May 9, 2008 [LINK / comment]

And throw away the key!

Just when the comedy movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay comes out, a real-life event transpires to remind us that the Gitmo detention facility still serves a needed purpose, and it still saves lives. A story in yesterday's Washington Post began

A Kuwaiti man who complained about maltreatment during a three-year stay in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a deadly suicide bombing in northern Iraq last month...

Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was only one of 500 or so former Guantanamo detainees released or transferred elsewhere, and many of the 270 who remain are in the process of getting out. If only that piece of scum had been kept behind bars where he belonged, some of those Iraqi bomb blast victims might still be alive today. (It's the opposite lesson to the one George Bailey learned in It's a Wonderful Life.) It's popular to make fun of U.S. counter-terrorism measures, as "Harold and Kumar" do, but this is a deadly serious matter. I'm against torture and I agree that we need better legal safeguards for those who are being kept at Guantanamo, but I see no alternative to the permanent incarceration of the religious fanatics who have sworn to destroy us.

April 30, 2008 [LINK / comment]

Combat deaths surge in April

After a lull that began last fall, a hopeful sign that the "Surge" policy was working, the number of U.S. combat deaths climbed to [50] in April, the most since last September (62). The U.S. offensive against the militia forces loyal to Moqtada al Sadr in Sadr City district of Baghdad is dragging out week after week. It is exactly the kind of urban attrition warfare that we have been trying to avoid all along, and there is a growing risk of alienating the local population if some of our soldiers fire at the wrong targets. In all such counterinsurgency campaigns, that risk must constantly be managed by military commanders. (See Washington Post.) In the south of Iraq, meanwhile, the offensive by government forces against the Shi'ite militiamen apparently gained very little. The virtual absence of the British army since earlier this year has left a power vacuum that the militias have eagerly filled.

Including fallen soldiers whose relatives have not yet been contacted, the total number of U.S. war deaths in Iraq crossed the 4,000 threshhold in March. It is sad that, as the frequency of news stories about Iraq declines, many Americans are paying less attention to the struggle.