After recently visiting Gitmo, Mark Steyn writes a column focusing only on the positive side of treatment there. But in the course of his seemingly one-sided presentation, he makes a thought-provoking observation (tip to Betsy):
If I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new Qurans in each unoccupied cell. To reassure incoming inmates that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Qurans are hung from the walls in pristine surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of the United States government to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry.
When I put this point to Adm. Harris, he replied, "That's an interesting question," and said the decision had been made long before he arrived. He explained that they had a good working system whereby whenever it became necessary to handle a Quran — because a weapon or illicit communication had been concealed in it — a Muslim translator would be called to the cell to perform the task. But I wasn't thinking of it in operational so much as psychological terms: What does that degree of abasement before their prejudices tell them about us?
As someone who has visited a couple dozen jails and prisons over the years (including taking my students in two small seminars to two different federal prisons), I never got the sense that I could judge what life was like from just visiting. One of my mentors, the late University of Chicago Professor Norval Morris, used to recommend that I spend a weekend locked up in Stateville, which Steve Goodman in a song once called "the charm school in Joliet." Another of Morris's proteges told me that when he did this, the inmates started hassling him — and then challenged him to tell them what he was doing there. When he said that Norval had told him to spend a weekend in prison, the inmates suddenly became friendly, assuring him that, "Any friend of Norval's is a friend of ours."
Some prisons or jails that I visited were somewhat superficially dormlike (but of course with smaller windows and more locks), like the federal prison in downtown Chicago when I visited about 1980. Some were grim on their face, such as Stateville. The only one that was just horribly oppressive on entering was the early 1970s old Cook County Jail, which was filthy and stank more than any building for human beings that I've ever been in.
Very eloquent.
In most circles, fighting accusations of violence with death-threats is so absurd that it wouldn't even be contemplated.
I am not saying that we should sell out our values. However, I really don't see how adhering to some Jim Crow-like religious laws are exemplifies our values.
How is defering to that a sign of strength? How is not calling them on it anything but weakness.
Unfortunately, those "circles" do not appear to include the people we're actually fighting.
And that even leaves aside the issue of whether other people's stupid beliefs deserve to be respected. If we were fighting an international white supremacist conspiracy, would we provide the detainees with pristine copies of the Turner Diaries?
Some choose to wear abayyas in public, simply to avoid the hassles. Others wear modest western dress, believing that American modesty is as good as Saudi modesty, even if the lines are drawn differently.
If a non-covered woman is hassled, then the Embassy steps in to sort it out.
BTW, this is only for situations outside office hours and official functions. At those times, American female diplomats are expected to wear modest American clothing, whether in the office or out of it, with no exceptions.
I am not Jewish. However, I understand that the restrictions apply to the sacred Torah scrolls, not printed versions of the Torah. (I am sure that other posters know better than I.)
I am fine with providing Koran's to prisoners. However, I would rather that it be done without pandering to our enemies bigotry.
Or does in this particular case, do we go too far for what might be an extremist belief in how to treat the Koran?
Providing Korans, like providing Bibles, is basic human decency. Providing Korans untouched by infidel hands is not.
Absurd. We should be alerting the prisoners and their co-religionists that we do not respect their religion nor accept their behavior and that they had best get about joining the civilized world. Once they've all done that, they won't have to be in prison and they can go to Borders and buy their own Korans like the decent people.
By hook or by cook, we're Americanizing them, all right!
It's one thing to respect a detainee's beliefs and give him a holy text, but the US government is turning cartwheels for an enemy that has no mercy on infidels.
As far as the Torah - printed copies of the Tanakh can be handled and sold to anyone. The actual scrolls themselves are a different matter - no one (except scribes) touch them with their hands. This is both due to respect and because the scrolls are extremely delicate. I bet even scribes use latex gloves these days.
Jake: Oh it was bad. Thursday night they'd serve a wicked pepper steak.
Matt: Can't be as bad as the cabbage roll at the Terre-Haute Federal Penn.
Elwood: Or that oatmeal at the Cook County slammer.
Matt: Well, they're all pretty bad.
Are they just taking the piss regarding excessive sterility?
Or is the juxtaposition just supposed to be a profoundly threatening and/or disturbing image? If I found a surgical mask in my cell, I would quite reasonably conclude that surgical procedures are not uncommon in that institution.
Is it safe?
Maybe we should do like Sheriff Joe and feed 'em baby food. And dress 'em in pink unmentionables. Offer 'em hot dogs.
After all, the Geneva Conventions that everybody is so het up about specifically says that you must feed your prisoners what you feed your own forces.
They'll come around.
as for the sterilized book issue, my instict is that the "gesture" is as much to keep the detainees calmer and more cooperative as it is to express any compassion.
People, and especially the government, shouldn't be in the buisness of favoring religion over non-religion but this is exactly what giving arbitrary random religious beliefs more weight than other strong preferences amounts to. I have no doubt if someone in any prison with an OCD disorder who demanded that no one else touch his mattress springs or some similarly random preference would be given the same allowance that someone with a random preference for religious reasons would be given.
This having been said I'm all for doing this in gitmo. There are very compelling PR reasons to show respect for muslim beliefs. Gitmo is bad enough PR we hardly need more people to become terrorists because they see this as a muslim anti-muslim battle.
I don't really care if someone sees accomodating their religious beliefs as weakness. This isn't some schoolyard fight to see who can impress people as being tougher. Frankly I would much rather the US be seen as weak kneed christians who are too secular/timid to demand equal treatment for their religion than as a strong tough christian nation standing up to islam. The later is going to promote more extremism and terrorism directed against us.
Remember the group we are fighting does not have secular values. The idea of being fair by treating different religions the same doesn't make sense to them. If you see islam as the true description why would you think you need to give false descriptions of the world similar treatment?
Hell I don't understand how any religious people support the concept of religious equality. I mean just like science religion claims to be a true description of the world. Just as we think it would be absurd to give false science equal public weight as true science why wouldn't a religious person feel the same about their religion. The only explanation I can see is if they are somehow unsure that their religion is really correct or if their religion directly mandates tolerance so being intolerant is in fact being tolerant.
"It's one thing to respect a detainee's beliefs and give him a holy text, but the US government is turning cartwheels for an enemy that has no mercy on infidels."
Of course, even the administration has conceded that some of the "enemy" at Gitmo is innocent.
"It's one thing to respect a detainee's beliefs and give him a holy text, but the US government is turning cartwheels for an enemy that has no mercy on infidels."
Of course, even the administration has conceded that some of the "enemy" at Gitmo is innocent.
Don't be absurd. The defense of Piss Christ had nothing to do with respecting Christianity, nor of arguing that art institutes or Serrano are respectful or weak. It was all about ASSERTING the right to speak, even/EXPECIALLY when insulting. Insults to others' beliefs are signs of strength, self-evidently.
Unless you mean by 'in most circles' something like "in leftist circles when the argument is convenient (even if in contradiction to previously-made arguments)", your statement is nothing more than a convenient bromide that you don't even believe.
Steve
Read the whole thing
Odd that you don't find several commentors' comparison of the Koran to Mein Kampf equally offensive.
Since we actually need whatever information these prisoners have, then we should focus on getting that information, not on debates about how well they're treated. So I say treat them so well that they'll talk until we tell 'em to shut up.
Each prisoner gets two rooms. One room is the same as the current cell, complete with sanitized Koran and other amenities. The other room is the privilege. It will either be accessable or not, depending on the prisoner's cooperation in giving up information.
It has a sumptuous array of food, some of which is Halal and some not, clearly marked. The best coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages are available. There is a TV with every channel imaginable, the shopping channels, porn channels, education channels, movie channels, Fox, CNN, ESPN, and every non-USA channel on satellite, the whole nine yards. Books of every work ever translated into the prisoner's language are available. If the prisoner wants something specific, he can ask and he should get it if it is possible to provide. Another KFC bucket o' chicken? No problem. Would you like some beer with that, or a nice Riesling?
Give them a few weeks to get used to the second room, then start with small, easy and unimportant questions. One act of insubordination, or one refusal to answer a question, and the second room is locked until they answer. Back to reading the Koran and dreaming of the good life in the cave with Osama. But the privilege room is always visible through a small window in the cell.
Rinse and repeat until they have nothing further useful to reveeal.
Was it in Saudi Arabia that the "holy book" was being destroyed by the thousands, something having to do with wahabbi interpretations? So when does the book become, or stop, being holy?
It's all about harassing the guards, which I suspect is known by most, possibly all of us.
The Times did a piece in the Sunday magazine a couple of weeks ago about the battle going on inside Gitmo between prisoners and the guards for control and influence. Think about it! And while doing so imagine a like battle going on in every prison, state or federal, every city, town and county jailhouse in America. Can't do it, can you?
Perhaps a few of those who sympathize with the prisoners would feel a little different if they had a bag of feces flung in their faces, a routine occurance in this hellhole of prisoner abuse. Then again maybe it wouldn't make a diference, some people are adaptable.
Of course I can. Not a lot of experience with the corrections system, I assume?
Results are relevant. The important question is what effect this treatment has on the WOT, and that depends on what the prisoners and other Muslims think of it. Not what some uninvolved commenter on a blog thinks of it.
If it convinces some Muslims that the west can be rolled by a bit of rough-tough, then it has a bad effect. If it mollfies some Muslims, then it has a good effect. If it does both, the net may be for the better or for the worse.
But the issue is what they think about it, and that means wondering what and how they think, or however many "theys" there are.
IMO, kindly treatment will not mollify a goodly proportion of the Muslims around the world, since they consider it their due, the base that infidels owe them. It's not a gift or magnanimity.
On the other hand, they know we have the power to make the prisoners' lives miserable, as Muslim jailers surely would. But it looks as if we lack the will. And what lesson does that teach?
The gratitude for infidel sacrifice on behalf of Muslims, say, in the Balkans, is notable for its complete and utter non-existence. To think there would be any gratitude for treating prisoners nicely wouldn't seem any more likely.
It's like us allowing anti-Jesus jokes and cartoons but not anti-Mohammed stuff. We're showing them that we know they are right but we are so stupid we don't care.
They just don't understand that our freedoms are more important to us than any religious rules.
What we need to do is tell them they are no better, and in many ways worse than other religions and we will do what the hell we want, and Mohammed and their Allah are impotent to stop us. Once they realize that their religion is no better than others they will stop dying for it.
Would you care to elaborate on your source for this little gem, please?
Well, maybe you can come up with a less inflammatory example of an absurdly partisan "observer" unable to find evidence of abuse (which he had neither desire nor, given his lack of relevant foreign languages, the ability to find) at a detention camp where reality—we already know—has been something else. I can't. Indeed, to fool the Red Cross visitors to Thereisenstadt required a serious deception to create the "Potemkin Extermination Camp". Steyn? Not so much. Not so much at all.
Considering how popular Mein Kampf and Jew-bashing is in the Islamic world, that's not necessarily an invalid comparison.
It's possible one might just wish to shoot for a higher standard than that.
A: XXX is as bad as (insert contemptable person/place/thing)
B: No he's not, for reasons 1,2, &3
A (or A's likeminded buddy): That's your standard?!? (aforementioned terrible thing)?!? Don't you think you should aim higher?
Oh you mean because these people are terrorists, right?
How about a trial and a conviction before we decide what they are?
And, just in case you are so daft that you think that their arrest is somehow proof of the their evil, you might want to reflect on the fact that more than 1/2 of the people originally detained at Gitmo have been released.
As far as how I look at this, put me down in Richard Aubrey's column.
Logicnazi gets it wrong when he says it isn't a Muslim-antiMuslim fight. The Muslims think it is. Me, too.
So because our enemies are morons, we're supposed to be morons too?
But even that response would miss the point. Osama is not our "enemy." He is a criminal who successfully conspired to murder thousands of Americans. His nutball theories are not of any more interest to me than was the Unabomber's manifesto.
Osama has attracted relatively few people to his actual organization, but he has a relatively broad swath of support, tolerance, or neutrality in many Muslim states. Those people are not studying his pronouncements as if he were some Islamic authority (he's not). Rather, they are dissatisfied with their lot in life &prone to blame America for their ills, in part b/c of our supposed "crusader" mentality.
Some of these people, obviously, wouldn't be appeased if Bush converted to Islam on a live al-Jazeera broadcast. But not everyone is so committed. And the more we can get out there that we do, in fact, respect Islam, the more chance there is that we'll be better regarded, in a conflict where how you're regarded is, in fact, a very big deal.
Now, do details like Qur'an-handling matter, when we're also legalizing torture, creating kangaroo courts, throwing out the most cherished human rights where furriners are concerned, and invading Muslim countries on bogus evidence? Well, no, probably not very much.
But if we're doing *anything* halfway right, this is not the time to discontinue it, because it affects the pathetically fake tough-guy stance of frauds like Mark Steyn.
My point is: it is one thing to give a detainee a Koran allow them to read and practice their religion/mythilogical beliefs.
But it entirely different matter to require the federal government to practice Islam. That is exactly what the DoD is doing when they issue orders how to handle a Koran, which hand to manipulate the Koran with, which shelf the Koran must go on. All of the above mentioned directives are found either in the Koran or Hadiths. Our government is practicing Islam.
Applying rational thought to irrational convictions is irrational. Extremists have no respect for others' respect of their beliefs. Respect must be mutual to have any validity. Respecting the detainees humanity is only for our own consciences.
you might want to reflect on the fact that more than 1/2 of the people originally detained at Gitmo have been released. "
And you might want to reflect on the fact some have been recaptured.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase
But I'm not convinced by this "stronger horse" stuff, to the extent that it's a license to treat prisoners badly or (if you take the logical extension, an argument in favor of treating prisoners badly. First, see what Anderson wrote. Also, by that logic, Abu Gharib should have really shown those bad guys who the strong, tough horse is, right? And at the margins is should have helped, right?
I'm not comparing what happened at A.G. to what we do with Korans, but the idea that making life miserable for prisoners will make the enemy back down seems both morally and practically suspect.
Denial about what? Am I in denial about the existence of an over-arching war of civilizations? Maybe. That isn't the point of this thread. About conditions at Guantánamo? Steyn certainly is in denial. Was he allowed to tour all parts of the facility without notice? Was he allowed to interview prisoners of his own choosing without observation? Without such absolutely-elementary acts, his 'description' of the facilities is 100 percent P.R. bullshit. In fact, denial is not the right word. He is indifferent to the conditions there, except insofar as he can participate in the War on Terror as a useful idiot. Much the same should be said of people on this thread who answer questions about what the United States does with what Al Qaeda does. None of our parents accepted that explanation for playground misbehavior.
Actually, I don't think if that is right. I understand that Islam says that everything that occurs is the will of Allah. So, if Muslims are suffering, it must be the will of Allah. Now, why would Allah want Muslims to suffer? Well, one possible answer is that Muslims are not faithful enough.
In other words, America is the cause of their ills only as much as Allah allows America to be the cause of their ills. Muslims take different views on how they can rectify this problem. For his part, Bin Laden believes that, by practicing Jihad against America and the West, Allah will not only bless Muslims with victory but in other ways as well.
Treating the prisoners badly isn't the point. The point was, what was the effect of treating them with kid gloves?
My opinion is that it is, in terms of our enemies, slightly negative, in that it shows we can be intimidated by Islam's tough guys. Now, it's obvious to all the Professionally Incredibly Wonderful that we do terrible things to the Gitmo gangsters, and that our great treatment of them is the result of the aforesaid P.I.W.'s insistence.
But my point is, whatit looks like from the Islamist's point of view. And my conclusion is that it doesn't look like magnanimity in strength, particularly when it's obvious that some of our treatment of the Gitmo Goons enables their resistance and that we know it but lack the will to stop it.
The omnipotent US DOD brought low by the whinings of the US liberals who are terrified of the Islamists. Their view, I should say, not mine. But not far from mine.
Just wondering, were you aware that when Mr. Steyn wanted to observe the conditions in post-Saddam Iraq in 2003 he went there by himself, with no bodyguard?
Now, you could argue that Mr. Steyn was foolhardy. You could argue that conditions in Iraq have deteriorated since then and his analysis of the situation is no longer valid. You could even argue that Mr. Steyn purposely witheld facts from his story to make it look less dangerous than it was.
But I don't think you can argue that Mr. Steyn is a coward, or that he's not willing to put his money where his mouth is.
Well, I'll be careful not to argue that, then.
What I said is that he's a fool, and a fraud, and that he adopts a pathetically fake tough-guy stance. I could google up numerous examples of Steyn's gibberish being taken apart, but I am trying to bill some hours this week after my immersion in the "torture threads" last week.
Still, here (via Greenwald) is Steyn in May 2003, mocking those who actually thought we might be in Iraq for a year or more ... and here's Djerejian's wonderful takedown/rant on Steyn's "Great Persian Campaign." Fool; fraud; pathetically fake tough-guy stance. All well-documented.
(My god, I spelled Greg's name right on the 1st try ... must spend less time on Internet ....)
I love the way lefties have now taken to defining deviancy UP. If only there were more "fools" and "frauds" like Mark Steyn. It certainly would be nice to find the world populated by witty and insightful fools like Steyn--imagine how wonderfully clever and talented the smart folks would be! Similarly, if all of our "frauds" were merely occasionally though unintentionally wrong (like Steyn), how nice would that be?
I wonder sometimes about the VC's reading habits, based on the proffers of people like Steyn, Krauthammer, and Rauch as pundits worth contemplating, rather than stopped clocks that are correct twice a day at best.
A confirmed lefty myself, I make a point of reading a few conservative blogs (the VC, Outside the Beltway, Drezner -- used to read Tacitus, when I had the patience) to avoid groupthink.
Shame you were not successful in avoiding groupthink. You may read those blogs but you do not actually read them for understanding. You read them to pat yourself on the back and then ignore the arguments. Big difference.
No, I do not live in (or near) Colorado Springs. Why do you ask? It wasn't due to any "We know what sort of people live there" leftist groupthink, was it?
I never suggested that treating prisoners humanely was going to convince any great number of radical Islamists that the U.S. offers a superior model, and I don't believe that is true. I merely responded to the opposite suggestion, that roughing up prisoners would should show that we were the "strong horse" and have a postive impact for U.S. policy. I would also suggest there are other reasons for humane treatment.
Again, what exactly counts as "humane" treatment (or torture) can be debated. Again, I think LogicNazi had the best analysis way upthread of this particular issue.
And I echo Anderson's point about Mark Steyn and others. These folks have been so consistently wrong about Iraq (and other issues) that it's hard to take them seriously now.
And there were plenty on the Left who have been just as consistently wrong about the War on Terror.
Remember the Media hyperventilating about the "brutal Afghan winter" in 2001? The Afghanistan that was the "graveyard of superpowers" that would consume our troops like a hungry dragon? How the Northern Alliance would never be able to overthrow the Taliban? You might not, but I sure do.
Or how Robert Fisk et al predicted that we would lose thousands of troops before we even entered Baghdad in 2003? Or how it would take us months, if not years, to even get there in the first place? Or the preening Democrats such as Kerry, who were against the war before they voted for it, and then turned against it again when the going got tough?
Personally, I've been waiting to see that explosion of the mythical Arab Street that was supposed to be the biggest negative effect of the Iraqi invasion. Plus, I'm still waiting for that "imminent Iraqi Civil War" that has been "imminent" since early 2005.
Of course, let's not forget the fact that most of the American Left was wrong about the US handing over control to the Iraqis, wrong about the Iraqis going to the polls, wrong about the Sunnis participating in the electoral process, wrong about the Sunnis and Shiites forming a government together.
And I won't even mention how laughably wrong the Left was about the first Gulf War (remember Senator Wellstone's famous "nothing good will happen in America if we go to war" speech?).
Speaking of other issues, when is that secret Fitzgerald indictment of Karl Rove going to be unsealed?
Now, I'm willing to admit that the Iraq War has not gone as planned. I'm also willing to admit that many predictions of those on the Right look silly three years later. But to suggest that somehow pundits on the Right have been the only ones who have been wrong about Iraq is pure partisan hogwash.
Even in the examples you give, if Iraq isn't already in a form of civil war, it's a heck of a lot closer to that than "greeted with flowers," "last throes," etc.
But we're not going to get anywhere with the general "is the left more correct than the right, or vice-versa?" My point was about Steyn and Iraq, and I stand by it.
"My Struggle" and Jihad (working on the conquest of the Dar al Harb) are rhetorically similar constructions. Jihad is one of the Five Pillars of Islam as set forth in the Koran. Mein Kampf is a more personal crie de cour but both are directed towards world domination.
"They hate us because of our freedom." That is, they hate us because we refuse "submission" -- in Arabic "Islam".
Some were attacked.
I would remind you that the Symbionese Liberation Army kept parts of California hopping, all dozen of them. It doesn't take many to make trouble.
Roughing up prisoners isn't going to make us look like the strong horse. This is a coin with only one side. Front, no obverse. Doing the kid glove thing in the fashion it's being done makes us look weak.
Some were attacked.
I would remind you that the Symbionese Liberation Army kept parts of California hopping, all dozen of them. It doesn't take many to make trouble.
Roughing up prisoners isn't going to make us look like the strong horse. This is a coin with only one side. Front, no obverse. Doing the kid glove thing in the fashion it's being done makes us look weak.
Saying I'm comparing what happened with the SLA and Iraq is fundamentally dishonest. But you knew that.
However, in order to forestall another effort on your part to misrepresent what I said, I'll put it another way and you can save your time.
It only took eleven people to make things jumpy in California for some time.
For a liberal, free society to get along without much trouble, something like 99% of the population has to refrain from being buttheads at any given moment.
It doesn't take many more active buttheads to make things difficult.
The point is, which I'm sure Joseph Slater knows but hoped to obfuscate, is that what is happening in Iraq gets a good deal of ink but does't require all that many of the population to be actively involved.
Remember all those folks who insisted that the huge, great, humongous majority of Muslims just want to get through the day? Well, if that's true, then the ones left over are a tiny minority. Simple arithmetic. By definition, then, there can't be too many giving us trouble. The hope is to get the Iraqi government strong enough to remain in being while putting up with a lower level of violence, of the kind not unknown in those areas.
I hope we succeed, not least to enjoy the reactions of certain of my countrymen.
No obfuscation, and no need to repeat your point, I understood it: it doesn't take many folks to create a disturbance, which the media can then overplay. If you think that's the correct analysis for Iraq today -- a country spiraling further and further into violence, sectarian strife, and yes, civil war -- you're kidding yourself in ways posts on blogs can't correct.
To get back to the original point, I'm glad we agree that treating prisoners especially badly won't help us in combatting the problem of Islamic terrorism. And we agree that treating them humanely in and of itself won't solve the problem. We disagree about whether treating them humanely makes the problem worse. I'll stick with "no, it doesn't make it worse" as my answer.