Gitmo

How invading the wrong country and running torture prisons makes you safer

July 21, 2005

 

Myth: Guantanamo and Iraq are necessary and effective components in the War on Terror. Every suggestion liberals make for improving our conduct in the War on Terrorism are therefore naive

[W]e thought we'd elaborate on why the political campaign against both Gitmo and the Patriot Act illustrate how far some of our elites have traveled since 9/11.

Start with Guantanamo, and the growing chorus to shut it down. In Congress, this includes most Democrats.

The argument seems to be that closing Gitmo will make the Arab world think better of us, thereby causing Islamic terrorists to stop killing Americans.  This overlooks the small detail that they were willing to kill us, even on American soil, long before Guantanamo was up and running.

-- “London and Guantanamo”, The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2005

The fact that foreign fighters are streaming across Syria into Iraq in the hopes of killing America is not evidence supporting the "breeding ground" theory. "Opportunity" to act is not the same thing as "motive" for acting. There is zero evidence for the proposition that Iraq is motive rather than opportunity, but the "motive" theory is nevertheless put forward again and again.

-- Hugh Hewitt, “Breeding Stupidity”, The Weekly Standard, 07/14/2005

al Qaeda and its affiliates understand us better than we sometimes understand ourselves. They advise their followers to charge torture when captured -- and Congress goes into a tizzy. They feign outrage at the alleged destruction of a Koran -- and then send a suicide bomber to blow up Muslims in Baghdad….

To argue resistance to the enemy is counterproductive is to rule out any active defense. To say that a war should not be fought because it might increase -- temporarily -- the size of the enemy leaves only one logical policy: appeasement”

--“The idiocy of appeasement”, The Washington Times, July 12, 2005

Reality

The irony that the same people who made the argument that liberating Iraq would reduce terrorism in the long run cannot seem to comprehend that improving our treatment of Arabs and Muslims might actually have that effect is rich indeed.  No proponent of addressing root causes, be it the conservatives at The Wall Street Journal advocating the toppling of Middle Eastern autocracies, nor the Democrats in the Senate advocating the closing of Gitmo who those same WSJ editors mock, is actually suggesting that their policy will have the immediate effect of eliminating terrorism.  Eliminating the root causes-- for example confronting states that actually do sponsor terrorism, while actually taking real actions to deal with the impression that we are arrogant, oppressive and hypocritical in our treatment of Arabs and Muslims--may reduce terrorism in the long run. 

In the meantime, closing Gitmo can be justified on purely humanitarian grounds, something the WSJ should also understand. After all, now that the Iraq invasion has failed to reduce terrorism, at least in the short term, they defend it on the grounds that removing Saddam Hussein was a humanitarian achievement. Never mind the obvious facts that the Iraq war, and this administration's tragically inept planning have increased the presence of terrorists in Iraq, while completely diminishing our capability to confront terrorism and governments that sponsor terrorism elsewhere. Well, closing a brutal and illegal detention center would also be a humanitarian achievement, and one that could be achieved at significantly lower cost in American lives and dollars.

Similarly, Hewitt makes an inane point.  Sure, we don’t know whether the terrorists going to Iraq to kill Americans and Iraqis are motivated by our presence, or had a pre-existing desire to commit these attacks and are merely capitalizing on the opportunity.  So what?  If removing our troops would remove the opportunity, and thereby remove our troops from harm’s way, as Hewitt admits by implication, then we ought to do so.

Finally The Washington Times makes the same mistake—and then some.  First of all, we ought not to be desecrating Korans not because it will necessarily prevent bombings in Baghdad, but because we shouldn’t be desecrating Korans. If it has the effect of reducing the impetus for terrorism so much the better. Secondly, the fact that we oppose desecrating Korans or torturing prisoners does not mean that we “argue resistance to the enemy is counterproductive.” Desecrating Korans isn’t resistance to terrorism, it’s just disrespectful (and, yes, it’s also counter-productive.)  We don't condone terrorism in anyway, anywhere. We want to fight it in intelligent ways - by attacking terrorists where they are, and by confronting the root causes of terrorism.

Myth: The liberal contentions that we have been unfair to Muslims—and that might have something to do with the terrorists attacks, that Iraq had no “operational relationship” to Al Qaeda, and that the Iraq invasion has not made us safer, are mushy-minded myths

Ever since September 11, there has been an alternative narrative about this war embraced by the Left. In this mythology, the attack on September 11 had in some vague way something to do with American culpability….

there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid….

That is the dominant narrative of the Western Left and at times it finds its way into mainstream Democratic-party thinking. Yet every element of it is false.

-- Victor Davis Hanson “Our Wars Over the War”, National Review Online, July 15, 2005

Reality

 The US does, in fact, give less foreign aid per capita than any other developed country. The result that many Muslims may see us stingy can only hurt our image abroad. Mr. Hanson inaccurately summarizes the left’s correct point that Iraq had no “operational relationship” in the words of the 9/11 commission report, as “there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.”  This misrepresentation allows him to “debunk” our contention.  Of course there were “connections”, but they were not working together. The essential truth is that we created more terrorists in Iraq by invading it. 

Myth: The U.S. invasion of Iraq is an any way analogous to the American revolution

 [Spc. Christopher] Bean, 20, of Port Gibson [N.Y.], finished up a year-long stint in Baghdad as a truck driver with the 594th Transportation Co., a 101st Airborne division. His time in the military has given him a different perspective on the Fourth of July.

"In Iraq, we're not fighting for ourselves," said Bean, from his home base in Fort Campbell, Ky. "We're over there fighting so the Iraqis can have their own Fourth of July."

"Being there really opens your eyes to what our forefathers went through to get the freedom we have today," he said.

-- ARTHUR CHRENKOFF, “’Their Own Fourth of July'”, www.opinionjournal.com, July 18, 2005

Reality

Unfortunately, Spc Bean confuses an indigenous independence movement with an outside invasion. The American Fourth of July was not brought on by an outside invader waging “pre-emptive” war. It was a movement, to paraphrase a great American president “of the people, by the people, for the people” (not a foreign power.) One false assertion of the right is that those of us on the left are not happy that Iraq is free of Saddam Hussein. In fact, we are happy for that fact. But unlike Spc Bean and Mr. Chrenkoff, we understand that for a new government to hold popular legitimacy, and, thus, for a democracy to be successful, it must not be perceived (correctly in this case) as the puppet government of a foreign power that invaded for its security (or other, more nefarious, reasons). We are certain that being in Iraq is opening Spc Bean’s eyes to the daily Iraqis (indeed, like the founding fathers they have to go without electricity and running water, albeit for entirely different reasons).  But the analogy is false. Hopefully Iraq will indeed become a liberal democracy like ours. But since they were liberated, (and in the process tens of thousands of them killed) by an outside power, they may not be lighting fireworks and listening to the Beach Boys on July 4th in the very near future.