OT- Mullah Coddlers


The past few months, the Democrats seem to have been trying to make
political hay about claims of "torture" and "abuse" at the Guantanamo
Bay
Naval Base, where the U.S. military has been running a prison camp for
Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield in
Afghanistan.

*** Durbin, of course, famously likened the troops there to Nazis and,
as
we noted last week, made the case that al Qaeda terrorists are entitled
to
be treated as civilians under the Geneva Conventions. (In fairness,
Durbin
was vague on this point; it's not clear if he understood that this was
what
he was arguing.)

Earlier, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee roughly interrogated
Alberto
Gonzales about his supposed approval of "torture," and the vast
majority of
Democrats (36-6, including Jeffords, with three not voting) voted
against
the confirmation of the first Hispanic attorney general.

Of course it is legitimate to criticize government policies, even in
times
of war. But the Democratic attacks on Guantanamo are so hysterical and
unmoored from reality that they have the feel of gotcha politics. The
over-the-top rhetoric and accusations are reminiscent of Democratic
attacks
on Republican judicial nominees. As Ryan Sager writes:

There's an important debate to be had in this country about just how
far
we're willing to go in our interrogations. But it's a difficult debate
to
even get started when one side thinks that we should be extremely
concerned
with the possibility that someone, somewhere might have desecrated the
Korans of the people responsible for the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nick
Berg,
Fabrizio Quattrocchi, three-thousand Americans and now hundreds upon
hundreds of Iraqi civilians.

A Rasmussen poll out yesterday suggests that this is terrible politics.
Only
20% of the 1,000 likely voters in the survey "believe prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay have been treated unfairly." Thirty-four percent think
the
treatment of the prisoners is "about right," and 36% think America is
treating them "better than they deserve":

The survey also found that just 14% agree with people who say that
prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay is similar to Nazi tactics.
Sixty-nine
percent disagree with that comparison. This helps explain why Illinois
Senator *** Durbin apologized for making such a comparison.

Even among Democrats, only 30% think the Guantanamo prisoners are being
treated unfairly. In other words, many Democratic elected officials are
out
of touch not only with Americans in general but with a majority of
their own
supporters.

What are we to make of all this? The most hopeful interpretation is
that the
Democrats are politically incompetent--that they are stupidly trying to
whip
up hysteria over Guantanamo in hope of scoring political points. The
other
possibility is that one of America's two major political parties is led
by
people who are genuinely passionate about the "rights" of terrorists
and
correspondingly blasé about the dangers of terrorism.

In light of all this, Durbin's politically expedient "apology"--even if
unsatisfactory as an apology--is a good sign. It suggests that
Democrats are
playing politics and coming to realize it isn't working.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006861

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