I don't apologize for agreeing with Ralph Peters.INSTANT JUSTICE
GITMO? NO, KILL THUGS ON SPOT
Ralph Peters @ NYP
WE made one great mistake regarding Guantanamo: No terrorist should have made it that far. All but a handful of those grotesquely romanticized prisoners should have been killed on the battlefield.
The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed.
Terrorists don't have legal rights or human rights. By committing or abetting acts of terror against the innocent, they place themselves outside of humanity's borders. They must be hunted as man-killing animals.
And, as a side benefit, dead terrorists don't pose legal quandaries.
Captured terrorists, on the other hand, are always a liability. Last week, President Obama revealed his utter failure to comprehend these butchers when he characterized Guantanamo as a terrorist recruiting tool.
Gitmo wasn't any such thing. Not the real Gitmo. The Guantanamo Obama believes in is a fiction of the global media. With rare, brief exceptions, Gitmo inmates have been treated far better than US citizens in our federal prisons.
But the reality of Gitmo was irrelevant -- the left needed us to be evil, to "reveal" ourselves as the moral equivalent of the terrorists. So they made up their Gitmo myths.
Now we're stuck with sub-human creatures who should be decomposing in unmarked graves in a distant desert. Before reality smacked him between the eyes, Obama made blithe campaign promises and quick-draw presidential pronouncements he's now unable to fulfill.
Everything's easier when you're campaigning and criticizing, but the Oval Office view is a different matter. And suddenly your old allies, who rhapsodized about the evils of Gitmo, no longer have your back.
Odious senators, such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, damned Gitmo to hell. But they don't want to damn the prisoners to Massachusetts (given that few al Qaeda members can swim, Cape Cod seems a splendid place for a prison). Don't the icons of ethics want to solve the problem?
Or should we send the Gitmo Gang to California's Eighth Congressional District, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's constituents could guarantee an end to waterboarding? The good voters of San Francisco could put up their new guests in a grand Nob Hill hotel and stage teach-ins to explain why America's so nasty.
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7 comments:
I agree with Ralph Peters, as ever, 100% too.
They should have never got to Gitmo or any other public jail.
Send them to Allah and their 72 virgins/transgendered camels.
I agree as well although I think it's 72 randy goats. . .
"Randy Goats" LMAOOOOO
Ralph Peters tells it like it is. In war, there are ways to win, and there are ways to lose. Mercy is a luxury in war. And, depending upon how determined the enemy is, it is not a luxury easily afforded.
One thing we have to remember is that these people we are fighting are not conscripts from a nation where they have no choice but to serve. These Jihadists volunteer to do the most horrible things imaginable. They are, for the most part, as hardened as hardened gets. And, that is evidenced by the fact that so many of them go right back to it as soon as they get released from Guantanamo.
It's a gloomy, though unfortunately very likely prediction that a Third World War will be fought between Islam and the West. This war will not be of our making. Its inevitability is implicit in the very definition of the name that Muslims give to the West - 'Dar al-Harb' - the Domain of War.
What will then be the status of Muslims within the U.S?
"The few kept alive for their intelligence value should have been interrogated secretly, then executed."
Peters is right FOR THESE PERPS, AND THESE VICTIMS, AND THE USA TODAY.
But that won't cut it.
He is wrong on principal.
For one day there will be an american leader who would abuse such a precedent.
And WE would be the victims of a security service out of control, and with secret powers.
BET ON IT.
We did right in capturing these fuckers and getting them to spill their guts. None of them suffers permanent harm, disfigurement or any other damage.
We just don't like being disliked for it. Tough.
Thoughts that all that has come out could be kept secret, or what Peters hopes for are truly naive in america.
And THAT should be our message both to the world and those here who would rather die than exist and live in the real world.
And if you look at the polls about gitmo today, the american people seem to think so as well.
Killed on the battlefield is one thing. So sorry, you're dead.
What we need is a standard by which such people are PERMANENTLY dealt with and that's what was left out of the Geneva conventions of 47-49.
Terrorists are neither POWs nor car thieves. They deserve neither the dignity of those who serve, nor the rights of criminal defendants, because their EXPRESS TARGET for tactical and strategic purposes are the innocent.
Wrong on principle?
The principle via the GC is that non-uniformed enemy combatants may be executed w/o trial on the spot (we did it in WWII). Interrogate them first, then shoot them. Countries aren't run by the GC, only wars 'are.' Each petty dictator 'governs' as he sees fit. You're mixing military duties/limits w/civilian duties/limits. It's apples and oranges. The US may/will one day see secret police taking people in the dead of night never to be seen again, but that action is not w/in the scope of legitimate gov't. It will be because of malignant gov't not GC guidelines or lack thereof.
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