Suicides an 'Act of War', Says US Admiral

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Sunday June 11, 2006 · 3:06 AM PDT

2006/06/11 · 03:06

It's not often that I find myself talking to the radio.

This morning, while returning home, I heard a CBS News radio report on the suicides at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Harry Harris, the admiral commanding the Gitmo prison camp, was quoted as rejecting the notion that the three men killed themselves out of desperation, or a sense of hopelessness. Instead, he termed their deaths an act of war.

Killing one's self is, you see, naked and unprovoked aggression. Like Pearl Harbor, or the shelling of Fort Sumter. Even if all you do is hang yourself.

I'll leave you to imagine what I said to my radio.

CNN has the story this morning as well. Harris described the suicides as "clearly a planned event" -- I had previously been unaware that suicide could be accidental -- and elaborated on his 'act of war' thesis.

They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.
-- Rear Admiral Harry Harris, Commander, Joint Task Force Guantanamo

Let's parse the logic, shall we?

After holding these men for almost five years -- during which time their jailors have had every conceivable advantage, including the unfettered right to use torture, trickery, and the threat of further incarceration forever, without access to family, friends, or the recognition of any legal rights whatsoever -- there has been insufficient evidence to try them as war criminals. Now, though, Admiral Harris has proof! See! They committed an act of war against the United States! By killing themselves!

Perhaps we should go bomb someone, in reprisal.

Thus are the prisoners damned: if they choose to live, they will live in endless isolation condemned without trial as terrorists; if they choose to die, their very deaths will be brandished as conclusive evidence that they were terrorists -- practitioners of the art of asymmetric warfare -- after all.

It's very possible that these people were terrorists -- that lack of evidence notwithstanding, they were brutal, inhuman monsters. But I submit that when we characterize the act of hanging oneself as an act of war, the evidence for our own humanity is not very encouraging.

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