World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don't want to eat. Muslim rapper Yasiin "Mos Def" Bey is so worked up about their appetite plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for closing Gitmo. Cry me a river.
This latest round of hunger strikes isn't an international human rights tragedy. It's another manipulative act of Jihad Theater.
Have you forgotten? Calculated Gitmo fabulism goes back to 2005, when Newsweek fell for false rumors that U.S. soldiers "flushed" the Koran down a toilet at the military detention facility in Cuba. Gullible media reports of "desecration" provided a handy pretext for anti-American riots across the Muslim world that resulted in nearly a dozen deaths. Detainees later 'fessed up that the conflagration stemmed from one of their own dropping the Koran in prison and blaming a guard.
Meanwhile, it was Gitmo residents themselves who were purposefully tearing up Korans. One guard reported in May 2003: "Detainee residing in cell (redacted) block tore his Quran into small pieces." Another prisoner "did intentionally destroy his Quran and throw (it) out of his cell," according to a separate government report.
Al-Qaida explicitly instructs its operatives to lie. A central jihad tenet, taqiyya, encourages Islamists to use deceit and victim politics to wage war. And while soft-on-terror sympathizers cast our military personnel as ruthless war criminals, Gitmo detainees have violently attacked them with everything from makeshift weapons and radios to disgusting cocktails of blood, vomit, feces, urine and sperm.
To date, there are no reports of detainees attacking our guards with the dozens of Sony PlayStations, Nintendo DS consoles, art supplies and DVDs that detainees have been given over the years. The toys and crafts are off limits!
Have you forgotten? The Gitmo stuntmen coordinated suicide threats to drum up global outrage over America's decision to hold and try them in our military system, instead of in our civilian court system. These sabotage strikes were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cold-blooded terror operatives versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities and civil liberties. Detainees considered suicides at the facility acts of martyrdom and "a continuance of their jihad against the U.S.," according to leaked documents. Military commanders discovered that detainees were abusing confidential attorney-client privileges by hiding notes and plots in special envelopes protected from the guards' reach.
Sound familiar? The same kind of subversive techniques were used by convicted jihad legal helper Lynne Stewart, who smuggled coded messages of Islamic violence on behalf of her client — jailed terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing and spiritual instigator of the 1997 massacre of Western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, and the 9/11 attacks.
Also forgotten in all the knee-jerk hoopla over the Gitmo food fight: just how much American officials have bent over backward to accommodate militant detainees' demands.
In his 2005 tell-all book condemning Gitmo, turncoat army sergeant Erik Saar inadvertently exposed our suicidal restraint and indulgence.
Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground for feet-washing before prayer, Saar reported. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer throughout the day. Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. And Gitmo's library — yes, library — is stocked with jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Saar admitted.
It's no surprise that President Overseas Contingency Operation is bowing to the cunning grievance-mongers. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy explains: "The hunger strike is on because the jihadists figure Obama is ripe for the taking." Faraway drones are A-OK, "but he is petrified by the prospect of performance-art jihad: the languishing martyrdom of self-starving death cultists, whose rapt audience of Obama favorites — Brotherhood front groups and the Lawyer Left — remind the administration every long day that he promised to shut this theater down almost five years ago."
Don't be distracted by Cirque du Jihad. Remember: The Close Gitmo mob, led by the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights, lobbied for the release of Libyan Gitmo detainee Abu Sufian bin Qumu — now a fugitive terrorist suspected of plotting the bloody Benghazi attack.
Remember: Obama's terror-coddling lawyers have dragged their feet on prosecuting suspected U.S.S. Cole bombing suspect and former Persian Gulf Operations Chief for al-Qaida Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Gitmo detainee since 2006.
Remember: As Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder spearhead renewed efforts to close Gitmo, intelligence officials report that 27.9 percent of the 599 former detainees released from Guantanamo were either confirmed or suspected of later engaging in jihadist attacks. That's a 2.9 percent rise over the 25 percent aggregate recidivism rate reported in 2010.
Remember, as Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan warned his military superiors: The soldiers of Allah "love death more (than) you love life."
The enemy combatants at Gitmo are playing bleeding-heart Westerners for fools. Their eternal goal is the destruction and subjugation of infidels. Why do we continue to enable them? Let them starve.
