Useful Idiots

I don't mean to pick on Joe Biden any more than any other public person that has promoted the idea that we must shut down Gitmo, but the picture was handy and frankly, Jimmy Carter is just too easy of a target. It is an interesting collection of political opportunists and ne'er do wells that are in the fore front of the "growing movement" to shut-down the camp. Along with the aforementioned Mssrs. Biden and Carter, we have the knuckle headed sometime Republican Chuck Hagel, the New York Times along with other less well known hand wringers.

More telling is the reason they put forth as their motivation for calling for the shut-down; they are afraid that Gitmo is hurting the U.S. image in the European and Arab world. The mind reels when one considers the utter shallowness of such a position. They actually have thought about the issue, turned it over in their mind and come to the conclusion that U.S. policy for dealing with murderers and terrorists ought to be determined by those in Europe who have been raised on contempt and jealousy for America, and those in the Middle East who have been raised to hate America.

The only thing worse than appeasing your nation's enemies at a time of war, would of course be to base your appeasement on lies, which is exactly what the Gitmo shutters are doing. We heard the first cries in this most recent effort to shut down Gitmo after the famous Newsweek "Quaran abuse" article. Ignoring that the charges were largely false, and that in fact, the most well documented cases of Quaran abuse were perpetrated by the prisoners themselves in bizarre protest rituals, the usual suspects lined up and began to call for the closing.

The next step was the accusation by Amnesty International's U.S. director that Gitmo was the Gulag of our time. This too, proved to be false as it turned out that the U.S. was treating prisoners surprisingly well by handing out Quarans, painting arrows on the floor that point to Mecca, issuing prayer calls five times a day, and preparing "culturally sensitive" meals for the pack of killers that are imprisoned there. Embarrassed by it's own hyperbole, Amnesty's U.S. Director, who must now be considered a potential enemy of the state, tried to back pedal without really admitting that the gulag statement was wrong. Of course the greatest proof that it was wrong was the simple fact that he remains free to continue to make his ridiculous "false but accurate" charges.

So the hand wringers were presented with an option. They could do the correct thing and pull together to support their country on the international stage, while still making some suggestions for improving the way we handle the prisoners, or they could try to make political hay at the expense of embarrassing their country and undermining it's moral authority in the war on terror. Sadly, their political desires won out and they choose the role of Useful Idiot.

For many it is not the first time they've supported the cause of appeasement of our enemies. James Earl Carter a man who will tell you that he's even smarter than he admits, was quite comfortable as President in the fine art of Soviet appeasement. In fact, he was so successful that the Ruskies felt free to push into Afghanistan on his watch. Jimmy, outraged, canceled the U.S. Olympic visit to Moscow. The funny thing is, Jimmy's failure in this area is a direct catalyst for at least part of the Al Queda problem that we have today. Well done Jimmy!

Of course for true success stories in the world of Useful Idiotness, one really can't beat the efforts of the New York Times. Who can forget the 1930's and the fine work done by crack Times reporter, Walter Duranty, during the man-made famine in Russia. Walter, based in Russia, wrote article after article insisting that all was well in the worker's paradise and blamed reports to the contrary on rumor mills. As we now know, the real story was that millions were starved as Stalin consolidated power. Of course, the Times never really felt any need until recently to give back the Pullitzer that Duranty won for his efforts.

As they say, "and so it goes". We live in an age were political expediency is much more important to the modern Democratic Party, and some Republicans harboring presidential hallucinations, than a serious commitment to winning the war on terror. Certainly we could do more to win the image war in this effort, and I would welcome serious suggestions on how to accomplish this.

One idea would be to release information on exactly who is being held at Gitmo and what they were doing when they were captured. Most of these prisoners were captured on the battlefield and are active enemies of our way of life, our constitution, our bill of rights, and the very due process that the hand wringers wish to give them. They weren't Mirandized when they were captured, and they were not regular members of a uniformed army. As a result, they don't qualify for the rights of our justice system, nor do they qualify for the Geneva Conventions.

We tend to forget that this status was not forced upon them. They were not kidnapped from the cafes of Paris or rousted from the streets of New York. They were in a fight against the United States. A little too bad for them I'd say. In their zeal for jihad, they chose their fate willingly. Is it our fault that we are giving them exactly what they have earned?


UPDATE: Well, it turns out useful idiot the Mutha Chucker has been interogating prisoners and Bird of Paradise has the transcript. Via Malkin.