Hawkins: Way To Gitmo

I wonder if one of the reasons Conservatives are doing so well politically (other than the fact that they espouse traditional American values like faith, patriotism, tradition, morality, honor, duty, honesty and all that politically incorrect, dull, unintellectual stuff) is that Conservatives can write funny, intelligent articles without cursing. Here's one published today by Dustin Hawkins, a graduate student at one of the Florida universities, that ranks right up there with the best, IMHO:

You know things aren't going well for the Democrats when their main fighting issue is what the room temperature is at Guantanamo Bay’s Motel 6. Among the brilliant ideas of the "We Support the Troops" party is to close down the island-resort prison center affectionately referred to as Gitmo. The people most upset about the "torture" are mainly a bunch of leftwing, bed-wetting socialists who have never supported the war in any form or at any stage, but who we are now supposed to take as objective, credible persons.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Idiot) breathlessly announced the extent of the torture found at Gitmo, which included 1) a room that was too cold, causing a detainee to shake; 2) a room that was too hot, causing a detainee to sweat; and 3) a room that was filled with loud rap music. Anyone learning of this information would undoubtedly, according to Durbin, compare this to the slaughter of several million non-terrorist Jews in Hitler's death camps, around three million persons murdered in Stalin's gulags, and a few million more massacred by Pol Pot's rampage in Cambodia.

Not only is such a comparison stupid but also it is irresponsible. If it is true that such situations create terrorists, as Durbin suggests, then it probably doesn’t help to exaggerate a point beyond believability. Al-Jazeera was originally going to use a headline that read "Infidels torture prisoner with bad music and Florida-like weather," but now they can use more entertaining headlines like "U.S. Senator likens torture of Muslims to Holocaust, millions of Muslims likely incinerated by giant oven." Hey, Durbin, thanks! You make us proud.

But the idea that liberals have of normal Arabs sitting around just waiting for that breaking point as to where they decide to check into a terrorist training camp and blow themselves to pieces because they are super-angry is rather absurd. Normal Arabs don't do that; the crazy ones do. And the crazy ones are already terrorists.
But that is beside the point. Americans are bad. Bad, bad, bad! Among the other things we do to American-hating terrorists and 9/11 co-conspirators is: feed them seven-course, culturally-aware meals, allow them to pray six thousand times a day, and give them prayer beads and prayer oil. (As opposed to mass starvation, denial of religious services, or random removal of bodies from heads.)

Inasmuch as hundreds of thousands of people risk their lives just to sneak into our country, which they sometimes call the Great Satan, it is rather obvious that our atrocities aren't quite atrocious enough. If we are going to be accused of doing really, really mean things to ruthless savages we might as well do them already. No offense, but putting on puppet shows and playing Christina Aguilera CDs (our other documented forms of "mistreatment") sounds less like the activities of hardened torture facility and more like those of Neverland Ranch.

My personal choice would be the Saddam Treatment, a unique brand of torture developed and tested by the former dictator himself, which would be equally suitable (and oh, how ironic!) for testing on his Gitmo-detained former subordinates. If Arafat was the Father of Modern Terrorism then Saddam is the Father of Modern Torture. In his pre-dictator days, Saddam worked at perfecting torture techniques. Such innovative torture ideas included eye-gouging, the drilling of holes in a person's hands and pouring acid on the open wounds, raping women with broken glass bottles, tying victims up and slowly lowering them into pools of acid, cutting off ears and tongues, ripping out finger and toenails, and among many other things, giving heavy electric shocks to the body and genitals. But hey, at least he didn't make them watch re-runs of the Golden Girls.

I'm sure that Congress will continue to argue for closing down the prison for absurd reasons, most likely with a brave bipartisan effort including liberal Republican Arlen Specter and liberal drunk Ted Kennedy. But if we must close Gitmo down, can we at least send the prisoners to Abu Ghraib?