Jihadist Jawad was caught in act

Both policy realities and military realities were shortchanged in today's Denver Post editorial, "The Reality of Closing Gitmo." Here's the link. To start with, policywise, the editors' admonition that “there should be no excuses” for failure to quickly shut down Gitmo is ridiculous, and flies in the face of both logic and international law. The Post editorial states: "The detainees should be properly adjudicated. If they can’t be charged, they must be freed." This is hogwash. The detainees at Gitmo are not simply common criminals; they are enemy combatants, subject to the laws of war (not criminal code) and may be detained until the cessation of hostilities. Holding these enemy combatants indefinitely, and the Gitmo facility itself, is fully compliant with international law, as noted in an Obama administration report (see my earlier post, It’s Official: Gitmo complies with Geneva Rules).

The Post editorial goes from debatable to irresponsible, however, in its characterization of the case of Mohammed Jawad, accusing the government of misdeeds “in the handling of the case of an Afghan held since he was a teenager on what Huvelle says is mostly hearsay evidence and on confessions gained through torture by Afghan captors. Mohammed Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade that seriously wounded two U.S. servicemen and a translator in Kabul.”

As it happens, I know a little bit about that case. I was deployed in Afghanistan at the time it occurred, just before Christmas 2002 (December 17th). The “two U.S. servicemen” wounded in the attack were from my unit at the time, the 5th Battalion 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the Colorado Army National Guard.

The “two U.S. servicemen” wounded are not some faceless statistics (although Mohammed Jawad did his best to change that). They have names (and since it was reported at the time - including in Colorado newspapers - I can mention them here): SFC (Sergeant First Class) Michael Lyons, and SFC Christopher Martin. Their wounds were severe: SFC Martin almost bled to death from his leg wound, and had it not been for the alertness and skill of our unit’s medical personnel, might very well have died.

Incidentally, Mohammed Jawad was captured, at the scene, by local citizens (shopkeepers) outraged that an outsider (Jawad was not from Kabul) would attack “our” Americans (despite what you may have heard, at the time we were there, we were VERY popular with the locals for bringing peace, security, and yes, lots of American dollars to the Afghan capital city). Jawad was turned over to Afghan forces for a VERY brief period of time before being taken into custody by our Soldiers; allegations of “confessions gained through torture by Afghan captors” are baseless.

Post editors did a disservice to SFC Lyons, SFC Martin, and every Soldier in the Colorado Army National Guard with this inaccurate and misleading editorial.

Focus on jihadists, not DC gunman

The real danger of the shooting in DC will be the moral equivalence struck by the media between this lone nut and Islamic terrorists. This incident will be used to validate the recent statement by Janet Napolitano on the “Threat of Right-Wing Extremism”. For CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN, it will be six of one, half a dozen of the other. Thus, to serve one's country is to be put on a suspicion list by the DHS. After all, the man arrested in Washington DC was "another of those veterans" -- having served in World War II over 60 years ago! The key feature that’s intentionally glossed over is the magnitude of the subversion by the Islamists in the United States in comparison with the “white supremacy” groups. Documents outlining the vast scope of the Saudi funded Islamist efforts are basically ignored! As if one elderly 88 year old is equivalent to a quarter of a million black prison converts to Islam, many voicing hatred of America and white people!

As was said before, the “shooter” in Washington DC is 88 years old. The question one has to ask is this: what can be done to an 88 year old man? Life imprisonment? The death penalty? The man has already exceeded the average life expectancy! In either case, he will leap into his grave laughing!

Obama's harsh retribution

When the word retribution is talked about amongst friends, family, or co-workers, it does not have a positive connotation. According to Webster, retribution means something given or exacted in recompense. With all its harshness, this is the only word I can think of that does justice to what the Obama administration is doing by releasing very sensitive information from the CIA about interrogation techniques used on terrorists. I still have not heard a compelling reason as to why the Obama administration felt compelled to divulge this information.

To actually have the gumption to consider prosecuting former Bush administration officials is unprecedented. If this is such a forward looking administration why must they continue to look back on the “mistakes” of the past administration?

I wonder how Americans would feel if they knew these interrogation methods saved their lives from further attacks. Furthermore, what message does this send and what type of example does this set for future administrations?

But perhaps the most critical argument: how are people that are supposed to be working on keeping our country safe -- CIA agents, lawyers, etc. -- going to do their job effectively if they feel the constant threat of future retribution upon themselves?

Where have you gone, Tony Blair?

Tony Blair gave a speech yesterday to the Council on Global Affairs. Almost to the day ten years previously,in April 1999, Blair spoke to the same group and laid out his ideas on "liberal interventionism". At the time you may remember, NATO was actively engaged in deposing Slobodan Milosoevic in the former Yugoslavia.  The attacks on 9/11 and the war in Iraq were still to come, of course, but Blair understood then -- as he does now -- that there are cases when military intervention is necessary to defend our interests. His concept of interventionism was the basis for Blair's steadfast support of the war in Iraq in 2003, and remains a key concept in his morally-centered vision of foreign policy. In a foreign policy establishment that has recently been taken over by idealists and apologists, Blair's view reminds me of how much I miss this courageous statesman on the world's stage. It is worth reading some of Blair's speech yesterday -- courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. It lays out clearly a view of the threat of Islamic radicalism that I completely agree with, and the importance of being resolute in combating it.  It is also the antithesis of Barack Obama's personality-driven foreign policy, where the power of Obama's simple presence is supposed to tame dictators and despots into "seeing the light".

"President Obama's reaching out to the Muslim world at the start of a new American administration is welcome, smart, and can play a big part in defeating the threat we face. It disarms those who want to say we made these enemies, that if we had been less confrontational they would have been different. It pulls potential moderates away from extremism.

But it will expose, too, the delusion of believing that there is any alternative to waging this struggle to its conclusion. The ideology we are fighting is not based on justice. That is a cause we can understand. And world-wide these groups are adept, certainly, at using causes that indeed are about justice, like Palestine. Their cause, at its core, however, is not about the pursuit of values that we can relate to; but in pursuit of values that directly contradict our way of life. They don't believe in democracy, equality or freedom. They will espouse, tactically, any of these values if necessary. But at heart what they want is a society and state run on their view of Islam. They are not pluralists. They are the antithesis of pluralism. And they don't think that only their own community or state should be like that. They think the world should be governed like that.

In other words, there may well be groups, or even Governments, that can be treated with, and with whom we can reach an accommodation. Negotiation and persuasion can work and should be our first resort. If they do, that's great, which is why if Hamas were to accept the principle of a peaceful two state solution, they could be part of the process agreeing it [sic]. But the ideology, as a movement within Islam, has to be defeated. It is incompatible not with "the West" but with any society of open and tolerant people and that in particular means the many open and tolerant Muslims."

This should be required reading in the salons of Europe, the halls of the UN and the corridors of the White House. It is critical for our security that we are able to speak openly and honestly about the nature of the threats arrayed against us. Diplomacy has its place, but comes with very real limits when interests, values and ideology are diametrically opposed. And while the left may believe that we can find some "rapport" and "accommodation" with Islamic radicals who seek to create an Islamic world, the reality is that this is a clash of civilizations that will have only one winner.

It is "us" or "them". This Blair understands. Pity that our president doesn't get it.

Giving peace a chance

Bill Kristol's piece today in the The Weekly Standard is a must-read for those who believe that the Obama Administration is playing fast and loose with our security. In the wake of the decision to release the details about our interrogation techniques during the Bush presidency, he quotes the current head of the CIA, Admiral Dennis Blair's attempts to provide some "perspective" to the decision to release this information: "(After 9/11) we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy we were dealing with, and our every effort was focused on preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain critical information from captured al Qaida leaders, and requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods. The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged the harsher methods to be legal.

"Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines."

News Flash! It's a bright, sunny SAFE April, 2009! Peace is at hand!

For those who have been paying attention, a familiar pattern is emerging. The Obama Administration puts a high premium on symbols that are designed to show liberalism's kinder, gentler side. It has eliminated the term "war on terror" in favor of "overseas contingency operations" and has decided that even the word "terrorism" should be dropped in favor of "man-caused disasters". That's right: terrorism -- the brutal act of murder in the name of radicalism -- is now on par with global warming, globalization and other man-made problems.

Now in an effort to appease the left -- which is always extremely sensitive to the way things look and sound -- it has decided to let us (and the terrorists -- er, the purveyors of man-caused disasters) know that we will never use the techniques of enhanced interrogation again. For Obama and his merry appeasers, the mea culpa has become de rigueur: "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history" said the president in his statement announcing the release of the interrogation details. That's right: to this president, exposing murderers to loud music, cold temperatures and harmless bugs is dark and painful. I wonder if Daniel Pearl, beheaded by Khalid Sheik Muhammad (one of those "tortured") would agree?

It's all too much to stomach, really. The left again shows naivete in its understanding of the enemy we face by apologizing for tactics that have been a vital and necessary component of keeping the nation safe. Of course, those on the left never thought we were at war to begin with, so the change in tone and nomenclature is really more than a rebuke of George Bush. It is designed to right the terrible wrongs done to all those detainees caught up in the path of American imperialism. 

Do you think the purveyors of man-caused disasters will also give peace a chance?