Obama to release photos of abuse

I thought the whole idea behind closing GITMO and releasing the interrogation crap was to make friends in the Muslim world and elsewhere, to make everyone feel nicey-nicey about us.

How does releasing these photos, photos of stuff that everyone in America thinks is an awful crime whose perpetrators have already been punished for, advance that idea?

How does it do anything at all but give our enemies another propaganda tool? How does it do anything but endanger American (and since they tend to kill each other when bad, bad pictures come out of the West) Muslims?

29Victor on April 24, 2009 at 1:57 PM

Releasing these photos seems like appropriate behavior to the Left because they are Citizens Of The World. Obama clearly sees himself that way, and most liberals would consider it a compliment to be named as such, not an insult. As a Citizen Of The World, Obama feels an obligation to document the crimes and abuses of George Bush, who was not his predecessor, but something akin to a defeated insurgent. Obama believes his betters in Europe will celebrate his openness and thank him for more evidence they can file away for that war crimes trial of Bush and Cheney they like to daydream about.

The effect of photos like this on the Muslim world is irrelevant, because as any liberal will tell you, Muslims are not responsible for their own words or actions – they only react to the evils of the West, which therefore has an obligation to conduct itself in the most pristine, saintly fashion possible, until the Islamic fascists realize how kind and noble we are, and stop murdering us. If we could only treat every terrorist like a presumed-innocent criminal defendant, extending the highest courtesies and comfort to them, along with the finest legal talent and unlimited access to the media so they’d have a chance to air their grievances against America… we’d be able to release those pampered terrorists back into their culture like little hope-and-change bombs, detonating in showers of compassion and scattering wallet-sized copies of the Geneva Conventions across all of Araby.

Obama will be pleased to see these CIA interrogation photos turning up at Very Serious Meetings of the United Nations, where he remind everyone that someone else was in charge when all this happened. He can wait for them to pat him on the back for his obedience to the Global Community, then issue a sternly worded letter of condemnation to the departed Bush Administration – you know, the kind of letter Western liberals regard as tremendously significant, and which despots and murderers use as toilet paper.

Remember this about liberals, and pass it along to anyone you know who ever considers voting for a Democrat president again: they do *not* believe this country has an intrinsic right to defend itself, act to prevent attacks, or retaliate against aggression. They are deeply committed to the idea that terrorism is a criminal action, to be investigated and prosecuted by law enforcement under the watchful eye of the Global Community. They do not believe the use of pure military force is ever justified, not for an advanced, socialized nation. Remember that, no matter how they later scrambled to hail Afghanistan as “the good war” once it was politically necessary to do so, they initially opposed even a military retaliation against the Taliban. They think terrorists should be arrested and prosecuted, with exquisite attention to proper jurisprudence, and they are perfectly comfortable with the idea that some of the terrorists would therefore walk free on legal technicalities. War is harmful to children and other living things. Violence is the last resort of someone who has lost an argument… and liberals never think the argument is over.

The only thing that will make liberals reconsider this enlightened position is when a duly exalted leader of the Party, with the appropriate Absolute Moral Authority, designates a foreign leader as “the next Hitler.” Then it’s okay to bomb the crap out of them from thirty thousand feet, because they have lost their membership in The Global Community, and can be disposed of like vermin. Only properly credentialed liberals, with the consent of the Party leadership, can rescind a foreign nation’s membership in The Global Community – it was very bad form for a primate like George W. Bush to assert that authority for himself. So, until the Lightworker chooses to designate a terrorist leader as The Next Hitler, terrorists are accused criminals with the presumption of innocence, and CIA interrogators are rogue cops. Evidence against these rogue cops should be immediately forwarded to the Internal Affairs division for the global police, which can be found in the offices of the United Nations, or reached care of the New York Times.

Doctor Zero on April 24, 2009 at 3:20 PM