Opinion > Columnists > Randy Scholfield

Posted on Fri, Jun. 20, 2008

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Why you should care about detainees

In an Eagle editorial this week, we said Americans should be "shocked and outraged" at the prisoner abuse at Guantanamo and other sites, as detailed in an investigative McClatchy series this week.

Several readers have responded with shock and outrage -- at the newspaper.

"The Eagle and McClatchy Newspapers are so pathetic," opines a reader in today's Reader Views. "If they think the majority of Americans are worried about the rights and treatment of the detainees in these prison camps, they are sadly mistaken."

That theme was echoed in several responses. "Who cares how they treat POWs!" said an online poster. "At least we didn't behead them like they do to our military and civilians. Do you not understand the meaning of WAR?"

Another reader accused us of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war."

And so on. There was a lot more along those lines.

Of course, I can't change the minds of some people bent on believing that the "leftist" media hate America.

But for readers open to reason, I'd like to explain why newspapers undertake stories about the treatment of prisoners. And why you should, in fact, care.

The McClatchy series went further than other reporting has gone to show widespread prisoner abuse and wrongful detention in the prison camps at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan.

The reporting found that dozens of these people held for years had done nothing wrong. They were wrongfully imprisoned. That's news the American people deserve to know.

Further, the series provided evidence that prisoner abuse was not an isolated incident or the work of a few "bad apples" but was a strategy planned and approved at the top levels of government and hidden from the public.

Some of those actions might have been illegal.

That's also news that Americans need to know.

This series wasn't an attack on the military. Far from it.

The articles laid the blame for these bungled detention policies squarely at the feet of top Bush appointees in the Justice Department, Pentagon and White House who set out to evade the Geneva Conventions, the Constitution and other documents they regarded as nuisances.

In fact, many of the military's own lawyers strongly objected, warning that the harsh interrogation tactics were illegal.

Generals and military authorities from Colin Powell on down warned that mistreating prisoners would place American troops in danger and make it more likely that they would be mistreated and tortured in captivity.

And the prisoner abuse, far from enhancing our security or providing valuable intelligence, turned many wronged detainees into angry jihadists, bent on revenge.

A fair reader objection: Why believe the word of those disgruntled prisoners?

McClatchy didn't just take their word; the reporters checked prisoner stories with military and political officials in host countries, with unclassified documents, and with former senior U.S. intelligence and military personnel with direct knowledge of the cases.

This was a detailed, carefully researched series that helped Americans better understand what their government is doing in their name.

Some Americans apparently still believe it's unpatriotic to question government in a time of war. But that blinkered refusal to weigh all the facts, to listen to evidence that doesn't fit the official story line -- in short, to think critically -- is what got us into this Iraq debacle to begin with.

I love my country.

But in the America I love, innocent people aren't "disappeared" into a prison for years with no due process.

I grew up learning that's what happens in Soviet gulags, not America.

In the America I love, prisoners aren't tortured and abused. We uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, the military code of conduct and the rule of law precisely because that is what separates us from the terrorists and animals.

Or are we really no better?

You don't have to care about these detainees. Some of them are, in fact, terrorists and bad guys who should be locked up forever.

But we should care about the truth. We should care about defending our nation's values and ideals.

The McClatchy series was an attempt to find the truth. To separate fact from fiction, the innocent from the guilty.

And that's another thing that separates us from them.

Randy Scholfield is an Eagle editorial writer. His column appears on Fridays. Reach him at 316-268-6545 or rscholfield@wichitaeagle.com.