Who can you trust?
In my last post I acknowleged the crimes committed by uniformed military personnel of the U.S.A. and I urged the military to do right...for lots of reasons. One of my reasons was that I do not wish to give "ammunition" to those who would use their position of influence to undermine the will of the people of the U.S.
What was unnecessary to say was that they need no help.
Angered as I am by the political left in this country, I understand that they may - perhaps - have a principled position.
What is less easy to understand is the media who have abandoned all pretense of objectivity and have taken sides. Regrettably, most have chosen the side of the Islamo-Fascists that we are fighting. Fox has stayed on the side of the U.S., which puts them in the elite company of Ed Murrow and Ernie Pyle...but, none of them can be called objective.
Now, however it is that principled people ultimately decide on government policy and whatever the merits of various interpretations made by those whose job it is to infer from facts presented them...
What is utterly unacceptable, completely reprehensible and wholly unforgiveable are machinations undertaken by organizations - which reverently claim impartiality - to advance a political agenda.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International are two such arrant hypocrites.
These organizations which, heretofore, exerted a positive influence in the world have now, apparently become political players in the world of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). NGOs seek to promote their individual agendas by influencing the policies of governments through political action at the grass-roots, national and international levels.
The situations are thus:
1. Amnesty International recently described our detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a Gulag.
Amnesty International has always claimed that they are utterly impartial. And, in the past has gone to (what then appeared as merely) silly lengths to criticize the U.S. at the same time that they criticized, say, North Korea or the Soviet Union. Now, however, their moral equivalence is no longer something that can easily be explained away. It is patently absurd - to the point of prevarication - to equate the Gulag system of the USSR to the administration of Guantanamo. Even the Washington Post...surely no friend to this President or his policies was irritated enough to say, "...we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union."
2. The International Committee of the Red Cross has decided to weigh in against the United States' prosecution of the war on terror by using their justly earned reputation for impartiality and good works as a bully pulpit from which they have unfairly attacked the U.S.
The case of the Int'l Committee of the Red Cross is the much sadder of the two because they have had such a superb history of helping without taking sides. Theirs is the greater and more hurtful betrayal of principles. The two most egregious examples of the politicization of the ICRC are these:
A. The Red Cross has always maintained confidentiality regarding information gleaned during their visits to POW facilities, recognizing that publicising problems could be considered taking sides. It would seem that policy has been ended.
Reports critical of our "detainee" policies have regularly been leaked to the press in an attempt to embarrass the U.S. Worse, these leaks have been "spun" to maximize embarrassment.
B. ICRC maintains that the prisoners we have taken in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns are entitled to the exact same rights and privileges as would, say, a German soldier captured in 1944. (Actually, that's incorrect. In 2005, the ICRC insists that they receive treatment consistent with a protocol that is NOT part of the Geneva Conventions and by which the U.S. has never agreed to abide.)
The differences between many of those in our custody now and a German corporal of WW2 are so stark as to not even require enumeration. However, let's examine two. 1. The "detainees" at Guantanamo regularly mixed with civilians and wore no uniform at the time of their capture. 2. They regularly targeted civilians and other non-combatants. These two facts alone - by the terms of the Geneva Conventions preclude their classification as POWs. But the ICRC doesn't want to hear that. Because, in an astounding act of moral equivalence, the ICRC insists that terrorists or members of any "national liberation movement" deserve all the protections afforded a POW. This assertion is based on a protocol not found in the Geneva Conventions or affirmed by the U.S. or any major governments. Thus, the entire idea of "unlawful combatants" - indeed, even the idea of proscribing behaviors by combatants, is now discarded by the ICRC. Apparently, the ICRC doesn't care if combatants dress as - and mix with - civilians. So to, they must not care that by combatants doing this, increased civilian casualties are assured. Somehow, I don't think the leaders of the ICRC were thinking of this when they cavalierly let it be known to the media that the U.S. wasn't upholding "agreed upon" standards of treatment. In sum, they are insisting that someone like Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (may Allah send him to us soon) deserves the same treatment as a uniformed Iraqi soldier who surrendered.
If we were truly treating the "detainees" in a manner consistent with that of a Gulag - or if yelling at detainees somehow constituted torture, then they might have an argument. But as it is, no reasonable person will long entertain this notion and neither did our military. The maintenance of this position by the ICRC demonstrates an obtuseness that is literally incredible. Again, a reasonable man is shortly forced to conclude that in this matter, clearly, the leaders of the ICRC have abandoned their principles in their burning desire to orchestrate and then focus the world's opprobrium on the United States.
So, what do you do?
Amnesty Int'l never got any of my money because of their equivocations. But now that they have plainly taken rank with those trying to kill me, I consider them enemies.
As for the ICRC, I will urge my legislators to pull all funding from them. If they want to play politics, let 'em do it on someone else's dime.
Let's all continue to give to the American Red Cross, though.
While not everyone who is not with us is against us, it begins to look that way.
What was unnecessary to say was that they need no help.
Angered as I am by the political left in this country, I understand that they may - perhaps - have a principled position.
What is less easy to understand is the media who have abandoned all pretense of objectivity and have taken sides. Regrettably, most have chosen the side of the Islamo-Fascists that we are fighting. Fox has stayed on the side of the U.S., which puts them in the elite company of Ed Murrow and Ernie Pyle...but, none of them can be called objective.
Now, however it is that principled people ultimately decide on government policy and whatever the merits of various interpretations made by those whose job it is to infer from facts presented them...
What is utterly unacceptable, completely reprehensible and wholly unforgiveable are machinations undertaken by organizations - which reverently claim impartiality - to advance a political agenda.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International are two such arrant hypocrites.
These organizations which, heretofore, exerted a positive influence in the world have now, apparently become political players in the world of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). NGOs seek to promote their individual agendas by influencing the policies of governments through political action at the grass-roots, national and international levels.
The situations are thus:
1. Amnesty International recently described our detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a Gulag.
Amnesty International has always claimed that they are utterly impartial. And, in the past has gone to (what then appeared as merely) silly lengths to criticize the U.S. at the same time that they criticized, say, North Korea or the Soviet Union. Now, however, their moral equivalence is no longer something that can easily be explained away. It is patently absurd - to the point of prevarication - to equate the Gulag system of the USSR to the administration of Guantanamo. Even the Washington Post...surely no friend to this President or his policies was irritated enough to say, "...we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union."
2. The International Committee of the Red Cross has decided to weigh in against the United States' prosecution of the war on terror by using their justly earned reputation for impartiality and good works as a bully pulpit from which they have unfairly attacked the U.S.
The case of the Int'l Committee of the Red Cross is the much sadder of the two because they have had such a superb history of helping without taking sides. Theirs is the greater and more hurtful betrayal of principles. The two most egregious examples of the politicization of the ICRC are these:
A. The Red Cross has always maintained confidentiality regarding information gleaned during their visits to POW facilities, recognizing that publicising problems could be considered taking sides. It would seem that policy has been ended.
Reports critical of our "detainee" policies have regularly been leaked to the press in an attempt to embarrass the U.S. Worse, these leaks have been "spun" to maximize embarrassment.
B. ICRC maintains that the prisoners we have taken in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns are entitled to the exact same rights and privileges as would, say, a German soldier captured in 1944. (Actually, that's incorrect. In 2005, the ICRC insists that they receive treatment consistent with a protocol that is NOT part of the Geneva Conventions and by which the U.S. has never agreed to abide.)
The differences between many of those in our custody now and a German corporal of WW2 are so stark as to not even require enumeration. However, let's examine two. 1. The "detainees" at Guantanamo regularly mixed with civilians and wore no uniform at the time of their capture. 2. They regularly targeted civilians and other non-combatants. These two facts alone - by the terms of the Geneva Conventions preclude their classification as POWs. But the ICRC doesn't want to hear that. Because, in an astounding act of moral equivalence, the ICRC insists that terrorists or members of any "national liberation movement" deserve all the protections afforded a POW. This assertion is based on a protocol not found in the Geneva Conventions or affirmed by the U.S. or any major governments. Thus, the entire idea of "unlawful combatants" - indeed, even the idea of proscribing behaviors by combatants, is now discarded by the ICRC. Apparently, the ICRC doesn't care if combatants dress as - and mix with - civilians. So to, they must not care that by combatants doing this, increased civilian casualties are assured. Somehow, I don't think the leaders of the ICRC were thinking of this when they cavalierly let it be known to the media that the U.S. wasn't upholding "agreed upon" standards of treatment. In sum, they are insisting that someone like Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (may Allah send him to us soon) deserves the same treatment as a uniformed Iraqi soldier who surrendered.
If we were truly treating the "detainees" in a manner consistent with that of a Gulag - or if yelling at detainees somehow constituted torture, then they might have an argument. But as it is, no reasonable person will long entertain this notion and neither did our military. The maintenance of this position by the ICRC demonstrates an obtuseness that is literally incredible. Again, a reasonable man is shortly forced to conclude that in this matter, clearly, the leaders of the ICRC have abandoned their principles in their burning desire to orchestrate and then focus the world's opprobrium on the United States.
So, what do you do?
Amnesty Int'l never got any of my money because of their equivocations. But now that they have plainly taken rank with those trying to kill me, I consider them enemies.
As for the ICRC, I will urge my legislators to pull all funding from them. If they want to play politics, let 'em do it on someone else's dime.
Let's all continue to give to the American Red Cross, though.
While not everyone who is not with us is against us, it begins to look that way.
posted by Voolfie at 4:48 PM
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