For
Immediate Release
January 29, 2002
By
Congressman Joe Pitts
Three weeks after American
troops were first engaged in the War on Terrorism, commentators began to
second-guess the President and the Secretary of Defense.
We weren’t making enough progress, they said. We’re getting bogged down and the Taliban are still in
command of Afghanistan, they said. They
were wrong. A week later the
Taliban government was collapsing and al Qaeda was on the run.
The lesson of their
embarrassment should have been to limit their criticism to topics they could
comment on intelligently. Unfortunately,
the critics are back. Now they’re
alleging human rights abuses and Geneva Convention violations against the al
Qaeda and Taliban prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Once again, the critics are wrong.
Two central points need to be
clarified. First, terrorists are
not soldiers. They have no rank and
they have no uniform. In fact, al
Qaeda goes out of its way to operate in independent cells with no command
structure. Terrorists do not fight
in battlefields, and they do not fight under the authority of governments. Most importantly, their targets are almost always innocent
civilians. These are not soldiers,
and as such the prisoner of war provisions of the Geneva Convention do not apply
to them.
Second, although they are not
prisoners of war as defined by international law, they are indeed provided for
in international law. The proper
term for them is “unlawful combatants.”
The less formal term the President has used is simply “killers.”
The Geneva Convention itself has provisions for unlawful combatants; the
Bush Administration is currently considering applying those provisions to the
terrorists being held in Cuba.
Regardless of their formal
status, the terrorists are being treated well—certainly better than they
deserve. All of them are being
provided with three appropriate meals a day, medical care, clothing, shelter,
showers, and the opportunity to worship according to their religion. A Muslim cleric has been provided for them.
Arrows in their cells point the way to Mecca, and each has been issued a
prayer mat and a copy of the Koran. They
are not being subjected to any mental of physical abuse.
When in transit, however, the
terrorists are being carefully secured. They
are extremely dangerous, especially when being moved.
Before being taken to Cuba, al Qaeda prisons broke loose in a bloody
uprising and killed an American agent and dozens of others.
Some of them were carrying grenades under their clothing.
Since arriving in Cuba they have openly threatened to kill Americans and
one prisoner has bitten a guard. These
are the exact same kinds of people who fly airplanes into skyscrapers.
Their chain-link cells may
look like cages, and that may invite critics to claim they are being “treated
like animals.” But the fact is
the terrorists are being treated quite well.
Their current accommodations are temporary, and when a more permanent
facility has been made for them their conditions will improve even further.
It is easy for critics
hundreds or even thousands of miles away to criticize our handling of al Qaeda
prisoners. If those critics had
lost loved ones on September 11, if those critics had risked their lives
capturing those terrorists, or if those critics’ jobs were to protect
prisoners intent on killing them—I suspect they’d then feel differently.
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