Hatred, American Style

The face of America today?

A while back, I used to spend more time dissecting the entire contents of various right wing articles that particularly aroused my ire.  Maybe my outrage has dwindled, or maybe I've just gotten lazy, but for that last couple of years, I've mainly left such things to blogs that specialize in that sort of thing, like Sadly No or World-O-Crap.  Here, however, is one piece, by Michelle Malkin, that got to me.  Let me remind you that Michelle Malkin is not just any old right wing loon; she has been carefully trained since her college days at the alleged Ivy League institution, Dartmouth, to spread Republican lies, and she has paid off their investment many times over.  Well, on to her latest contemptible pack of lies and racist fear-mongering:

"Gird your loins, America. President Obama intends to empty out Guantanamo Bay and send scores of suspected Muslim terror operatives back to their jihadist-coddling native countries. Goaded by anti-war activists and soft-on-terror attorneys (including those from Attorney General Eric Holder's former private law firm), Obama announced Thursday that he'll lift a ban on sending up to 90 Yemeni detainees home and will initiate other stalled transfers out of the compound."

Apparently, Michelle, who fills her little frame with fury at any perceived, imagined or invented threat to the second amendment, is perpetually so exhausted by her efforts that she never makes it far enough down in the Bill of Rights to read this:

"Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial..."

Now, I don't know about you, but in my opinion holding a person in a prison camp halfway around the world for ten years without even having enough evidence to charge them with a crime, let alone proceed to trial, does not constitute "a speedy and public trial."  In fact, as I pointed out the day after Obama became President in 2008, he should have immediately sent all of the Guantanamo detainees home, and issued a statement to the effect that he was acting in line with his sworn duty to preserve and protect the constitution and that, if any of them ever engaged in terrorist activity in the future, the fault would lie entirely on the execrable Bush and Cheney for having abrogated to themselves the right to simply ignore the plain wording of the Constitution, in order to curry favor with bottom feeders like Michelle Malkin.

"This radical appeasement of Obama's left flank is a surefire recipe for more Benghazis, more U.S.S. Coles and more innocent lives at risk."

In fact, as I pointed out above, it would have been a "radical appeasement" of the United States Constitution.

"A little more than three years ago, the White House assured Americans that it would not release Yemeni detainees back to their al-Qaida-infested land."

What's the difference, Michelle?  Your kind insist that our land is infested with Al Qaida operatives too, so why not send them to live next door to you?

"In January 2010, international press outlets reported that at least a dozen former Guantanamo Bay prisoners had rejoined al-Qaida to fight in Yemen."

Can you blame them for hating the country that kept them in prison for ten years, for no reason other than the racist fearmongering of people like Michelle Malkin?  If these people, most of whom were guilty of nothing we could discover in those ten years, are now terrorists, they are terrorists that we created.  And they are terrorists that our Constitution demands that we have to live with, regardless of the hate-filled screaming of Michelle Malkin.  That is our punishment for not insisting that our leaders act like decent human beings.

"Yemen was also the terror training ground of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the jihadist who attempted to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day in 2009.

Abdulmutallab reportedly told the FBI there were countless al-Qaida trainees like him in Yemen. The CIA knew of Abdulmutallab four months before his bombing attempt and was aware of him meeting with terrorists in Yemen a month before his arrest. British media also reported that counterterrorism and intelligence officers were "aware of several British nationals and British residents who had trained at camps in Yemen's 'ungoverned spaces.'"

The United States is apparently the training ground of the Tsarmayev brothers, and numerous home-grown right wing bombers and cop killers.  Under Michelle Malkin's miserable logic, it should therefore be perfectly legal to throw any American into a concentration camp like Guantanamo, and keep them there forever, without charges.  And what's more, they would have no right to feel in any way aggrieved by this treatment, because once upon a time someone else from this country did something bad.

"From the very first days of Obama's presidency, Americans in Yemen have been endangered. In late January 2009, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen came under gunfire. American diplomatic staff had been warned of a pending attack. That same month, two former Yemeni Gitmo detainees, Said Ali al-Shihri and Abu Hareth Muhammad al-Awfi, released a video flipping America the bird."

Oh my God, they flipped America the bird!  That justifies any barbaric abuse we wish to inflict on their countrymen, from now until eternity.  And note that Michelle laughably asserts that this has all happened only "From the very first days of Obama's presidency."  As usual, the monstrous damage done by the Bush-Cheney administration's behavior is all blamed on Obama.  And not a shred of it is caused by the raging hatred directed at the people of the Middle East by the likes of MichelleMalkin, who I remind you is not a normal reporter, but someone selected and groomed by the Republican party to spread their message.

And finally, this brings us to the core of the issue:  The people of the Middle East have been subjected to wanton military abuse by Western countries which stretches from at least 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, to the present day, and shows no prospect of ever ending.  This abuse has consisted in bringing war to their territories again and again, subverting their chosen governments in favor of dictators who would do our will, slaughtering their people without a second thought, stealing their natural resources, demanding that they always think of us before they think of themselves, and never once concerning ourselves with their interests.  All of the terrorist acts in the last few decades barely begin to add up to the devastation of one month's work for our government in Iraq.  They have every reason on earth to hate us, and Guantanamo only adds to their legitimate outrage. 

We attack them with fighter planes and drones, and they have nothing with which to fight back but a couple of pressure cookers, yet they fight back.  This is presented by the likes of Michelle Malkin as some sort of cowardice, yet it never occurs to Michelle that it is cowardice to sit on an air base in Georgia, and send flying robots to kill them.

"They publicly recommitted to "aid the religion," "establish the rightly guided caliphate" and "fight against our enemies" after undergoing terrorism "rehab" in Saudi Arabia. Charlie Sheen's rehab worked better than that of the Sauds."

And who is "they?"  Some minuscule number of people, whose existence justifies slaughtering anyone who looks like them, speaks the same language, feels a shred of the same anger at the violent injustice that we display toward them?  Why, exactly do we not deserve to be killed and imprisoned without cause, because Michelle Malkin is one of us?

"Military review panels indicated that al-Shihri had traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, trained and funded jihadists outside Kabul, and coordinated travel for al-Qaida before being captured and held at Gitmo. After his release by the Bush administration, intel officials say he was involved in the deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, in September 2008."

If any of this were true, why was he not charged and tried for his offenses, in the manner provided for by the Constitution?  Are we expected to take the words of a hate filled liar like Michelle Malkin, as sufficient grounds to destroy lives?

"Al-Shihri has reportedly been killed in drone attacks at least three times and may or may not have met the same fate as fellow Yemeni jihad leader and drone strike victim Anwar al-Awlaki. But this much is clear: Embassy staffers in Yemen have targets on their back, Benghazi-style. The warning flags are crimson red."

I have already discussed why this is true.  I will not repeat myself.

"Yemen also produced Jamal Ahmed Mohammad al-Badawi, the convicted mastermind of the U.S.S. Cole bombing that took the lives of 17 American sailors in October 2000. As I've reported previously on the Yemen jihad revolving door: Despite being sentenced to the death penalty, escaping twice from jail and being indicted in the U.S. on terrorism charges, the Yemeni government freed al-Badawi in 2007 in exchange for a promise that he renounce his old murdering ways.

Al-Badawi remains at large and is on the FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist list."

And what, exactly, does any of this have to do with these people, held in a concentration camp for ten years without charges?

"Which side are Obama and his lawyers on, anyway? As I reported in "Culture of Corruption," Covington and Burling, the former private law firm of Close Gitmo crusader and Attorney General Eric Holder, has provided dozens of Yemeni Gitmo detainees hundreds of hours of pro bono legal representation and sob-story media relations campaigns."

Oh, maybe I should have quoted the rest of the sixth amendment, as Michelle seems to have missed it on the many occasions when she was furiously treating us to her rage concerning the second amendment:

"Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

Holder's law firm was upholding the Constitution of the United States when it acted as their lawyers.  This means nothing to Michelle Malkin.  In fact, nothing in the Constitution means a thing to her, except when it provides her an opportunity to attack decent Americans. 

"While these bleeding-heart lawyers dismiss the perils of Gitmo recidivism, the numbers don't lie. I repeat: The office of the Director of National Intelligence reports that 27.9 percent of the 599 former detainees released from Guantanamo were either confirmed or suspected of later engaging in jihadist attacks. One of those Gitmo recidivists still on the loose is Ansar al-Sharia leader Sufyan Ben Qumu a.k.a. Abu Sufian bin Qumu, the suspected plotter of the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack."

The other 72.1% of Guantanamo detainees, who, as far as we have been able to determine in ten years of investigation, are guilty of nothing, can just rot in hell as far as Michelle Malkin is concerned, and effectively that is what they are doing.  But she doesn't give a damn, because someone else from their country once did something bad.  This is exactly the same logic which the real terrorists use themselves.  And that is why Michelle Malkin is, to any decent American, every bit as despicable as the worst Muslim terrorists.