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s I mentioned yesterday, liberal blogger Dan Chmielewski and I have been in a “wall war” on facebook over Gitmo and, with his last post, the whole raison d’etra of the Iran war.  Chmielewski posed a two-parter:

You didn’t answer the question Laer; what did we win? Seton Hall researchers put out an announcement that the ARMY got the numbers wrong with the 61/now 63 former detainees having rejoined the fray.

Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign and where there only on a token level after we invaded. Disagreements between the Sunni and the Sh’ia will more likely turn Iraq into a theocracy than a Democracy.

Let’s start with the numbers, then turn to what we’ve won in Iraq.

UPDATE: I’ve now added the discussion on what we won in Iraq.

Why would Chmielewski expect the number of detainees returning to battle to be low? Why would released detainees not go back to fighting us?  Did they learn the beauty of the American system in Guantanamo?  Did they renounce jihad as war against the infidel and accept it as war against inner demons?  Some, maybe, but more likely the detainees would respond the same way our servicemen and women would respond if the shoe were on the other foot.

If the Islamists were enlightened enough to even have prisoners instead of considering our captured soldiers to be nothing more than beheading and mutilation targets, and if they bent to the shrieks of the libs and released them, the released soldiers and Marines would be aching to get back into the fight.  Chmielewski is either not thinking this through, or he’s ascribing to the Islamists character traits I see no evidence of them having: pacifism, doubts about Islam, flexibility, complacency, love of America.  Is he giving the detainees some sort of hero status like Sacco, Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs, and thereby misreading what they’ll do upon release? Quite possibly.

So there’s clearly a basis justifying the acceptance of the numbers - but are they accurate?  Here’s the base report, as reported on Voice of America:

The United States Department of Defense says the number of former Guantanamo Bay detainees returning to terrorist activities is on the rise.

Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have returned to the fight against the United States and its allies.

Morrell said that a Defense Department report compiled in December found a substantial increase in the number of detainees returning to terrorism.

“Prior to this report, the rate had been about seven percent of those who had been held at Guantanamo and released and those that had been confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. At that point, we suspected that 37 former detainees had returned to the fight,” said Morrell. “We now believe that that number has increased and that the overall known terrorist re-engagement rate has increased to 11 percent.”

Morrell said that of the former detainees who returned to terrorism, 18 are confirmed and 43 are suspected of participating in terrorist activities. He says fingerprints, photographs and intelligence materials were used to tie some of the former detainees to terrorist activities.

Chmielewski may be going with the confirmed number and I - and most other non-libs - are going with the confirmed and suspected total.  Before he chimes in that one can hardly trust a Voice of America report (as if VOA hasn’t been swallowed up whole by libs), let me add this from the VOA story:

But Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School has represented some of the detainees and says the Pentagon has failed to produce evidence of early claims that former detainees have returned to the battlefield.

“The numbers are wrong about who has returned to the fight; their numbers and names are wrong about who has been in Guantanamo. And, of course, the characterization of ‘returned to the fight’ is far broader than they would like to admit,” said Denbeaux. “What they would like is to be understood to mean as ‘return to the battlefield,’ but, of course, that hasn’t happened. So what they mean by ‘return to the fight’ is engaging in propaganda battles and criticisms of the United States at home and abroad.”

Weasels. If someone comes out of Gitmo and becomes, instead of a footsoldier, a general, a recruiter, a fundraiser, or a weapons procurer, then Prof. Denbeaux of Seton Hall won’t count them as “returned to the fight.”  That’s like saying David Petraeus is no longer a military asset to the U.S. because he’s now in Tampa, not Baghdad.  Denbeaux is proving my point by this argument.  If the detainees released from Guantanamo aren’t returning to the battlefield, then those that still are engaged in jihad against us are fighting at a higher level in the command structure - increasing the likelihood that they were significant enough assets to begin with to require continued detention.

It’s not the least bit surprising that Denbeaux would question the numbers, or that libs would flock to him as a more believable source than the Pentagon.  He doesn’t hide his contempt for Guantanamo and the U.S. military. Here’s the lead of his bio:

Professor Mark Denbeaux, one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members, is also the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its disseminatino of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. Denbeaux’s interest in the conditions of detainment arose from his representation of two detainees there.

Following his visits to GITMO, and his participation in amicus briefs arising from the rules governing the hearings for “enemy combatants,” Denbeaux realized the need for an analysis of the government’s assumptions and the principles governing the detention process. The Guantánamo report series are primarily produced by Seton Hall Law students of all levels. Several graduates have remained research fellows, as well.

So Denbeaux is on the side of the detainees, not the military (note the all-telling quotes around “enemy combatants”). It’s not the least bit surprising hat since he’s dedicating his life to freeing these scum, he does not want to admit that they are, in fact, scum.  He’s espoused his theories on Rachel Maddow’s show and at teach-ins, so he’s got to be more believable than the U.S. government.  No word on who, exactly, his observers in the field are and why they’re more accurate than the U.S. military.

So you have the U.S. military, which obviously has an agenda but is also an open society with internal checks and balances, and which also has extensive resources in the field, up against a guy who’s sided with (”alleged”) terrorists, is prejudiced against Guantanamo and the war, and has no resources to draw information from than the detainees themselves.

Yet Chmielewski sides with Denbeaux and supports his position on the war in part by believing what Denbeaux believes - that the detainees aren’t such a bad bunch of fellows, really.  And with that in mind, we turn next to Chmielewski’s next question: What did we win in Iraq?

[The following is being added over my lunch break]

Perhaps the best place to start seeking what we have won in Iraq is to consider what we lost in Vietnam, when we followed the Lib’s lead and left the country when victory was in hand.

Obviously, the most important point is not about what we lost, but what the people of Southeast Asia lost.  They lost millions of lives in South Vietnam and Cambodia as the Communists imposed first their brutal and illegal retaliation against those who fought them (a war crime the Left did not protest), and then, in Cambodia particularly, their bizarre visions of utopia.  For those who survived, most lost wealth, health and opportunity.  Their lives would have been better under a capitalistic society.

For us, we lost the opportunity to have another strong partner in Southeast Asia, creating a vacuum filled first by the Chinese communists, and subsequently by totalitarians (Burma) and, more recently, Islamists (Indonesia). If Vietnam had become a free capitalist democracy on the southern flank of China, would the development of repressed-market capitalism there had grown so quickly?  Might not all of Southeast Asia, including Hell-holes like Burma, flourished because there was a local model to emulate?

I won’t speculate on the regional changes that could have occurred with our victory because we’ll never know, but if you want a model, look at how the quality of life in Eastern Europe has improved since we defeated communism there. It’s s easy to see that there was a lot of lost potential in Southeast Asia.

The obvious next step is to consider what we won in World War II.  The answer of course is that winning sometimes isn’t all it’s cut out to be, but it’s still pretty good.  On the up side, we eliminated the threat  Germany, Japan and Italy posed to our democracy, and freed their people from regimes that were condemning them to starvation at best and death at worst.  We saw Democracy spread, and with it trade opportunities for us and a better quality of life for them.  We kicked off a period of fantastic growth in our economy and global influence.

On the downside, Russia got its cut and with it decades of grief for Eastern Europe and Cuba; China wasn’t dealt with at all, leading to decades of poverty for the Chinese under communism and the Korean war; and in the Middle East, the whole multifaceted, bloody conundrum got established anew.  Like I said, winning isn’t always what it’s cut out to be.

There certainly could be similar downsides to a victory in Iraq, but Chmielewski’s Sunni/Shia bloodshed isn’t as likely a one of them as it was a few years back.  With each passing day, there is more reason for Iraqis to stick together and fewer reasons for it to descend into violence, and there’s more power and capability in the central government to hold the country together.

Iran, Syria and the states on the Saudi peninsula could respond in all sorts of bizarre and negative ways to having a free Iraq - but how is that different from how they act today?  The chances are more likely there would be profound cross-Gulf business alliances that could lead to more pressure for the repressive Iranian and Syrian regimes to change.

That’s all speculation about the future and any lefty can speculate right back at me with all sorts of black and depressing scenarios, so let’s look instead at what’s already in the “won” column.

The first big win is for the Iraqis, who no longer must live under Saddam Hussein, who fomented Sunni attacks on Shi’a and Kurd populations, starved his people so he could build palaces, let millions die in his madcap wars, and conducted a reign of terror in which no one felt safe.  Now they have a democracy and their economy is picking up.  Violence is way down.  Women can run for office. And just about everybody can hate al Qaeda and their senseless violence.

There’s another win in there for dozens of other countries and the U.N.  By stabilizing the Gulf (and we did - there’s only been one, contained war there, unlike how things were while Hussein was in power), we ensured continuous oil deliveries to the benefit of the world’s economies.  And we stood up for the UN’s resolutions.  And (with a wink here) we taught the intelligence services of Russia, France, Britain and a host of other countries that they had to sharpen their skills, since they, like we, missed it when Hussein shipped off his WMDs to Syria, buried them in the sand … or just made the whole thing up, fooling us all.

For us, for a start, other countries have seen this.  That has its downsides, but they’re overrated.  Liberals around the world don’t like Bush or us much, but the world is made up of more than mere liberals.  Even though a neocon-dream of rapidly spreading democracy hasn’t happened, when we leave Iraq and people see it continuing to function as a democracy, they will notice, they will scratch their heads and wonder why if we’re imperialists we’re leaving, and most will appreciate what the Iraqis have … what we gave them.

We also have a stable source of oil.  We didn’t take it; we’re buying it (as are others) and the iraqis are producing it.

Iraq will restore oil exports to 2.0 million barrels per day in 2009 and increase its refining capacity to become self sufficient in oil products by the end of the year, Oil Minister Hussain al-Sahristani said on Monday.

“We have pledged in the 2009 budget to raise daily crude production and export an average of 2 million barrels per day, which means a 150,000 bpd increase compared to 2008,” Shahristani told a small group of reporters. (Reuters)

After the first Gulf war, Iraq’s production was 500,000 million barrels per day; it grew to a very sporadic 2.5 MBD just before the start of the current war - but with considerable deferred maintenance that has been slowing Iraq’s recovery in the area of oil.  With a free democracy, Iraq is now investing in its major source of revenue instead of presidential palaces, and production will continue to increase, especially when demand starts to grow again.

We have tested and proven new alliances.  The war on terror - both in Afghanistan and Iraq - has tested our relations with Muslim countries from Turkey to Turkmenistan.  There has been some fall-out for sure, especially in Turkey early in the war, but we have seen that when we need to form an alliance with an Islamic country to fight another Islamic country, we can.  The war has also helped us build alliances in Eastern Europe, which will prove very helpful as Putin stirs.

As for Putin, he may not stir so quickly because of the war.  Our success in overthrowing the Taliban regime in about two minutes was a huge embarassment to the Russians, and our ability to work with Uzbekistan has got to be a nightmare for the Kremlin.  And as we fight to free a large Muslm population, he must look at his Muslim population (10 to 15 percent of Russians are classified as active Muslims by the CIA) and grit his teeth.

But the biggest benefits of the war for us all have to do with the global war against the jihadists who declared war on us on 9/11.

The war has allowed us an opportunity to force our enemy into a two-front war, and we have vanquished them in the Western front, Iraq, and if Obama’s worth his salt, will vanquish them in Afghanistan as well.  This may not have been our intent, as Chmielewski points out - “Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign [Never say never, Dan] and where there only on a token level after we invaded.” - but the first intent and the final intent of wars are rarely the same. Al Qaeda flocked to Iraq after the war began, intent on a glorious, Afghanistan-like victory over another great Satan, but it was they who were defeated - thoroughly, embarassingly, and at great cost.  We broke their infrastructure, killed them by the thousands, hurt their recruiting capabilities and gained knowledge in how to gather intelligence about them.

Most importantly, the western front in the war on terror kept them busy over there so they weren’t as busy over here, and one of the great unmeasurable benefits of the war is the attacks on America that didn’t happen because al Qaeda’s resources were tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, and the Left will contest this until they’re blue in the face, the war in Iraq brought back our military and our respect for our military.  Sure, the loons protest and try to kick ROTC off campus and recruiting stations out of Berkely, but the rest of America swells with pride over our young warriors and the great work they’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They know a selfless commitment to bettering others and protecting us when they see it, and as a result, our military has gotten stronger, with better recruits and broader support.

And with that, I end with a salute to the biggest losses of all in the War on Terror - those who died on 9/11 and the young American and allied men and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq since then - and with a prayer that President Obama will not let these deaths to have been in vain.

       

Tags: Al Qaeda, Denbeaux, Guantanamo, Iraq, Leftism

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