A Sense of Proportion

Over in his Impromptus cloumn, Jay Norlinger publishes a letter from a long-time reader of his whose husband was a POW in Vietnam.

Jay,
My husband was a POW in Vietnam for five-and-a-half years. He is beside
himself over this Gitmo stuff. “Honey glazed chicken!” he says. “What about
moldy bread with rat turds in it?” And “what about nothing but pumpkin for 45
days?” And “what about getting beri-beri from eating nothing but white rice for
months?”

“They complain that the air conditioning was turned up?” he says. They made him live in a box outdoors for months, under the summer sun.

“They are put in uncomfortable positions?” he says. He had to sit on a stool for
months, in one position.

And so forth.

He is writing a column on this, but he is recovering from surgery so he is slow writing it. The surgery is his second hip replacement; his hip was eaten up by the beri-beri.

Yet nobody’s asked any of the POWs what they think of the Gitmo thing.

Frankly, the whole Gitmo controversy strikes me as being a textbook case of making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Certainly a lot of what goes on there is unpleasant, but unpleasant doesn't equal abuse, and abuse doesn't equal torture. The prisoners there eat better than our own soldiers in the field. They have ample opportunity for exercise, and they are granted a degree of religious deference that goes far beyond common courtesy. I think it speaks well of us that we take a concern for how we treat our enemies once they are in our custody, but at some point, the underlying reality that these are people bound and determined to wage war against the United States has to override our sentimentalities.

It also has to override our concern for our image around the world. The global stage is still very much an Hobbesian jungle, and as much as we might like it to be governed by the rule of law, power, shrewdness, and the willingness to use them still trump all. For better or for worse, in such an environment, the important thing is not being liked, the important thing is being feared and respected. As the War on Terror progresses, strategic, tactical and moral mistakes will be made; there's no way around it. Instead of obsessing over these mistakes and declaring the cause lost, as some are wont to do for a myriad of reasons, we need to acknowledge them, deal with them, and plow ahead. When it's all said and done, we won't be judged by whether we dotted every "i" and crossed every "t"; we'll be judged by whether or not we win. If we win, our image will be bolstered and our security enhanced. On the other hand, if we lose, we will be disgraced no matter how great our concern over thermostats at Gitmo.