Terms of Internment: How to win friends and influence enemy combatants - (delightful sarcasm!)

OPINION JOURNAL.COM ^ | JUNE 20, 2005 | ALAN BROMLEY

[CHARLITE]

A chorus of democrats has begun to sing a song written by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, whose lyrics included a line suggesting that we should close the Guantanamo Bay detention center because of alleged failings in how we treat the prisoners' holy books.

First, we gave them food, then clean clothing, then supplied all the prisoners with copies of the Koran, one for each prisoner. We gave them the time and place to bathe, to ponder and to pray. Then, it comes out that one, two, maybe three times over a span of three years (that would be more than 1,000 days), some U.S. soldiers, administrators or interrogators may not have treated those Koranic copies with the utmost respect.

Sacre bleu! Close Gitmo! the critics cried.

Well, I think we should not close Gitmo but write a new set of rules of procedure for the treatment of terrorists, those who often either hide behind civilians when being shot at or kill innocent civilians to show how tough they are. The new rules, with the working title of, "Terms of Internment", should be:

• We really, really respect all your beliefs and all your writings, even if you use them as your basis for killing us.

• We want you to retain your beliefs, and therefore we will continue to supply you with every written word that reinforces your instinct to kill.

• We will honor those words, at all times, as much as you do, lest we offend you.

• We will only serve you the best humus available, from Zabar's

[SMARTY]

All Islam would be courting capture under those conditions.

[GOP_1900AD]

I love the philosophy of Dale Carnegie. I have most of his books and even took the course. It's great stuff - for business and for dealing with most people within the confines of Western Civilization. The mistake made by people ranging from the supporters of bilateralism to Thomas L. Friedman has been to assume that Dale Carnegie's approach is suitable for matters of geopolitics and war. To believe that Carnegie usurps Von Clausewitz is to have a suicidal tendancy. To everything, there is a season ...