WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- The transfer of al Qaida prisoners from the Afghan war to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been suspended because, according to the U.S. military, the facility is full up. At the same time, a number of international organizations have alleged the prisoners are not being treated properly under the rules of the Geneva Convention, something the U.S. government denies. How should the prisoners be treated? UPI National Political Analysts Peter Roff, a conservative, and Jim Chapin, a liberal, face off on opposite sides of this critical question.
Roff: A predictable response
It should come as no shock to anyone that the international left is accusing the United States of mistreating the al Qaida prisoners being held at the Guantanamo naval base.
Attacking the United States is what they do best.
After Sept. 11, a small but vocal minority of opinion leaders posited the idea that America was reaping what it had sown because George W. Bush had abandoned the Kyoto protocols on the environment, the U.S. had walked out on the U.N. conference on racism, and the new Republican administration was inaugurating a new and isolationist foreign policy.
Once al Qaida's guilt became plain and the monstrous Taliban regime was exposed for what it really was, the "Amen corner" of America-bashers went silent.
Now that the war is over, they are re-emerging, less concerned with human rights than with the restoration of the United States as the principal source of evil in the world.
As several British papers have reported, an investigation of the conditions at Guantanamo Bay by English diplomats showed the charges of mistreatment are false.
The Times of London wrote, "Prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are getting bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, as well as prayers broadcast over the PA system" in what the paper called the clearest picture yet of conditions inside the detention facility known as Camp X-Ray.
"They are also given pre-packed Islamic meals, as much water as they need, daily medical checks, and, according to Tony Blair's official spokesman, arrangements are being made for them to receive copies of the Koran."
Another British paper, The Sun, was more blunt.
"The study by British diplomats exposed the bleatings of hand-wringing liberals as a pack of lies," the paper's George Pascoe-Watson wrote earlier this week.
The British report concludes that the pictures of the shackled and kneeling al Qaida prisoners that so outraged some were taken just after the prisoners arrived at Camp X-Ray. They reflected the conditions under which they were transported, not the conditions under which they were held.
Because the rights of the individual are such an important part of the American culture, extreme care is being shown toward the prisoners. They are being shown more concern for their welfare and their culture than the average American would likely approve. But that is why America is different.
The same people who now decry the alleged mistreatment of the al Qaida members were largely silent when the issue was the Soviet gulags. And where were they when Iraq's Saddam Hussein was slaughtering and gassing Kurdish rebels in the northern part of their country after the 1991 war?
Anyone who wants to know what the real mistreatment of prisoners of war is like need only ask Arizona Sen. John McCain, Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle, former U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton of Alabama or any of the other U.S. military personnel who were taken captive by the North Vietnamese and incarcerated in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.
The prisoners are being treated well because America has respect for the rule of law and the essence of humanity. It might do the chronic anti-American complainers who now allege cruelty to remember that once in a while.
Chapin: The Bush administration, ham-handed again
Over-reaching and then retreating is a regular routine of our administration. It's happened on domestic policy -- remember the great arsenic imbroglio? In the end, the Bushies accepted the limits proposed by the Clintonistas, but they got into a lot of trouble along the way.
It has happened in this war -- remember military courts? After getting everyone from William Safire on the left into an uproar, those courts have yet to be used for anything.
Now it has happened at Camp X-Ray. Being too clever by half, the administration decided against calling the Taliban-al Qaida people it captured "prisoners of war," because POW status carries with it a number of guarantees, including the right to practice one's religion and attend religious services, and the right to have gas masks and mess kits.
Even more important, the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian laws are designed to prevent forced interrogation of prisoners, giving them access to lawyers, the right not to be interrogated without their lawyer present and the right to fair trial if accused of crimes.
Instead, the U.S. military called them "unlawful combatants."
They decided to keep the prisoners out of the continental U.S., because a Supreme Court decision in May 1950 gives aliens here the right to use the court system. That's why they are at Guantanamo Bay in the first place.
As a result, did the U.S. military get a "free hand" to deal with these very dangerous men, which was the original intention of all this maneuvering?
No, it hasn't. Instead the military attracted worldwide attention to the prisoners' condition. Protests have extended far beyond "the usual suspects," all the way to the German and Dutch governments and even to the entire European Union. (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair, as usual, is the only foreign leader willing to defend what we are doing at Camp X-Ray. And even his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was one of the first protesters.
Now, having made the entire business into an international scandal, the administration, perforce, is going to end up treating these men about as well as they would have treated them had they called them POWs in the first place.
In other words, having attracted worldwide negative attention to the U.S., the government is not even going to be able to reap whatever "benefits" this policy was designed to have in the first place.
This war is as much a propaganda war as it is a real one, and the administration allowed Camp X-Ray to become a propaganda defeat for the U.S.
It's not sufficient to say that your enemies would propagandize against you no matter what you do. It's the job of leaders to think of these things ahead of time, not in retrospect. It feeds right into the criticism of the U.S. that is widely shared overseas -- that it moralizes about everyone else everywhere but applies no such standards to itself -- that the U.S., in the end, feels that its own power is the ultimate justification for anything it chooses to do.
While power is indeed often its own justification, American power and its power to influence the rest of the world have come from its "soft" side as much or more than from its hard one.
When the administration started by proclaiming that these prisoners weren't POWs, I had some fears about what their treatment might be. Now I have no such fears, for it is obvious that the American government has, once again, put itself in a box in which these prisoners will have to be treated fairly well.
It might have been more reassuring, and certainly better for America's image, if the administration had started where it has ended up. But this cycle of over-reach followed by retreat seems to be one of the basic behavior patterns of the George Bush administration.
It hasn't been the first time, and it probably won't be the last.
