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Opinion & Analysis |
Thursday, March 26, 2009 |
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Cowen wrong to offer haven for jihadistsTONY ALLWRIGHT OPINION: REMEMBER THOSE second World War stories and movies where Germans ran prisoner-of-war camps, usually called something like Stalag, where American and British servicemen were interned? The lads were always trying to escape, but usually failed. You remember the bit where the Germans’ allies, the Italians and Japanese, would denounce the Nazis for keeping these men illegally locked up, their human rights violated, with no mention of a trial? Especially the bit where the Germans relented a bit, held a few tribunals and let out some of the less vociferous POWs? These fellows would of course re-enlist and return to fight the Germans. They were such inspiring stories. What’s that? You don’t remember this kind of plotline? Well, how about the more recent version, involving the redoubtable 007, sorry 008. Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul was an armed Taliban fighter captured during George Bush’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. He was designated an unlawful combatant, and eventually found himself in Guantánamo Bay prison as Detainee 008. Over the following years, America’s “allies” (eg France) and “friends” (eg Ireland) urged it to close Guantánamo, to put prisoners such as 008 on trial, and in effect to free the vast majority because juries were never likely to find many guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”. The occasional prisoner, judged no longer a threat, did leak out. One was 008, after he promised to go pursue a peaceful life. In 2007, he was released and flown to Kabul where he was reinterned. A year ago he was set free and, to no one’s great surprise, rejoined the Taliban. He rapidly rose to become operations chief in Helmand province and the architect of a new offensive against British troops, exemplified by a spike in roadside bombings that have killed more than 40 brave Tommies. 008 is just one of 60 Guantánamo alumni to have resurfaced on the battlefield. Now, Barack Obama is in the Oval Office. He announced that Guantánamo would close in a year (yeah, right!), and asked whether his friends in Europe and elsewhere would take the tribal wild men off his hands. Very few volunteered, though there’s lots of talk of “considering” it. Jacques Barrot, vice-president of the European Commission, has declared that without “total transparency” of information about the inmates, the EU “can’t assume that responsibility”. Not to be put off by tales of freed inmates returning to terrorism, the moment arrived for our Taoiseach to step forward in the exuberance of Saint Patrick’s Day in Washington. Brian Cowen, having first granted an audience to Big O, headed off to CNN for a big announcement. Doubtless thinking it would curry Big O’s favour, he chose America and journalist Wolf Blitzer as the medium to tell the world, and all at home, that Ireland would be delighted to take Guantánamo inmates (as The Irish Times reported last Friday). After all, since the Belfast Agreement, the Irish have had a lack of terrorist outrages. This needs to be rectified, despite the efforts of IRA dissidents to do exactly that by murdering the two soldiers and policeman. As far as I can ascertain, neither the Cabinet nor Dáil have publicly decided Guantánamo detainees will be accepted – or even been so informed. Thus Biffo’s choice of foreign shores to announce such a controversial fait accompli , without any public debate, constitutes a massive contempt. And no, the Nazis did not free their prisoners to go back to battle. They kept them locked up until the war was over (if they didn’t kill them). The Americans should do likewise until the war against Islamic jihad is over and the jihadists have been crushed. Brian Cowen has no business volunteering that the Irish public should provide a safe haven for Guantánamo prisoners freed by Big O for the latter’s own political reasons. If the president does not want them in America, he should not try to inflict them on others. Erik Eblana’s letter yesterday makes a similar point. The jihad is not over, and won’t be for many more years.  Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial
safety consultant, and blogs on international and national issues.
www.tallrite.com/blog.htm© 2009 The Irish Times
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More on this subject in a blog post entitled “Contempt for Irish Citizens over Gitmo” |
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Release of Guantánamo detainees - 27th March 2009Madam, – Tony Allwright (Opinion, March 26th) criticises the Taoiseach for offering “a haven for jihadists”. The Taoiseach is doing nothing of the sort. Mr Allwright bases his argument on the claim that the US wrongly decided a former Taliban fighter was no longer a threat and released him. This is not true. The US government never claimed he was no longer a threat. He was not released from Guantánamo. He was transferred back to Afghanistan where he was held in the maximum security wing of Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul. The Afghan government later made a decision to release him and have been much criticised for doing so. This is completely different to the kind of cases being considered by the Irish Government. Between 50 and 60 of the remaining 250 Guantánamo detainees have been cleared for release. The US government and military has accepted that these men are not a threat, and never were. They are not Taliban. They are not al-Qaeda. They are not suspects of any kind. Oybek Jabbarov for example, now in his seventh year of detention, was an Uzbeki livestock trader who accepted a lift from Afghan Northern Alliance militia he met in a teahouse. They then handed him over to the Americans for a bounty. Others are political activists who fled oppression in Uzbekistan, China or Libya. They cannot be returned home because the human rights record of those countries means that sending them there could expose them to further torture, imprisonment or even death. More than 520 men have been released from Guantánamo since it opened and the vast majority are trying to rebuild their lives. Claims by the US on numbers of former detainees who have “returned to the fight” have not been backed up with any identifying information or other evidence. Moreover, the US defence department’s number apparently includes former detainees who have engaged in “propaganda warfare” by speaking out publicly about the abuses they suffered while imprisoned at Guantánamo. Innocent men have spent years in prison because they were swept up in the confusion of the US invasion of Afghanistan. They suffered imprisonment, degradation and torture. Ireland can help bring this to an end by offering sanctuary to detainees who have been cleared for release. It is an act of moral courage to do so. – Yours, etc, |
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Good to report that as at
FREED AT LAST, |
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BLOGROLL
Atlantic Blog (defunct) Blog-Irish (defunct)
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What I've recently
But it's not
entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs
to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as See detailed review +++++
BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability. Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia. The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history. Note: I wrote
my own reports on Macondo +++++
A horrific account of:
More details on my blog here. +++++
After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939. From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison. Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,
Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life. Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book. There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document. +++++
This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP. With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is. +++++
It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations. For example:
The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions. And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks. Weird. ++++++
It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as
It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains. For instance:
The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. +++++
The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India. Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. The book amounts to a very human and exhilarating tale. Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan. +++++ Other books here |
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After
48
crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are,
deservedly,
England get the Silver,
No-one can argue with
Over the competition, |
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