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| Home Front: WoT |
| Humanizing al Qaeda, Demonizing the Bush Team |
| 2008-07-23 |
| By WILLIAM MCGURN David Addington and Omar Khadr are two names that will forever be linked to the war on terror. Mr. Addington is chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney and a former colleague of mine. He's the son of a West Point man who earned a bronze star in World War II and went on to become a general. Before coming to the White House, David put in stints at the CIA, at a congressional intelligence committee, and at the Pentagon -- all giving him an expertise on intelligence and national security issues only a handful of others can match. Then there's Mr. Khadr. He is the son of a man who helped found and finance al Qaeda, and who died in a 2003 gun battle with Pakistani troops near the Afghan border. So close were the family ties that the Khadrs lived for a while in the bin Laden family compound in Jalalabad, Afghanistan; and when Mr. Khadr's sister was married, bin Laden was an honored guest. Mr. Khadr himself went through weapons training at an al Qaeda training camp, and was captured in 2002 after a battle in which he is alleged to have killed a Special Forces medic. Ultimately he was brought to Guantanamo, where he awaits trial before a military commission for war crimes. Guess who gets the sympathy in the press? A few days ago, Mr. Khadr's attorneys released a videotape from February 2003 of their client being questioned by visiting Canadian officials. At first he was hopeful, but he quickly became sullen and withdrawn when he realized the Canadians were not going to get him out. The tape shows the young man, then 16, crying for his mother, and complaining about treatment for the wounds he suffered while fighting alongside al Qaeda. The response has been illuminating. The Montreal Gazette calls him "a victim," "not a villain." Closer to home, our headlines run along the lines of "Tape shows 'frightened boy,'" "Teen on video: 'Help me, help me'" or "Teenage detainee pleads for help, tells of torture on video; Rights group seeks immediate release." About the only one willing to say anything unpleasant about Mr. Khadr is the soldier who lost an eye in the same firefight in which Mr. Khadr is alleged to have thrown the grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer. It would be easy to denounce the treatment of David Addington and Omar Khadr as an example of moral equivalence. But moral equivalence would be a step up for David. While the operative for al Qaeda is humanized, the counsel for the vice president is demonized. Such is the temper of the times that Rep. William Delahunt (D., Mass.) felt free to joke during recent hearings that he was sure al Qaeda was watching -- and was "glad they finally have the chance to see you." And so it goes. Reasonable people can disagree with David, and many did. But the aim here is not reasonable debate. The aim is to close debate by shouting accusations so often that they become accepted. Thus memos that are mostly about a commander-in-chief's legal authority are now routinely described as "torture memos." Thus the drumbeat for hearings on "war crimes." And thus the Washington Post column on David's congressional testimony, where he is described "hunched" and said to have "barked," "growled" and "snarled" -- language you would use to describe an animal. For these purposes, David makes a convenient villain. For one thing, outside the Beltway he is relatively unknown, which feeds the aura of conspiracy; one documentary presented his photo as though it were a rare shot of the Yeti. More to the point, David does not leak to the press, in sharp contrast to many of his adversaries. I am thinking in particular of the "former high-ranking administration lawyer" who figures so prominently (and so anonymously) in the New Yorker profile that did so much to cast David as some sort of cartoon. In his own book, Jack Goldsmith -- former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and perhaps David's greatest critic -- put it this way: "Our sharp disagreement over the requirements of national security law and the meaning of the imponderable phrases of the U.S. Constitution was not a fight between one who loves the Constitution and one who wants to shred it." Mr. Goldsmith went on to say that "whether and how aggressively to check the terrorist threat, and whether and how far to push the law in so doing, are rarely obvious" -- and that for all their fights, David is a man is who acted "in good faith" to serve his country. It's a tribute to our society that even amid a terrible war we are capable of seeing the humanity of an enemy raised and trained to hate and kill us. Some of us are still waiting for that same presumption of humanity to be extended to the good men and women doing their imperfect best to keep us safe. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Khadr is being peddled as a clone of Africa's "child soldiers." The factual narrative of the murder by Khadr is as follows: 1. US troops entered an al-Qaeda compound, and acted to secure same; there wasn't a major firefight. 2. A Medic would normally only enter a "clear" zone, however, that might not always be the case. When the Medic entered, Khadr - who understood every word of English - hid behind a wall and waited for an opportunity to make a kill with the grenade that he held in hand. 3. given every opportunity to surrender and accept US custody, he tossed a grenade with knowledge that doing so would cause the death of a US soldier. 4. without further arms for aggression, he was seized and taken into custody. 5. every al-Qaeda terrorist took a blood oath (bayat) to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Umar, under text that put the testator under obligation to make jihad to the death. Clearly, Khadr understood the oath and both gave same with the same knowledge of an adult, and carried it out as would an adult. Is the above narrative true or false? I have little doubt, given incontravertible facts. There are several witnesses for the prosecution. Put the little terrorist on trial as an adult. It is foolish to let this issue float. The Canadian tape was released by judges who wanted an international audience to hear American soldiers accused of "torture." That is BS. The "Standard Operating Procedures" used at Delta Camp, Gitmo are on the internet. Frankly, I find them inept at best, and worthy of the terrorist derision that they received, at worst. Further, I have seen a UK production, "Road to Guantanamo Bay" which featured 4 UK muslims who were captured with Taliban and sent to Gitmo; none claimed to have been tortured. Captured al-Qaeda documents disclose standing orders that bind captives to make claims of torture, in order to engage the dhimmi-equivocators. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2008-07-23 06:06 |