I thought I was going to jump through the television set midway into my favorite drama-thriller, 24. There was a terrorist with his finger on the trigger of a nuclear bomb, an intimidated Vice President, a President lying in the hospital following the downing of Air Force One, and a captured American terrorist sympathizer who was not being interrogated because an international amnesty group had blocked the process for fear his civil rights might be violated. Whew!
As this last plot point developed, my shouts became high pitched and brutal. My wife left the den, shaking her head. My daughter, poised at the top of the stairs, turned around and headed back to her bedroom. I must have looked like a man possessed.
“This is war! Get that information any way you can,” I screamed at the set. “We’re going to melt this country down in the name of political correctness!”
Finally, Jack Bauer, federal agent extraordinaire, took matters into his own hands, “firmly” persuading the prisoner to reveal the whereabouts of the terrorist gang. From my den I yelled to Jack with hardy words of encouragement. But soon the ticked-off prez sent the Secret Service to arrest Jack, thwarting his capture of the terrorist mastermind. Cut to commercial. Tune in next week.
This scenario is more real than it should be. A couple of years ago we brought a career Army officer up on charges for discharging his pistol at the feet of a detainee to intimidate him into answering questions. The American officer didn’t rig the man's privates into an electrical device or saw his head off with a dull blade. Those kinds of stunts play to a full house at the U.N. with little reaction. And yet last month the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe asked the U.S. government “to cease torturing and mistreating detainees” at Guantanamo Bay. “The U.S. government has betrayed its own highest principles in the zeal with which it has attempted to pursue the war on terror,” it said.
I certainly don’t condone the humiliation of prisoners by U.S. National Guard troops at Abu Ghraib last year. But for Europe’s top human rights body to call on our government to either give the Guantanamo prisoners a fair trial or release them is dangerous and insulting. These suspects are enemy combatants in a war zone.
We are still a primary target in a war without boundaries. Wholesale release of prisoners considered key suspects would do nothing to end terrorist activities. The biggest trump card Muslim extremists have in this game of terror is the possibility that partisan politics will destroy any resolve our country has to protect itself in the harsh light of world opinion.
If you have any questions or comments for Steve Lasky regarding this issue or any other, please e-mail him at [email protected].
Steve Lasky | Editorial Director, Editor-in-Chief/Security Technology Executive
Steve Lasky is Editorial Director of the Endeavor Business Media Security Group, which includes SecurityInfoWatch.com, as well as Security Business, Security Technology Executive, and Locksmith Ledger magazines. He is also the host of the SecurityDNA podcast series. Reach him at [email protected].
