According to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) press release, I should be upset with Randy Kuhl for not immediately denouncing President Bush's threatened veto of H R 1585, the 2008 Defense Appropriation. The DCCC claims that Bush wants to veto the bill because the increases in troop pay and survivor benefits are too high. If you want to go down that rathole with the DCCC and Rep. Kuhl, this story will take you there.
I'd rather not engage in a silly debate, so I'm ready to stipulate that both Kuhl and the DCCC are 100% grade-A all-American troop supporters of the first rank -- but only if they promise to stop arguing about who "supports the troops". Kuhl's constant repetition of that phrase is a poor substitute for a real defense of his continued support of the Iraq war. The DCCC's usage is worse, because it is textbook case of letting the other side frame the debate by using their language. The DCCC is apparently unwilling to challenge Republicans on the substance of Iraq, so instead it focuses on whether we should raise soldiers' pay 3% or 3.5%.
Both sides are doing the public a disservice. While they're slinging platitudes and arguing over minutae, they fail to address the real issues in the war on terror. One of those issues, Guantánamo, is finally being addressed in H R 1585, no thanks to Randy Kuhl.
The House version of the 2008 defense appropriation included an amendment [pdf] asking the Department of Defense to identify and transfer all prisoners from Guantánamo Bay by the end of the year. Randy Kuhl voted for H R 1585, but against the amendment, which ended up in the bill anyway.
The plain fact, as documented by the UN [pdf], is that the US has used Guantánamo Bay as a way to circumvent the Geneva Convention, to torture inmates, and to delay the release of some prisoners who are probably innocent of all charges against them. Gitmo will go down in history with other US overreactions in times of war, and it needs to be cleaned up.
I think that last paragraph is completely uncontroversial, but unfortunately a lot of pundits and politicians continue to defend Guantánamo. I would ask anyone who agrees with those opinion makers to imagine what they would call a place like Guantánamo if it were located in Castro's Cuba instead of on our base there. What would we call a facility in a communist country where people can be held indefinitely without trial, threatened with dogs, and made to endure sleep deprivation and other forms of "soft" torture? I don't think "gulag" is a hysterical term for such a place.
A strong country dedicated to a long fight against Islamic fundamentalist extremism does not need Guantánamo Bay. We are smart and tough enough to treat prisoners humanely while we fight a war. To do anything less is profoundly un-American, since it denies the principles upon which our country was founded.
Many Democrats and most Republicans have been afraid to challenge the administration on its handling of prisoners because they are afraid of the same kind of demagoguery that is behind "support the troops". That's why, years after Guantánamo should have been shuttered, only four Republicans voted for closing Gitmo, and 15 conservative Democrats voted against.
If the DCCC were interested in real issues, they might have highlighted Kuhl's vote against the Guantánamo amendment. If Kuhl really wanted to do something to "support the troops", he could have voted with a few of his colleagues to close Gitmo. Instead, we get inane press releases from both sides.
Comments
Hey chief,
Your "rathole" link doesn't work. Try this:
http://www.eveningtribune.com/articles/2007/05/18/news/news03.txt
Thanks. The evening trib seems to change urls on occasion, or I tend to screw up evening trib urls...
Why is anyone not concerned about the toll that this instant on media is having on how war is fought. Take a look back in WW2, if we had a similar ability to know about that war it would have been closed down quickly. Also, the army did not give us updates on many of the battles until after the war? Why? Because they want to keep us in the dark? No. They know that none of us can go through the pressures of war with having our kids over there without wanting to cave under the pressure. We owe it to our kids to support them and help them win this war on terror.
gopAngel: Your need to go back and read your WW2 history. The notion that the facts of WW2 were suppressed from the American public is a myth.
Take a look back in WW2, if we had a similar ability to know about that war it would have been closed down quickly.
Battle outcomes were reported. Though media wasn't instantaneous, dispatches by reporters and radio reports were filed. The American people had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Pearl Harbor, for example, was reported the morning it happened.
the army did not give us updates on many of the battles until after the war? Why? Because they want to keep us in the dark? No. They know that none of us can go through the pressures of war with having our kids over there without wanting to cave under the pressure.
Some incidents, such as the deaths in Operation Tiger were suppressed because of operational intelligence reasons. In Operation Tiger, German e-boats attacked soldiers training for the D-Day landings. The fact of their deaths weren't released until after the landing, for obvious reasons, but they were released two months after D-Day. But D-Day was reported. Pictures of death and mayhem on the beach appeared in Life magazine shortly after the battle.
Also, the face of death was everywhere during WW2. Have you heard of "Gold Star Mothers"? Parents who lost children in the war displayed gold stars in their windows. There were many of them, and some houses had more than one.
It was Stalin who suppressed facts about the WW2, not Roosevelt. You're thinking of the wrong country.
We owe it to our kids to support them and help them win this war on terror.
Agreed. One of the things we owe them is to preserve the rights they're fighting for. One of those rights is freedom of the press. It's one of the many freedoms that separated us from fascists in WW2, and that separates us from Islamic fundamentalists today.