Hearts and Minds

The Incredible Terrible Saga of Sami al-Hajj

During the first phase of Bush’s “War on Terror” a host of suspected dissidents were rounded up and sent to the U.S. military’s secretive detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Guantanamo Bay is U.S. territory leased from Cuba; though the Cuban government has never cashed the U.S. checks for that land. The reason a military prison was constructed and harbored in that unlikely location is because attorneys for the Bush administration felt that the legal status of Guantanamo Bay was ambiguous and as such prisoners held there would not be subject to the normal regulations that govern the capture, holding, and interrogation of foreign POW’s. As a result of this legal ambiguity Guantanamo has been a haven for incredible abuse of both the prisoners and the legal system in general.

One of the early stated goals in the “War on Terror” was to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghani, Iraqi, and by extension the citizens of the whole Middle East. Now I understand perfectly well that when you go to war there is going to be a lot of what they call “collateral damage” – meaning innocent civilians, women and children, will be killed. It is an inevitable consequence of dropping bombs and shooting bullets. Collateral damage is one of those calculated risks. The bad guys are so bad that it behooves us in the long run to blow up civilians to get to them. I don’t agree with the logic – but I understand it.

But every so often another story pops up that makes me shake my head and say “really? That’s how we’re going about winning the hearts and minds of the people whose countries we are invading?” I just learned the details of one of these stories. It involves a man named Sami al-Hajj who has spent the last six years at Guantanamo Bay. You might ask what al-Hajj’s crime was? It turns out that he was captured because he was a cameraman for Al-Jazeera – the most popular Arab-based news outlet in the world. The U.S. at the time was working under the assumption that Al-Jazeera was actually in cahoots with Al Queada and they interrogated al-Hajj on dozens of separate occasions in order to try and get him to confess this link. He never would because, according to al-Hajj, there is no link between Al Queada and Al-Jazeera.

Nevermind the truth though – let’s assume Al-Jazeera actually was tied in some way to Al Queada. Was capturing a cameraman and holding him without charge for six years the right thing to do in order to win hearts and minds of the Al-Jazeera viewers? Keep in mind Al-Jazeera is essentially the CNN of the Arab world. While I had never really paid attention to al-Hajj’s story until I heard a recent report on his release you can bet that every Al Jazeera viewer knew it inside and out; backwards and forth. This is because Al-Jazeera ran an hourly update on the captured cameraman. Every single hour of every single day for six years Al-Jazeera viewers were reminded that a cameraman had been locked up on an island 7,900 miles away on an island in the middle of the Carribean Ocean.

Can you imagine the damage that was done because of the obstinance and lethargy of the U.S. system of – of what? Military justice I guess, illegal detentions, “non-lawful combatants.”

Because We Can

Is there no one in charge with an iota of common sense? This guy knew nothing – he was just a regular working guy doing his job. We got no valuable information from him. We handed our “enemies” a powerful and compelling tool of propaganda and even when we realized, and we must have realized fairly quickly, that Al-Jazeera was going to bombard the middle east with this story we essentially flew world opinion the bird and said “we’re holding him anyway because we can.” That’s all this exercise is – a big old “because we can.” We’re big and we’re bad and we’re powerful and we will do whatever we want and then we’ll pay our lawyers to tie everything up in court while we pat ourselves on the backs and say “hurray for the red white and blue.”

Incidentally Sami al-Hajj was released from Guantanamo Bay. He was never charged with any crime and he was never tried by any tribunal. They just picked him up, took away six years of his life, and then let him go.

If this is the best we can come up with in order to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle-East then we need to get some better brains in D.C. pronto.

[Or, is this all part of “the Plan?”]

e-mail: madbob@madbob.com