Guantanamo: A Battlefield

Reading James Taranto’s interview with Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of Joint Tank Force Guantanamo in The Wall Street Journal of September 16, 2006, made me think of T. R. Fehrenbach’s book, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. (See "Books Worth Reading" in the left hand sidebar.) The interview discussed, among other things, the three detainees who killed themselves on June 10, 2006.

There was a huge outcry about the suicides at the time. The following excerpt from an editorial in The New York Times on June 12, 2006, is a good example of what was said:

"The news that three inmates at Guantanamo Bay hanged themselves ... was the inevitable result of creating a netherworld of despair beyond the laws of civilized nations, where men were to be held without any hope of decent treatment, impartial justice or, in so many cases, even eventual release. ... Admiral [Harry] Harris's response was as appalling as the suicides. ‘I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us,’ he said. The inmates, he said, ‘have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own.’ These comments reveal a profound disassociation from humanity."

Comments like these tend to demonstrate a distressing lack of historical context, which is why I bring up This Kind of War.

In chapters 35 and 36 of This Kind of War Fehrenbach tells the story of Koje-do, the island prisoner of war camp for North Korean and Chinese POWs. Initially, the United Nations forces did not do a good job of policing the camp. The POWs even took the commanding general hostage for a time. But the most interesting thing was how the North Koreans and Chinese POWs viewed the POW camp as just another battlefield in the war. Since Koje was an island, no escape would get the POWs back to their side. However, by planning a massive breakout and violent rampage, the POWs hoped to hand the UN forces a huge propaganda defeat.

And this is almost certainly what happened at Guantanamo. The detainees at Guantanamo could not try to escape. (Where would they go, Cuba?) However, they could still participate in the war al-Qaeda and others are fighting. As the North Korean and Chinese Communist POWs could aim for a propaganda victory by a massive breakout followed a violent rampage, the detainees at Guantanamo could aim for victories in the media by suicides that would bring criticism on their foes. Judging by comments in places and by people such as The New York Times, it appears they succeeded.