Poppycock. As best-selling author Richard Miniter recently reported in the New York Post on his return from a visit to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the Defense Department is bending over backwards to avoid any appearance of mistreatment of these unlawful enemy combatants. For example, the detainees at “Gitmo” are supplied with three square meals a day made up of foods to their liking (all “halal,” Islamic kosher, and a choice of vanilla or chocolate ice cream); expensive medical care (including colonoscopies, dental work and prostheses); extensive legal representation (an average of 2.2 lawyers for every detainee); and extraordinary latitude for the practice of their faith (for example, interrupting interrogations for prayers).
What is more, as Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the Guantanamo facility, makes clear in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published over the weekend, detainees have repeatedly attacked their guards, seeking to kill or at least maim them using improvised weapons fashioned from fans, cameras, plumbing and light bulbs. Lately, detainees who have been rewarded for good behavior with more lenient treatment have also taken advantage of their conditions to mount savage attacks on their guards. Some of their lawyers are suspected of facilitating terrorist communications.
Unfortunately, far from debunking charges of abuse and ending talk of the need to close this and other vital interrogation facilities, the coddling of prisoners at Gitmo seems to be intensifying the sanctimony of Bush administration critics. They insist on blurring the lines sensibly drawn by the Geneva Convention between prisoners of war (namely, military personnel from states parties who conform to the laws of war by wearing uniforms, displaying their arms, and adhering to an identified chain of command) and unlawful enemy combatants (who do not). And they adopt a posture of contemptuous moral superiority over those who disagree.
We need to remove the sanctimony from this debate. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about the extent of the rights that should be enjoyed by people believed to be among the most dangerous Islamofascist terrorists on the planet. Those who recognize the importance of neither compromising classified information – and the sources and methods by which it is obtained – nor making inevitable the unwarranted release of such individuals are not indifferent to human rights. Those who appreciate the need to use methods of interrogation more aggressive than those employed at Gitmo are not in favor of torture.
By the same token, those on the other side of these issues do not have an exclusive claim to morality’s high-ground. If, thanks to the absence of interrogation techniques that make detainees uncomfortable but fall well short of already prohibited torture, Americans are condemned to death (perhaps, ironically, in the course of a successful terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol), those responsible for denying our government such tools will bear a heavy moral burden.
At that juncture, of course, it will be easy enough – yea, even politically correct – to blame legislators who unilaterally disarmed America in critical ways. By that time, however, it will be too late for some of us.
So, as the Senate deliberates this week whether to adopt John McCain’s approach to detainee-related issues or the more robust version favored by President Bush, let us hold the Senator from Arizona and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle accountable. For all of our sakes, they should err on the side of protecting the national security. Congress should swiftly enact legislation that actually protects America by establishing sensible, practicable guidelines for: the use of aggressive, non-torture interrogation methods where absolutely necessary; legal protections for those charged with performing such interrogations; and the limitation, if essential to protect sources and methods of intelligence, of evidence shared with detainees in the course of their prosecution.