How Eugene Robinson Keeps His Job Is A Mystery

Yes, I'm beating on Robinson again, for yet another inept editorial. This one is all about Gitmo. And, of course, Mr. Robinson is all for closing the base. This should come as no surprise to regular readers of this site, or any other center-right blogs. The president stated he would like to close down Gitmo, but I'd advide against that. This war is far from over, and frankly speaking I don't want terrorists on US soil. Gitmo is close enough for me.

We'd better not turn away just yet from the suicides of those three detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The rest of the world clearly isn't ready to move on. And with good reason.

In many newspapers around the globe "Guantanamo" is much more than the name of a beautiful harbor on Cuba's southern coast. It has become shorthand for a whole litany of American excesses in George W. Bush's "global war on terror," the most visible example of how the United States blithely ignores the values of due process and rule of law that it so aggressively preaches, if necessary at the point of a gun.

U.S. officials have portrayed the three men -- Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen, and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani of Saudi Arabia -- as irredeemable jihadists whose deaths were an act of war. Ahmed was allegedly a "mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative," Utaybi a "militant" recruiter for jihad, Zahrani a "front-line" warrior for the Taliban. One State Department official called their deaths by hanging "a good P.R. move," and while those words were quickly disavowed by higher-ups, the general reaction from the U.S. government has been something pretty close to "good riddance."

For all we know, these men might have been the evil miscreants our government says they were. Since our government wouldn't describe whatever evidence it claimed to have against them, it's impossible to tell. I think any reasonable observer would conclude it's also quite possible that these men were clinically depressed after being held for years in steel-mesh cells without legal recourse, without even formal charges, and that they simply sought the only kind of release they could possibly achieve. At least one of them, Ahmed, had been on a hunger strike for most of this year, which would have meant that guards regularly force-fed him through tubes stuck down his nose. What would that do to your state of mind?

The point here isn't to go all bleeding-heart over three men who may well have been the type who gleefully slaughter innocents in the name of a warped religiousness. The point is that when our government mocks transparency and tries to conduct this war of ideas in the shadows, away from prying eyes, we defeat ourselves.

Let me just say that journalists make lousy attorneys. The due process that Mr. Robinson is speaking of is surely the one afforded to US citizens. These men don't even come close to citizens and shouldn't be afforded the same "luxury" Moussaoui was given through our court system. (That was a brain-dead move, to be sure.) The due process these people will receive, and have been receiving, will come in military tribunals.

We're not conducting any sort of "war of ideas" in the shadows. The debate rages daily--and will again this week in the Senate over withdrawal--about this war. Are we doing the right thing? Did we do the right thing in Iraq? What happens if we leave too soon? What happens if we overstay our welcome? These are questions on the minds of a lot of people. However, they're not on my mind.

I have faith that the government is doing what it must to protect this nation. We are not in any danger of becoming like the version of London in "V For Vendetta," yet we hear the civil liberties morons carp about that almost daily. We are not defeating ourselves. If anything, the Left in the nation is doing its best to wreck the morale that we're holding onto. They are the ones preaching the tactics of defeat. They serve, in this war, as the dhimmis attempting to stop us from prosecuting this war to our fullest potential, and protecting this nation for years to come.

But they don't want that. They don't want the NSA tracking our enemies. They don't want our troops shooting civilians, even though they may be used as shields, or even complicit in the violence abraod. They don't want us to be wary of suspicious individuals that exhibit signs that could lead us to suspect that they may be terrorists. No offense, but we can't conduct this war through the use of political correctness. Our enemy can't be coddled and understood. They need to be eradicated, and a message sent--loud and clear--that those who use terror and fear to accomplish their tasks will be dealt with.

Mr. Robinson can contiue to delude himself, and be a mouthpiece for the Left, but he doesn't serve America better by doing it. And it still begs the question of how this man still has a job with the WaPo.

Publius II