Ten American Baptists were
arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as
some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.
National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is
deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom she contends (based exclusively on his family's claims) is innocent. Lopez demands that the State Department do more to "insist" upon Allen's release, and -- most amazingly of all -- complains about the conditions of his detention. She has the audacity to cite a Human Rights Watch description of prison conditions in Haiti as "inhumane." Lopez complains that Allen
was waterboarded, stripped, frozen and beaten has "hypertension," was
shipped thousands of miles away to a secret black site beyond the reach of the ICRC and then rendered to Jordan allowed to speak to his wife only once in the first ten days of his confinement, and was
consigned to years in an island-prison cage with no charges denied his choice of counsel for a few days (though he is now duly represented in Haitian courts by a large team of American lawyers).
You know what else Human Rights Watch vehemently condemns as human rights abuses?
Guantanamo,
military commissions,
denial of civilian trials,
indefinite detention,
America's "enhanced interrogation techniques," renditions, and a
whole slew of other practices that are
far more severe than the conditions in Haiti about which Lopez complains and yet which have been
vocally supported by National Review. In fact, Lopez's plea for Allen is surrounded at
National Review by
multiple and increasingly strident attacks on the Obama administration by former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino for (allegedly) abandoning those very policies, as well as
countless posts from former Bush speechwriter (and the newest
Washington Post columnist) Marc Thiessen
promoting his new book defending torture. Lopez herself has
repeatedly cheerled for Guantanamo and
related policies,
hailing Mitt Romney's call in a GOP debate that we "double Guantanamo" as his "best answer" and
saying she disagrees with John McCain's anti-torture views, while mocking human rights concerns with the term "Club Gitmo." And
National Review itself has led an
endless attack on the credibility of Human Rights Watch, accusing it of anti-Israel and anti-American bias for daring to point out the human rights abuses perpetrated by those countries.
What's going on here is quite clear, quite odious, and quite common. It goes without saying that because he hasn't yet had a trial, Allen could be perfectly innocent, or he could be guilty of some rather heinous crimes -- just as is true of Guantanamo detainees held for years without charges or a trial (indeed, even with Haiti virtually destroyed under rubble, Allen -- unlike GITMO detainees -- is receiving full due process). Why would
National Review -- which endorses far worse abuses when perpetrated on Muslims convicted of nothing -- take up the cause of an accused child smuggler and possible child trafficker, and suddenly find such grave concern over detainee conditions? Or, to
use their warped vernacular, which
equates unproven accusations with guilt, why would
National Review be advocating for the
rights of child kidnappers and child traffickers? Because, as a Christian, Allen is deemed by
National Review to deserve basic human rights, unlike the Muslim detainees whose (far worse) abuse they have long supported (in stark and commendable contrast to
National Review,
Southern Baptist leaders are also demanding that the Obama administration do more to secure the release of Allen and his fellow prisoners, but they at least have standing and credibility to do so, as the
National Association of Evangelicals, the
Southern Baptist Convention, and
the leading Southern Baptist ethicist all condemned Bush policies as "torture" which "violates everything we stand for," although they did that quite belatedly).
All of this is reminiscent of the
single greatest act of self-satire I encountered since I began writing about politics: in September, 2006, three Indonesian Christians were convicted in a regular Indonesian court of a brutal terrorist attack that left 70 Muslims dead, and they were sentenced to death. Michelle Malkin and various other right-wing agitators -- who not only cheered on every radical Bush/Cheney denial of due process and punishment without trial for Muslims, but demanded even more extreme measures -- righteously took up the cause of these Christian Terrorists, expressing "grave doubts raised over the fairness of the trial," citing "irregularities" in the trial they received, and even calling upon the "International Criminal Court in Geneva" to intervene -- seriously (
this behavior from GOP Sen. Mel Martinez, in a different case, was quite similar). The very same people who have been demanding for years that Muslims be imprisoned for life, tortured and killed with no trials or charges of any kind suddenly become extremely sensitive to the nuances of due process and humane detention conditions -- they start sounding like Amnesty International civil liberties extremists -- the minute it's a Christian, rather than a Muslim, who is subjected to such treatment. Lest anyone think these glaring double standards are driven more by nationality than religion,
National Review -- along with most of their comrades --
supported the full denial of due process in the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S.-born American citizen and Muslim who was
tortured to the point of insanity, and it now
does the same with U.S.-born American citizen and Muslim Anwar al-Awlaki, whom the U.S. is
currently trying to assassinate.
<snip>
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/14/haiti
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