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April 20, 2004
AND THE PROBLEM IS... WHERE?
So apparently lawyers for the "enemy combatants" down at Guantanamo Bay are arguing before the Supreme Court for their clients' rights. One of their lawyers called the detainee prison at Gitmo "a lawless enclave."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, the principle of letting the Bush Administration just create zones where they are not subject to any judiciary oversight or rule of law is distrubing. (It's how Bush came to power, actually... creating one such zone in Florida.) And I know that you might expect me, with my liberal sensibilities, to decry the denial of civil rights to the detainees.
But you'd be wrong. Because try as I might (and actually, I don't try all that hard), I can't muster the slightest bit of sympathy or compassion for these fargin' iceholes. I don't really give a rat's ass about their human rights. I kind of hope their detention is long, hard, painful and cruel.
We're not talking about an enemy army, subject to the rules of the Geneva Convention. If we fought a war against, say, Afghanistan, and Afghani soldiers who were trained to fight battles against US soldiers were taken prisoner, I might be a little more inclined to sympathy. After all, soldiers are trained to fight, and they do... they follow orders and fight whom they are ordered to fight, and in many countries young men are not given the option of not being drafted into the army. But the detainees in Guantanamo are al Qa'ida fighters; they gathered from all around the world to train to do battle against American civilians, not because they were ordered to but because they chose to in their religious zeal. They toook up arms with a group whose stated aim is to kill as many non combatants and civilians as possible. And I find them both too dangerous to risk giving up, and too unworthy to care about their "rights" (by the way, how did foreign born enemy combatants get the right to sue in US Court or petition for redress?).
I really don't care about their rights. I'd actually like to leave them in outdoor cages in the 110 degree sun, be sparing in the use of water, bring back physical punishment of prisoners... they're al Qa'ida, they are cowardly butchers, they supported a mass murderer, and they deserve every unhumane thing we can dish at them. It may be time to bring back the medieval torture devices.
How very un-liberal of me, you say? You're right. When it comes to the leigitimate enemies of the US (as oposed to enemies we just appoint because our president needs someone to bomb), I am not at all liberal. When it comes to the people who were responsible for 9/11, I say we ratchet it up to 11 and really dish it out... take a pound of flesh for every one of the 3,000 people who died that day.
