“Asymmetrical warfare” or asymmetrical justice?

Maybe it’s just a measure of my own suicidal tendencies, but I suspect that if I’d been kept prisoner in the Guantánamo facility for years on end, with no end in sight, with no opportunity to challenge the evidence against me, and under the total control of my keepers, I would probably stop eating or try to hang myself or try to do myself in by whatever means came to hand. I doubt I’d be consciously engaging in “asymmetrical warfare,” but would only be availing myself of the last shred of my autonomy.

Of what value is life, under the circumstances of the prisoners of Guantánamo? They well understand that Bush’s “War on Terror” is a war without end, a war that can never end, and that they will be held for its duration—who among us would choose “life” under such conditions? What, exactly, do they have to live for?


I find it a stunning use of language when Admiral Harris says that he believes that “this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” All three of the men had been receiving force-feedings after having gone on hunger strikes, and had no hope of ever being released—would this not cause some degree of desperation in any of us so treated? Is not their incarceration a form of living death?

It seems to me that the suicides were the most rational act that those prisoners could perform, and that their reasons for acting were substantial, regardless of their guilt or innocence (itself apparently of no interest to their captors). Given the choice of a an endless living hell at the hands of others, or relief via death, I’m pretty sure I know what I would do.