by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen President Bush arrived in Vienna last week, protestors bore “World’s No. 1 Terrorist” signs while chanting “We will, we will fight Bush.” A Harris Poll conducted prior to the president’s visit revealed that the European public thinks\u00a0America\u00a0is a greater global threat than either\u00a0North Korea\u00a0or\u00a0Iran.<\/p>\n Apparently, our terrorist detention center at\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0Bay\u00a0is the most recent open sore. When, European ministers have been persisting, will the\u00a0United States\u00a0close down this Neanderthal embarrassment to liberal Western values?<\/p>\n This European anger, however, doesn’t seem to be based on evidence of systematic American abuse. Despite Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s claim thatGuantanamo\u00a0was akin to Nazi camps, the few reported regrettable, isolated cases of sleep deprivation and harassment seem no worse than what we read about in most prisons. The roughly 450 prisoners still there \u2014 many of them killers \u2014 are probably treated as well as inmates in either Europe or the U.S.<\/p>\n Further, Guantanamo exists to fill a vacuum in an undeclared and unprecedented postmodern war of few good choices in which the enemy does not wear uniforms, adhere to the Geneva Convention or distinguish civilians from soldiers.<\/p>\n If the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0were to close down\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0and send the detainees back to their home countries, some returnees would be freed and treated as heroes \u2014 and then rejoin the global jihad. Other released terrorists, or so the Europeans no doubt would whine, might be executed by the autocratic Middle Eastern governments in their homelands that are as afraid of Islamic terrorists as we are.<\/p>\n So, should we instead try all of the\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0detainees inside the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0?<\/p>\n No. By doing that, we would be inviting thousands of lawyers and public defenders to argue, on behalf of their clients, that we are not in a real war but simply prosecuting common criminals. Numerous trials and appeals as costly and circus-like as the drawn-out spectacle of Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hijacker) would likely follow. And, in the end, Europeans would still object, since the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0would be exposing foreign nationals to possible death-penalty sentences.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he real problem is that\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0Bay\u00a0, like Bush himself, has become a symbol of sorts. It is an easy scapegoat through which Europeans can vent their much larger love-hate frustrations with their protector and rival, the hyper-power\u00a0America\u00a0.<\/p>\n The pacifism of the European Union was supposed to be a post-Cold War model of liberal reason for the rest of the world. Instead, Islamic fascists have either ignored\u00a0Europe\u00a0‘s human-rights advocacy or considered it a sign of weakness to be exploited. An impotent E.U. is embarrassed and needs cheap targets like\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0to transfer attention away from its past naivet\u00e9 about the dangers of Islamic fascism.<\/p>\n By ankle-biting America on Guantanamo, the Europeans sound moral and tough while ignoring the real dangers for which they have absolutely no solutions \u2014 unassimilated and angry Muslims, the Dutch and Danes under assault by radical Islamic censors and a defenseless Europe potentially soon in range of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear-tipped missiles.<\/p>\n Note also that the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0has been mostly quiet about\u00a0Europe\u00a0‘s own ethical lapses in this war. Americans are in a quandary with\u00a0Iran\u00a0in large part because the Europeans \u2014 for whom profits trump idealism \u2014 sold the theocracy technology needed for the bomb. Nothing new there: Saddam once got his nuclear reactor from the French and his bombproof bunkers from the Germans.<\/p>\n We also hear a lot about the three suicides at\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0but almost nothing about the still-unexplained death of Slobodan Milosevic while being held inEurope\u00a0. When was the last time Americans chided the Germans that Mohammed Atta conspired to murder thousands of Americans while in their country?<\/p>\n Have we forgotten that Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the killer of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, at one time fit in well with the radical Islamic culture that thrives in\u00a0London\u00a0. And how about Abu Hamza al-Masri, who plotted against the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0\u2014 he’s wanted by American authorities on charges of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in\u00a0Oregon\u00a0\u2014 from his sanctuary in a\u00a0London\u00a0mosque?<\/p>\n Yet if the Eiffel Tower topples to a jihadist suicide bomber who assembled his team in Los Angeles or Miami, or if an Iranian missile soars over the Brandenburg Gate, expect the Europeans to drop their present high talk about the “gulag” at Guantanamo \u2014 and start whispering about the need for more American terrorist detention centers, classical deterrence and their own missile defense.<\/p>\n But until the Europeans’ dream world is shattered, we will hear nonstop screeching about American barbarity. Such outrage says far more about them than us.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When President Bush arrived in Vienna last week, protestors bore “World’s No. 1 Terrorist” signs while chanting “We will, we will fight Bush.” A Harris Poll conducted prior to the president’s visit revealed that the European public thinks\u00a0America\u00a0is a greater global threat than either\u00a0North Korea\u00a0or\u00a0Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[772],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-11I","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2182,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/guantanamo-laureate\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":0},"title":"Guantanamo Laureate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama threw many stones at Bush, and now lives in a glass house. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Over the last decade Barack Obama \u2014 in campaign mode for various state and federal offices \u2014 repeatedly denounced the Bush-era security protocols as either unlawful or of little utility.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2248,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/being-frank\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":1},"title":"Being Frank","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner It Would Have Been Easier Just to Tell the Truth Given the recent arrests of several jihadist plotters, we can be thankful that Obama did not, as once promised in various early manifestations, end renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, and the Patriot Act (\"shoddy and dangerous\").\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3009,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bush-considered\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":2},"title":"Bush Considered","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"American is a safer place thanks to his administration. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online A\u00a0disinterested appraisal of Bush administration foreign policy will take years. For millions on the Left, events in Iraq, Guant\u00e1namo, and New Orleans rendered the 43rd president an ill-omened phantasma \u2014 omnipotent, ubiquitous, and responsible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3121,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rules-for-killing-rogues\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":3},"title":"Rules for Killing Rogues","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The welcome end of Osama bin Laden at the hands of helicopter-borne American military commandos raises a number of issues. Americans rejoiced at news of the end of this psychopathic mass murderer, and, privately, are probably relieved that he was not to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4294,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-biteback-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":4},"title":"The Biteback Effect","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Do we even have a word to descrive the new criticism? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Sometimes even the English language is without the right word to describe a commonplace occurrence. We don't, for example, have a term quite like the German\u00a0schadenfreude: \"Taking malicious delight in someone else's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2005"","block_context":{"text":"August 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/august-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1830,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trouble-with-elitist-theories\/","url_meta":{"origin":3950,"position":5},"title":"The Trouble with Elitist Theories","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration? In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites. 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