[Peace-discuss] Stop Calling Them ‘Terrorists’!

[Morton K. Brussel]

 From the American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/05/20/stop-calling-them-terrorists/
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.
 From Gingrich 5/15:
“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.
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