Steyn on GITMO

Saw this linked at th Volokh Conspiracy and thought they had an interesting point on one section. I'll get to that later. Let's start with his comments on Leahy.

'This is not just a bad bill," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. ''This is truly a dangerous bill." And it's not just a dangerous bill. It's also "unconstitutional" and "unconscionable" and represents the loss of the nation's "moral compass."

Wow! That's quite a lot for a humble bill on military trials for terrorist (OK, "alleged terrorist") detainees. But Vermont's lefty colossus wasn't done yet in his excoriation of the Bush administration. "Even they cannot dismiss the practices at Guantanamo as the actions of a few bad people," he continued. "Before they just did it quietly, and against the law, on their own say-so, but now they are obtaining license to engage in additional harsh techniques that the rest of the world will see as abusive, as cruel, as degrading and even as torture."

Pat Leahy fascinates me. His high moral posture strikes me as completely missing the point as to what the US is faced with in the war on terror. Of course, being from a state that has essentially no worries about being attacked by terrorists, I don't suppose he needs to be very attached to that reality. I suppose I'm going to take another strike as a "moral relativist" but how can you complain about legislation defining how to bring these terrorists to trial when you are also complaining about the lack of methods to bring them to trial? Like the rest of his ilk, I'm certain he'd be granting them full rights of all US citizens when bringing them to trial. But then there would be no trials since they weren't read their Miranda rights at the start.

Here's where Steyn makes an interesting statement.

Perhaps this is what Senator Leahy means by "abusive," "cruel," "degrading" "torture." If you're used to the Afghan health system, no doubt it's profoundly humiliating to be offered free colonoscopies every time you bend down to use the prayer mat. Nevertheless, it surely requires a perverse genius to have made the first terrorist detention camp to offer homemade Ramadan pastries a byword for horror and brutality. 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? Mulling it over since I got back, I'd go further: It seems to me that one sign this war is over is when Muslims are grown-up enough not to go to full-blown baklava nuts over other folks touching their Qurans.

If, as Leahy would have you believe, the treatment and trial of these terrorists is so vile, why do those guarding them go to such extremes to ensure that their religious views are carefully protected? Don't give me that sadly lame reasoning that it's related to international PR. GITMO has been quoted as an abomination by every Human Rights group in existence and no Muslim press organ will ever view it as anything other than a concentration camp.

I don't expect that we will see Islam being more "grown-up" anytime soon. Not any more so than any other fundamentalist religion.

As for Leahy and his ilk, they should get used to the legislation. For now it is where the majority of the US representatives have decided is the right path to justice. And it's far more justice than would be accorded any of us if we were in their hands.