Stop Calling Them ‘Terrorists’!
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While everyone was busy eulogizing the Republican Party, it reverted back to Rovian form and managed a huge PR victory on the Hill this week. Repeat a lie enough — and stridently enough — and it becomes the truth. The opposition, also true to form, buckles.
Democrats folded like two-dollar beach chairs over the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility on Tuesday, and effectively forced President Obama to pivot on one of his first official — and possibly bravest – revocations of Bush Administration policy since taking office. Setting into motion the closure of the troubled detainee camp, a legal thicket and human eyesore fraught with evidence of torture and abuse growing everyday, was as symbolic as it was practical. The symbolism of this political defeat, coupled with the resurrection military commissions, and the awkward flip-flop on releasing abuse photos last week, will hurt Obama’s mantle of transformative “change agent” more than anything he has done in the last 100+ days of his tenure.
In the end, Obama could not “transcend” — as was promised, endlessly — post-9/11 politics as usual in Washington, which is all about fear and manipulation, convincing everyone that there is a missing hijacker behind every bush on Mayberry Street. And repeating a lie enough to make it the truth.
Which is exactly what Republicans did to cow Obama and his weak sister Democrats on the Hill this week — by repeating the word “terrorist” at every chance regarding the Gitmo detainees, even when they know it doesn’t legally apply to even half of them. We know at this point that out of the 240 detainees currently on the island, 60 were cleared of any wrongdoing by the last administration and are just languishing there in a sort of limbo and 80 others have yet to be tried in whatever court the administration finally settles on. According to Sec. Def. Bob Gates, that leaves 50 to 100, who cannot be charged with terrorism but won’t be released because they are supposedly too much of a risk. That leaves how many convicted “terrorists”? Three.
But Republicans recognized early on that this was a winning issue and that Democrats would fall over with the slightest breeze. Turns out it didn’t take much –just some consistent windbaggery helped along by the pliant media who love to give A-team demagogues like Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich a platform and wide berth on this and every other national security issue. Democrats even ceded their best card in the deck: the 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared of any wrongdoing by the Bush Administration and are now appealing to the Supreme Court for their release from Gitmo. They remain imprisoned because they cannot be sent back to a certain death sentence in China. They symbolize all that is wrong the the Bush-era prison camp. But Republicans on the Hill were effective in making them indistinguishable from al Qaeda.
“So the Obama administration has decided to set the Uighurs loose in America. Most likely, the lucky community that will soon be hosting the Uighurs is a neighborhood near you: Fairfax Country Virginia, where there is already a sizable (non-terrorist) Uighur community.But the Obama administration’s plan for the Uighurs doesn’t stop there. At Guantanamo Bay, the Uighurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bared arms appear and hurling them across the room.Perhaps understandably, the Obama administration believes the Uighurs will need help getting adjusted to northern Virginia society, in which women with bared arms have been known to appear.”
Stop calling them terrorists. Take the word “terrorist” out of the equation and you level the playing field, with a chance the discussion might become a healthy and realistic legal debate, not a hyperbolic melee over wild-eyed evildoers breaking out of the local courthouse or worse, settling into the condo next door.
Instead, Republican senators upped the ante yesterday, introducing legislation prohibiting the release of any detainee – innocent or not — on American soil, because, as the sterling Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham pointed out, “immigration laws prohibit the release of a terrorist operative within the United States.”
Democrats reacted to this obvious stagecraft by denying Obama the $80 million he asked for to close the infamous facility by the end of year, employing the pathetic excuse that the administration didn’t have a “plan.” So they torpedoed the entire thing in one fell swoop. “The feeling was at this point we were defending the unknown,” [Democratic Sen.Richard] Durbin explained to the press. “We were being asked to defend a plan that isn’t announced.”
Go grab a tissue, Durbin, and a grip. This same crew has no problem handing over the rest of the $92 billion request for continued war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. How much has the administration been grilled about their plans for that? About as much as Democrats grilled President Bush every time he came calling for more war funding. Not much.
There you have it. Republicans winning by taking cheap shots, Democrats pathetically squeamish as ever. And Obama, transcending none of it, leaving the integrity and strength of the American spirit flagging, and compromised.
Filed under: Uncategorized, War
I think they should be released under one condition. They go to where ever Kelly Vlahos lives. And stay there. After all a guy like Khalid Muhammad was just a happy go lucky lad when he was picked up by the Bush/Hitler war machine. Which was just a branch of ZOG, right guys.
I’m also curious why the Iranians are still working on long range missiles and nuclear weapons. After all, since the warmonger Bush is out. And the “black messiah” has arrived. I don’t understand it. Someone please enlighten me.
Wow. A five sentence response that manages to shoehorn in every mindless talking-point issued from GOP Central while avoiding anything like a rational argument.
Wingnuts are – so – frikking predictable.
[...] Kelley Vlahos at TAC: Which is exactly what Republicans did to cow Obama and his weak sister Democrats on the Hill this week — by repeating the word “terrorist” at every chance regarding the Gitmo detainees, even when they know it doesn’t legally apply to even half of them. We know at this point that out of the 240 detainees currently on the island, 60 were cleared of any wrongdoing by the last administration and are just languishing there in a sort of limbo and 80 others have yet to be tried in whatever court the administration finally settles on. According to Sec. Def. Bob Gates, that leaves 50 to 100, who cannot be charged with terrorism but won’t be released because they are supposedly too much of a risk. That leaves how many convicted “terrorists”? Three. [...]
Huh? Is Khalid Muhammad a Uighur?
I wonder when we’re going to get a political class and media that addresses issues honestly, rather than in superficial partisan talking points. It seems too easy for people to forget that underlying these issues are real people, who (in the case of the Uighurs) have been improsoned for 7 years without trial and, ultimately, without reason.
This is really discouraging.
[...] May 20, 2009 by Lee Well, what else is new? The American Conservative’s indispensable Kelley Vlahos on the Gitmo mess. [...]
This is so refreshing to hear some rationality coming from the right. I know there are some sharp folks over there, but all the noise is being made by the Fox News, and other, fear lovers, and I’ve been looking for some actual rational conservatives.
Pearlman can be counted on for demagoguery, cynical and propagandistic manipulation of language, and dishonest argumentation. All things conservatives used to associate with the Left, but which became tried and true tools of “the Right” under Bush II. So there are lies, damn lies and “conservative” talking points.
And the 17 Uighars are a drop in the bucket of all the illegal Latino immigrants that Pearlman’s Bushie/Neocon buddies have let in the country since 2001.
In the meantime, Vlahos cogently dissects where we’ve been for almost 8 years. A manipulative, statist “right wing” element advancing the power of gov’t to detain without warrant, due process or habeas; and cowardly Democratic politicians unwilling to defend these old principles, despite their professed fealty to them. The Demos performance this week explains Pelosi status as knowing of torture and remaining silent. The demonization of critics in 02-04 was far worse than even now. She did know what was going on and, seeing how the Administration eviscerated critics before a pliant, fearful and mobbish public, kept quiet to keep her standing. Craven and cowardly; just as we saw this week.
Why didn’t the gov’t simply expand these facilities at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas, which is already a maximum security prison facility? We know why the Bushies didn’t, to create a fait accompli in favor of Gitmo. Why the Demos aren’t suggesting something like that is beyond me.
As people swept up in the misnamed “War on Terror,” the detainees create an opportunity for the Judiciary to make Pearlman’s fantasy a reality. Given time, the courts probably will find a way to liberate some of these people among us. This is precisely why this issue is so useful to the GOP, deep down most of us know where this is going.
The best option would be to parole them to the tribal areas of Pakistan where we can have a second chance at killing them. Clearly taking prisoners in a three sided war between us, them, and the ACLU is delusional.
I am still a mostly-left progressive, but I voted for McCain. Well, not exactly. Let me explain. I absolutely despise the Democrats, spineless and thoroughly craven as they are. So my voting strategy has become: ALWAYS VOTE AGAINST THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. ALWAYS.
Which is what I did.
McCain was a frightful joke. Palin, a wonderment of incoherence. Bush a meat puppet. Cheney a death-worshipping psychopath. But Pelosi’s crowd is simply unmatched in the vileness of its unprincipled self-service. I would rather the country be speedily immolated in a McCain-Palin nuclear clusterfuck — so that we could proceed with rebuilding from the ashes — than to lay down to the fate of slow putrefaction in a cesspool of Democratic carrion feeders.
In the U.S., anyone who disagrees with the corrupt and very murderous government is a ‘terr ist’ as the bush bastard pronounced it.
and now, with the Obombaton’s latest speech, you can be indefinitely, forever incarcerated to prevent FUTURE CRIME by this cabal that took over for the last cabal.
the U.S. Constitution? Hell, apparently that is, just like bush bastard said; “is a goddamned piece of paper” and no longer the law of the land.
so we must be in “the end justifies the means” law now, right?
when we attack Iran for Israel, that’ll be when the government begins to flex it’s new ‘FUTURE CRIMES’ muscle. And that, Ms. Vlahos, will be the beginning of the end of this republic. Most of us will absolutely not stand for that shit.
Bush and his team of thugs have destroyed two countries, tortured countless innocent people, bankrupted the treasury, increased threats against the bloody homeland, and cashed in personally on an illegal war of their own invention and initiation. Cheney is the moral inferior of Saddam, let alone KSM. The Iranians have bitter experience of our meddling; we overthrew a democratically elected government and gave them the Shah, a despicable little prick who rivaled Saddam in thuggery and whose odious secret police, the Savat, were trained in the “dark” arts of torture and repression by our own intelligence services. The Iranians know better than to believe that a change in president will yield a change in policy. The United States has become a pariah state, a danger to its own people and the rest of the world. But be not afraid: our continued expansion is unsustainable, and other powers are forming alliances to counter the US bid for global domination by force. Thanks to the arrogance, ineptitude, thievery and quasi-Nazi brutality of Cheney and his pals, the “terrorists” have already won. A rag-tag gang of fundamentalist wackos — the Jerry Falwells of the Middle East — have prevailed against the greatest military power in world history. Congrats to them, and their drooling supporters.
On a related note, I’ve sometimes suggested that we need a new term to replace “suspected terrorist” or “terrorist suspect”. This is because it has so often turned out that there was no suspicion, or no basis for suspicion, that the individual is a terrorist. So, something like “alleged terrorist suspect”, or a phrase like “allegedly a suspected terrorist”, would be in order.
Carl. “Cheney is the moral inferior of Saddam, let alone KSM.” Don’t you think this is a bit of an over-statement?
SAVAT is a French martial art. SAVAK was the Shah’s secret police. No one had to train any Persian group in the art of torture. They’ve been perfecting it for thousands of years.
Regarding the Shah, we deposed the Shah’s father to prevent Iran from joining the Axis. Do you regret that covert action as well, or as much?
The Shah did much good, and worked in the spirit of Atatürk to bring his people into the twentieth century. SAVAK could be brutal but the Shah, like most monarchs, killed far fewer of “his” people as his replacement did.
Bill Pearlman, May be in order to be enlighten you should try to see what americans are doing in the countries they went to liberate ?
I mean what great democracy they introduced this civilized americans have bring to this back wards countries who may be they have thousand of years of civilizations but to the americans that can claim at least 150 years of existence and if we want to be more fair they had a real united nation if you want to call it that after they finished killing all the right full owners of the land to steal their land and they called savages and then they had to kill each other for the spoils of war so lets say they been as a nation with great civilization and a world envied democracy for what ? a whole 100 years? so they proceed to export this democracy to the rest of the world by all means necessary like iron and fire? By the way the system in your country it is not a DEMOCRACY so it is advised here to search and learn what actually is. A Hint USA Inc.
And what great democracy have they exported. killing women and children raping children and then killing them as according to the leaders of this great liberators and bringers of democracy the poor soldiers who commit all this democratic actions they have psychological issues due to what they are forced to do in order for the muslim terrorist to forced into step with what they bringing to them. Kind of our way or the highway lets say only in this case the cemetery.
Not to mention the mercenaries they brought in to help them in this great effort to rape the country of everything it has before concentrating to the individual. and in full cooperation with the soldiers on the ground did all the work destroying and looting a whole nation of everything that could be lifted and carried away.
In short my friend Pearlman to me at least it is obvious that the Iranians want nothing of what americans are exporting and it be reasonable observing what americans are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan they already liberated and the other efforts of the liberation the Israeli friends of them try to give the Palestinians that like their over seas brothers and with the aid of England also liberated the land from the Palestinians very much in the same fashion the settlers in america liberated it from the savages living their before the white man arrive kind of killing them and stealing everything…… why you so surprised that a free nation has the need to arm himself against such liberators and protect their women and children?
Or you think that only americans have such right and you actually believe what they brainwashed all of you with? And remember my bright friend with such intelligent attempt to sound intelligent. I have enlighten you if you have the brains that is to understand what I wrote here and have a thinking span longer than few seconds to think about what I wrote here.
And remember not who ever americans decide it can defend itself against them can, we of the rest of the world have a deferent opinion of what you have and guess what we are much more than you and we have the ability not only to think for ourselves but also we know not only to say no more and make a stand for what we actually believe but also hit back as hard we receiving. The illusion of the american dream have expired a very long time ago among the thinking people of this world and now all is left is the realization that since its birth US of A has none stop been waging war committing 100 times the atrocities they accuse Hitler has committed and my advice is learn the real history of this world you live in and your countries before you ask a question again actually start by learning who the capital of the state you live in actually is and proceed from there .
Have a very nice day from the little we know your federal government will make sure will not last long but hey enjoy it while you still can.
hM ……………………… i see my answers are not posted and for a moment I began to think here is a web page where free speech is well come oh well.