Another week - another chance for the Bush administration to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The victory in question was, of course, the news that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi had met his end at the hands of coalition forces in Iraq. This news was greeted with pretty universal approval and had been touted as a big boost for the new Iraqi government and the faltering Republican administration.
Hopefully Bush, Cheney and the rest got out and enjoyed what must be for them a rare moment of universal international approval at their actions, because it did not last long.
On Saturday, three inmates of the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay committed suicide by hanging themselves in their solitary cells with bed sheets. One of them, unbeknownst to him, was scheduled to be repatriated, but was not informed that his release was pending as the authorities had not decided what country to send him back to.
News of the suicides was certain to refocus the international community on the issue of the Guantanamo camp's continued existence, but it was not the suicides themselves that drew the most ire from the international community, but rather the jaw-droppingly crass comments of US military and diplomatic officials in responding to the news.
Firstly the commander of the camp, Rear Admiral Harry Harris was quoted as saying of the dead prisoners: "They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
Then, not satisfied with having her nations foot only half in its mouth, US diplomat Colleen Graffy dismissed the deaths as "good PR move to draw attention" in an interview with the BBC. US officials had also dismissed a mass suicide attempt in August 2003 at the camp as "manipulative, self-injurious behavior".
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world was pretty unimpressed with this attempt at 'putting a glossy sheen' on the camps first suicides. Politicians and activists from all over the world lined up to condemn the camps continued existence, and the reaction of the US government.
Even the Saudi government, (which has a reputation for torturing people in its custody comparable to that which France has for wine-making) was able to take the moral high ground. The deputy president of the Saudi National Assembly was quoted as saying "The detention camp is out of reach for neutral monitors, therefore, it is easy to accuse the prisoners [of suicide]. It is possible that these doomed [inmates] had been tortured."
For a country that has defined the smooth/forked-tongued nature of modern public relations, the US reaction to these events displayed a complete and utter ineptitude. The administration's attempts to gloss over these deaths as insignificant has simply given the rest of the world a perfect, and in this case deserved, chance to engage in the global pastime-du-jour: America-bashing.
US and other coalition officials have long claimed that part of al-Qaeda's strategy is to discredit it by means of claiming that its operatives have been mistreated and tortured while in the custody of states. This incident begs the question: do they even need to bother? In this as in so many other incidents in the war on terror, the US government's behaviour is a far better publicity machine for al- Qaeda that anything they could devise for themselves.
To regain the moral authority that it once commanded and now desperately needs again, to silence its critics, and to stop arming terrorists with the cloak of moral legitimacy the US government needs to shut Guantanamo, or bring its inhabitants to trial. Regretably, with congressional elections coming up in November and poll numbers in the toilet, Bush and the Republican Party are unlikely to jump at the challenge.
