Thiessen cites the Joker from Batman: The Dark Knight to rebut Obama on Guantanamo as recruitment tool
March 24, 2010 11:36 am ET by Media Matters staff
From Marc Thiessen's book: Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack:
Obama claims that by eliminating enhanced interrogations and closing Guantanamo, he is actually making America safer. In his view, both the CIA program and Guantanamo have driven the Muslim street into the enemy's camp and helped al Qaeda recruit new terrorists. As Obama put it in his speech at the National Archives, enhanced interrogation techniques "served as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us." Moreover, he said, "There is no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is American's strongest currency in the world ... [I]nstead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause."
This is demonstrably false. First, the terrorists were successfully recruiting suicide operatives long before the CIA interrogation program existed or there were any terrorists held at Guantanamo. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when terrorists first tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program when they attacked the USS Cole. And there was no Guantanamo and no CIA interrogation program on September 11, 2001. The terrorists found other excuses to recruit the operatives for these attacks. Evil always finds an excuse.
In the movie Batman: The Dark Knight, whenever the Joker is about to kill one of his victims, he points to the scars that form his hideous smile and tells the story of how he got his disfiguring wounds. Each time it is a different story. The first time he says they were carved into his face by an abusive father. The next time, he claims he did it to himself after criminals disfigured his wife. But when he says to Batman, "Do you know how I got these scars?" Batman says, "No, but I know how you got these," and pushes him off the side of a building. Batman is not interested in the villain's made-up excuses. We shouldn't be, either. [Pages 369-70]
As terrible and vile as their acts have been, those who attacked us have made it very clear as to why. They've been striking out at what they see as an attempt to dominate the world by force. We have more military bases in more parts of the world than any other nation, and some do not like that. Furthermore, we put a rather large Air Force base in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. We promised to pull out when that conflict was over. Our military leaders decided it was best to stay and found ways to do that long after that conflict was over.
The monsters who attacked us have, from the beginning, been looking for excuses to portray the United States as the monsters. Gitmo has done just that--particularly when it became known that we were compromising our ideals and principles with the use of torture.
If your going to reference The Dark Knight go back and look at the climatic battle between the Joker and Batman again. You'll notice that there are two boats on the harbor, rigged with explosives. The people on those boats are given the choice to kill or be killed. On both crafts there are those who choose to go against the will of the mob, and stand on principle. The choose order over chaos.
I've always felt that is what this nation chooses as well.
Thiessen is the true joke here.
Whew! At least he left The Dark Knight alone!
"Batman is not interested in the GOPs made-up excuses. We shouldn't be, either."
What I don't understand is why any legitimate book editor would have allowed such a strawman argument to stay in a book!
bee in the bonnett
burr in the saddle
President Obama's argument is that Guantanamo caused terrorism to increase. He never said terrorism was a brand-new phenomenon that only started after prisoners were kept at Gitmo.