A Little Reality Please in the War against Terror

Just because power exists does not mean that the power is used correctly or properly. A case in point is the decision by the Supreme Court dictating that an enemy on the battlefield in the war against terror is entitled to ‘prisoner of war’ status under the Geneva Convention. Liberals carry this erroneous judicial conclusion a step further and say that the Bush administration is now prevented by the court from practicing “torture” of terrorist detainees; in this they echo statements of the many critics of Bush and the Iraq war.

The liberals are wrong on many counts; not just in echoing the Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the Geneva Convention, but also in the erroneous conclusion and statements of their allied media critics. First of all, the inescapable fact is that neither the Bush administration nor our military practice ‘torture’ or inflict ‘inhumane treatment’ on the terrorist enemy found or captured in the terror war ‘battlefield’. By definition, “torture” is “the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge … or for shear cruelty”. I defy liberals and other critics to point out even one example of ‘torture’ practiced by our military or condoned by ‘the Bush administration’. The critics are blinded on this issue by their apparent hatred of President Bush.

Some claim that U.S. detainees are subjected to “inhumane treatment” which the Supreme Court in bestowing Geneva Convention treatment on captured terrorists, prohibits. Of course, unlike ‘torture’ there is no standard definition of such heinous acts. Unfortunately, the dictionary is not helpful since “inhumane” is defined as “not humane, lacking humanity, kindness, compassion, etc.” The question to the liberals is: has there ever been a war where captured enemies were treated with ‘kindnesses and ‘compassion’?

The United States has been continuously criticized for ‘inhumane treatment’ of captured terrorists, not more so than by the liberal news media in our own country; the childish treatment of prisoners in Iraq being the most ‘grievous’ example. In fact, one of our soldiers was sentenced to prison for allowing a dog to bark uncomfortably close to a terrorist. Other terrible inhumane treatments were allowing female soldiers to be in the presence of naked terrorists, disrespecting the Koran and keeping murderous terrorists in shackles while transporting them.

Detainees in Cuba are being treated better than they ever lived before their capture. Reports are that they eat better than their military guards, are given many perks, are allowed to freely practice their ‘religion’ (whereas Muslims around the world kill those that do not practice ‘Islam’) and are provided with better housing, clothing and health care than western world prisoners receive in any Islamic country; is this ‘inhumane treatment’? Furthermore, one detainee asked to not be released from Guantanamo because his life is better imprisoned in Cuba than it would be in his home Country.

Liberals say that “Not only does subjecting detainees to degrading treatment undermine our human rights efforts across the globe, but it only increases the likelihood that our own soldiers captured in combat will face the same vicious and vindictive assaults.” Who among us believes that those unfortunate captured American soldiers that were really tortured and ultimately decapitated would not have preferred to have received American-style ‘inhumane treatment’ than the treatment received at the hands of their Geneva Convention counterparts on the terrorist side? What say you liberals?