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Hypocrisy of Our Ideals, Seen Through Guantanamo Lens

Elmer Smith (op-ed)
The Philadelphia Daily News
June 13, 2006

THEY SAY THAT history is written by the victors. But that ain't necessarily so.

The losers' lament is sometimes the most compelling epoch in the history of any era. Because it is written in blood and tears, it is often the most-riveting and usually the most visceral account.

History is written in varied versions from alternate perspectives for different audiences. Where some see patriotism others will see persecution. Truth, ultimately, is in the heart of the beholder.

I wonder what truth we will have written on the hearts of the people who will be reading the history of GuantanamoBay.

What will they think when they hear that three detainees have "succeeded" in killing themselves after dozens of suicide attempts by prisoners held for years without trial, without legal counsel and under conditions convicted serial killers don't have to endure here?

Will they be persuaded by these words of the Guantanamo Prison camp commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris Jr.:

"I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us," Harris said, by inmates "who have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own."

We are the victims of these suicides, he is telling us. This isn't about the inhumane treatment of "detainees" that he has just declared guilty.

The chapter Admiral Harris would write would ignore abuses that have prompted even our allies to distance themselves from the sordid history of Guantanamo and of other "black box" sites around the world where we routinely send people to be tortured in ways that we are too high-minded to do for ourselves.

The victor's version, assuming there is anything to be won by this suspension of civility, may make no mention of why a United Nations anti-torture panel has called for Guantanamo to be shuttered or how unnamed judges in secret courtrooms justify indefinite imprisonments of people who haven't even been charged.

The administration's response is that all of this - and much more that we don't know about - is done in the interest of national security. They have reason to believe, they tell us, that these men may have been part of some larger, still unspecified, plot.

Even if you accept the view of supporters of the war and of these internments, such as retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, there is reason for grave concern.

"About a third of these detainees are very dangerous," McCaffrey told NBC's "Today" show host Matt Lauer yesterday.

Let's assume that third is dangerous enough to justify holding them for four years without a trial. What about the other two thirds? And what is it about the Bill of Rights that we find so constricting in times like these? How can we keep billing ourselves as the defenders of basic freedoms around the world while withholding them at Guantanamo?

Even McCaffrey felt compelled to say that within a year or two "we have to walk away" from Guantanamo.

Why wait two years? If we have enough evidence to justify inmates' indefinite detention, let's put it to the test in a courtroom. If not, we should deport them and keep them under surveillance as potentially dangerous terrorists.

For now, while the Bush administration is still able to manage the media it's possible to scare a freedom-loving people into believing that their lives depend on this suspension of basic rights.

But a policy so wildly at variance with the freedoms we cherish will expose the hypocrisy of our ideals when seen through the long lens of history.

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