between the sex and age of the hated “infidels.” In a violent 7th century governmental ideal cast within a religion which teaches it is against gods law to take infidels as friends or confidants, and that it is against God’s law to steal, lie, cheat, or kill fellow Muslims, there is no such restriction on the same behavior pertaining to the Muslim treatment of non-Muslims. There have been dozens of cases of supposedly “reformed” Islamic terrorists released back to their host countries who have simply gone right back to their former ways.
Secondly, anyone who doesn’t think that the Gitmo detainee’s are not already being treated very well is sadly mistaken. Among those Muslim and non-Muslims alike who are even minimally aware of the severity of the threat being faced (or largely ignored) by the non-Muslim countries of today, the term that springs to mind is that of “Dhimmitude.”
I believe the past is a pretty fair predictor of the future and with that in mind I believe it is sheer folly indeed to attempt to deal with these terroristic animals within the standard criminal justice system. The evidence has been ample in most of the cases in which this approach has been tried not only in America but many other nations as well. Those few who do receive any sort of serious incarceration (none has ever been executed in a western country) the violence and headaches they create within our penal systems are both growing and well documented. Proof positive that treating them kindly has had zero results.
Finally, the ignorance displayed of even a little knowledge of the teachings of the Quran, the Hadith and the Sira so many years after 9/11 is terrifying. This is not Communism, or Fascism, both of which are much easier to both understand and either contain or defeat. This is the perfect storm that has existed for 1400 years because it is so hard for most decent people to grasp and understand the true nature of the threat. Until it is to late, that is.
The error of logic here is that those detained at Guantanamo are not prisoners of war, but unlawful enemy combatants. Many of them are also war criminals in the international law sense of that erm.
The logic of this author is perhaps applicable to native insurrectionists in Iraq (read those NOT of al Qaeda and its supporters or ilk), but would be disastrous in application to those who have purposely commited acts of terror or conspired in them.
Aug 12, 2008 - 10:46 am