The Editors of the New York Times began a supremely dishonest and partisan editorial on the suicides at Guantanamo with this lead paragraph:

The news that three inmates at Guantánamo Bay hanged themselves should not have surprised anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the twisted history of the camp that President Bush built for selected prisoners from Afghanistan and antiterrorist operations. It 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.

In this rarest of cases, I’ll echo Michelle Malkin: Boo Freakin Hoo. Do the Editors of the Times really believe those three “poor unfortunate” dedicated Al Qaeda Terrorists were so despondent over their status as enemy non-combatants, their legal limbo, their continued confinement at the hand so such brutal American military captors, that they fervently desired death over confinement?

Do these fools have a clue?

I have no doubt that dedicated Jihadis are incensed, beside their Paradise-seeking selves that they are not being allowed to kill infidels (us, you, the editors of the NYT, anybody not sufficiently 7^th century Muslim), or at least, die trying.

I have no doubt it is just as the Times-slandered Commander at Guantanamo says:

"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."

They aren’t being allowed to kill infidels, so the next best thing they can do: commit suicide in captivity (special fatwa absolving them from Hell, since suicide was an act of Jihadi resistance), and allow the useful idiots and other sympathizers in the media carry out the press release.

That, and at least one of these guys was on his way to a Middle Eastern country where they don’t have a military that is so obsequious, that don’t bend over backward to make sure you are fed three square a day, clothed, allowed personal items, prayer objects, prayer time, etc. Not at all. Where they would have been likely subjected to torture or immediate execution.

Do the Editors at the Times have any idea how well these prisoners are treated compared to, let’s say, 95% of the world, including most of the countries in Europe?

But there is one thing you can say about the Editors of the New York Times.

They’re not afraid to tell you what side of the political divide they are on. Nor are the reluctant to identify to whom they pledge their allegiance, their sympathy, their concern and the support of their significant media resources.

Of course, NYT reporting on our detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay from the start has been anything but honest, complete. This is one-sided attack journalism in league with their political friends and fellow-partisans.

In times of war, it used to be that Americans believed that, for better or worse, you supported your government. You might criticize, you might advocate change, you might call for new leaders. But you wouldn’t promote and advance enemy propaganda while at the same time discrediting and dismissing official US Government positions and press releases.

In times of war, only the most wild-eyed progressives view pacifism as a no-surrender moral stance, applicable in all cases, no matter how evil or abhorrent the enemy.

In times of war, Americans would brook no slander against the men and women serving in the Armed Forces, as they are our brothers and sisters most in harm’s way.

Either the Editors of the New York Times think these former practices primitive or antiquated, or they don’t agree that we’re at war. One has to wonder: would their view be different if their offices had been in the World Trade Center?

In times of war with countries that retained at least of shred of humanity or respect for the Laws of War (even Nazis one might add), when you found un-uniformed combatants engaged in sabotage, terrorist attacks against non-combatants, people who hid their military affiliation, the Laws of War were pretty clear. Such could be summarily executed by military commanders, and often were.

That’s the whole conundrum of respect for humanity and civilized behavior even in war, that led to the US to create Guantanamo in the first place. These are terrorists who reject all aspects and common practices in “civilized warfare,” as codified in the Geneva Convention and acknowledged Laws of War. They deserve no part of the rights and privileges of prisoners of war because they reject those conventions and laws outright. They act contrary to the letter and spirit of such attempts at maintaining a shred of humanity, with intent. That is in fact their mode of operation.

No, Guantanamo and the designation of non-enemy combatants for these non-state, independent allies in terror war against anything Western, American, Zionist (read Infidel) is not a perfect solution. And if the Times would drop the attack stance against anything Bush related, maybe they could be part of suggesting something better.

Returning to a law enforcement paradigm, releasing those fighters who could not be “proven” to be terrorists only to have them kill innocents again, is not something better. But that’s all the Editors of the Times have got. And America needs to stop buying.

(Via Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web.)

(Cross-posted at Milblogs)