Saudi Suicides and a Deadly Double Standard

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

All right. Two Saudis and one Yemeni committed suicide at the Guantanamo Bay prison. And? As one correspondent of mine remarked: “Since Muslims are committing suicide on a daily basis all over the world -- and killing as many others as is possible with themselves -- what is so hard to believe about three suicides in a jail?” Remember that every one of the 460 detainees at Gitmo was either taken in combat against U.S. forces in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere, or taken as a suspect with terrorist or Taliban connections, and scheduled to be tried by a tribunal.

It is hard to believe if reality does not conform to one’s wishes.

Remember that these are not “rockin’” fans of the Dixie Chicks or gentle Bono groupies or twittering sycophants of Muslim-patronizing Prince Charles of Britain, spirited away from Pennsylvania Avenue or the Strand and unlawfully incarcerated without charge. These are men who would just as soon as cut the throats of American civilians with box-cutters, hijack another planeload of them and smash it into the U.S. Capitol in an act of suicidal jihad. Or at least stockpile bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to grow more piles of Western bodies and rubble.

No, if you listen to the news media, you are not to remember that. You are to buy the story that these three succumbed to the “stench of despair,” as Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall University described the “plight” of prisoners at Gitmo. Denbeaux and his son represent two Tunisian prisoners there. It did not occur to the writer of the Associated Press report that quoted Denbeaux to wonder: Who is paying Denbeaux’s retainer? CAIR? Or some other Islamic front organization funded by Saudi Arabia? Attorneys cost money. So does the judicial system, even for pro bono lawyers. But don’t expect any investigative Pulitzer Prize-winning stories to result from that tidbit.

You are not to remember either the extent to which the American military has gone to accommodate Islamic customs at Gitmo in terms of prayer times and prayer rugs, food, free copies of the Koran, not to mention all the medical services, cleaner clothing than most of them ever wore, and other perks that no American prisoners of war ever enjoyed in any war of the 20th century. The U.S. has gone more than the whole nine yards to fend off accusations by “human rights” organizations that it is mistreating prisoners, even to the extent of calling them “detainees” and not “prisoners of war.”

No, you are to empathize with their suffering, not your own or that of Americans whom these “detainees” have killed or would have killed if not captured. You are to forget that every one of them acted in the name of a totalitarian ideology that regards due process, individual rights, and freedom as the corrupt practices of men to be either killed or enslaved.

A measure of the news media’s virulent hatred of the U.S. is how quickly and eagerly it will jump on any rumor of American misbehavior. Its malevolent glee at a chance to knock the Marines -- the proudest and least politically correct American military service -- over Haditha must sit in the craw of anyone who has ever been in combat against Islamic “insurgents” or lost a friend or relative to these “freedom fighters.” You want to put your fist through the TV screen and wipe the sanctimony from the faces of Charles Gibson, Matt Lauer, Diane Sawyer and their patronizingly skeptical brothers and sisters elsewhere in the media.

The crime this time is that especially the American news media is willing to grant credence to our enemies first -- an enemy that knows how to work the West’s multicultural and relativist premises to his full advantage -- before examining facts or even recognizing that there are such things as facts. Observe, for example, how the media dwells on the Israeli mortar shell dropped on a Gaza beach, killing some “innocent” Palestinian civilians. You watch the footage and if you have half a brain, you must ask yourself: Why does this look so staged? What was a cameraman doing there with a camcorder and audio? Why does the little girl behave like she is following directions?

You can almost hear the Hamas’s verbal cues. “Now, run along the beach looking for your father. Don’t look at the camera! Okay. Now you see him. I’ll put the camera on him, and then you see him and flop into the sand and roll back and forth hysterically, screaming anguish and bloody murder. Try not to look up at the camera, or it’ll look phony. Hey, great work, little one! Now we have an excuse to fire more rockets into Israel. To hell with their apologies. We want to kill Jews. Say, little one, how would you like to wear a pretty new vest?”

But, back to the Gitmo suicides. The Associated Press reports General John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, saying that the “suicides were part of Islamic militants’ holy war against the United States and its allies.” “They’re determined, intelligent, committed elements,” said Craddock, “and they continue to do everything they can…to become martyrs in the jihad.” “Militants”? Not prisoners of war?

Fine. Let more of them commit suicide and martyr themselves. Give them the bed sheets and maybe some nylon rope. It will mean fewer hostile mouths for U.S. taxpayers to feed. It’s a thought, but all 130 Saudis at Gitmo could be freed by herding them onto Air Force transports for “released” over Riyadh, together with about a thousand 500-pound bombs targeted on various palaces of the sheiks, the mourning tents, and mosques.

The Associated Press reports of June 12th on the suicides read like an Islamic agony column. (A correspondent of mine queried whether or not the Associated Press and Reuters might be sub-cells of Al-Quada, which is not so wild a hypothesis, since rich Saudis are stealthily buying interests in Western news organizations.) Ample space was given to the likes of Denbeaux and his ilk in the European Union and Saudi Arabia, all of whom commiserate over the “detainees” and who call for the closing of Gitmo and release of the “detainees.” Very little space was devoted to the American position. Most Saudis don’t believe the deaths were the result of suicides, or if they believe they were suicides, they were brought on by “torture.”

“A crime was committed here,” said Kateb al Shimri,” to the Associated Press, “and the U.S. authorities are responsible.” The Associated Press went on to say that Shimri echoed “the general sentiment heard in the Saudi capital.” Shimri is a Saudi lawyer representing relatives of Saudis held at Gitmo. He plans to sue the U.S. government for compensation on behalf of the relatives of the suicides. “Many Saudis denounced the suicide claims as a fabrication, and some accused the U.S. authorities of complicity in the inmates’ deaths.”

“They were killed; they were murdered,” one mother of a Saudi prisoner of war wailed. “This was no suicide.” This from a Muslim woman who would have celebrated her son’s death had he wandered into an Israeli pizza parlor and blew himself and twenty people up. That action, presumably, would not qualify as killing and murder. Does anyone out there see the deadly double standard that is eroding the separation of Western and Muslim cultures, the moral chasm that divides the life-giving values of the West and the death-worshipping cult of the East?

Finally, I quote another Saudi whose veracity is demonstrably impeachable, Mufleh al-Qahtani, deputy director of the Saudi kingdom’s Saudi Human Rights Group.
“There are no independent monitors at the detention camp,” he said to the Associated Press, “so it is easy to pin the crime on the prisoners, given that it’s possible they were tortured.” Also, the A.P. article reported that “The kingdom’s semiofficial human rights organization called for an independent investigation into the deaths of the two Saudis.”

I submit that a Saudi “human rights” organization is as much an oxymoron as a Mafia-run squad that offers crime victims trauma and bereavement counseling. It would be the stuff of satire were it not actually happening.

I submit also that it is beyond bizarre. Doubtless Shimri and al-Qahtani speak with the approval of the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia last week complained that the State Department included it in a list of twelve countries that deal in “human trafficking” (also known as slavery), and that this was “unfair” in lieu of American guilt. Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador to the U.S., speaking to a group of Nashville businessmen, said that “We read in American media and the press about the mistreatment of illegals who come to the U.S. seeking work and end up in brothels and gangs and unacceptable servitude, whether in factories or at farms, and yet that is not mentioned in the State Department report.”

More sanctimony that invites a punch in the face. It cannot even be called “hypocrisy.” You see how slyly and effectively the double standard of fatal altruist/ pragmatist/ multicultural Western premises can be used against us. You can see it; President Bush and Condeleezza Rice cannot. Or will not. Al-Faisal and his ilk know how to work a crowd of dupes and apologists and exploit our own double standard of good and bad premises. “You are altruists, but not perfect. Do not presume to throw stones at us. What you call crimes and abuses, you are guilty of committing.” And the dupes and apologists and aging hippies in three-piece suits nod in sad concession.

Saudi Arabia is a medieval dinosaur that also respects honor killings, castrations of boys, the subjugation of women, tribal vendettas, supports kindergartens for killers called “madrasas,” funds the jihad against the West through various “charities,” foundations, and oil revenues, and regularly practices extortion against especially the U.S. Saudi and other Islamic mouthpieces in the U.S. call for Sharia law to replace the Constitution. (Since that is an assertion of a “religious belief,” it cannot be defined as advocating treason, even though Islam makes no distinction between “church” and state.)

It would be an interesting to listen to a debate on the subject of which Muslim country is our deadlier enemy: Saudi Arabia or Iran. If I were a judge of such a debate, I would be obliged to call a tie and give both sides an equal number of marks.

Crossposted at The Dougout.