A few weeks ago, I heard an international expert say on the radio that one of the most remarkable achievements of Western society is the capability to get people to sit down in the same room and talk with each other, even though they are armed to the teeth. I’ve been following the debate about the treatment of the prisoners at Camp X-Ray, and the bottom line is this: they are being treated humanely, despite their ongoing threats to murder their guards if they get their hands on a weapon. The military commander at Camp X-Ray has stated publicly that he is observing the Geneva Convention de facto, even though it is not the stated official policy of the U.S. Government concerning these people, and they have not been declared prisoners of war. The reason for this is simple: we DO believe in the rule of law, we ARE a civilized society (despite our flaws), and pragmatically, what goes around comes around.
I think we in the U.S. do understand that there is some objection to our policies in other countries, but that there is support also. The essence of a free society is to be able to disagree without fear of violence.
Personally, I think some of those detainees will be quietly sent home when things settle down (which I admit could take a while). The others may end up in prison forever, and those hard-core are the ones I’m happy to see locked up. We would like to believe that they’re mostly brave, honest, misguided men fighting for what they believed to be right, but the simple fact is, many of them are nothing more than murderous brutes who loved the killing for the sake of killing. Did we think our own society is the only one that produces such aberrants? I hardly think so, when so many of them have been taught from childhood that God approves of the killing of infidel scum and the negation of the female half of the human race.
That said, my highest hopes are that once the shooting is over, the West will begin a different kind of campaign in the Middle East, to convince them that we and our ways are not as inherently evil as they believe.
*stepping off the soapbox now.* 