Gitmo's Legacy

The Wall Street Journal outdoes itself in pure chutzpah. Below is the entire text of today's short editorial, "Gitmo's Nomads" (no link, avail to subscribers only):

As a measure of Europe's concern for the men held at Guantanamo, we offer the story of 15 Uighur inmates. Captured in Afghanistan where they were for reasons that remain unclear, the men are not considered "enemy combatants" by the U.S. military, which wants to release them.

Only these Uighurs can't go home to China, which brutally represses this Turkic-speaking Muslim minority of some eight million living in the country's northwestern corner. So Washington is looking for a third country willing to grant sanctuary. Sweden, France, Germany, Finland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey are among those that have been approached, according to news reports. You'd think that Europe, so critical of U.S. detention policies, would jump at an opportunity to reduce the prisoner pool at Gitmo. Yet not a single country has offered to take them in.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court deferred to a lower court an appeal by two of the Uighurs who want to be released in the U.S. If Washington's talks with Europe falter, U.S. asylum may be the only humane option. But the Uighurs are not America's problem alone. They were picked up during the "good war" -- good in the sense that Europe supported it -- in Afghanistan. The German daily Die Welt reports that Berlin rejected Washington's request because it didn't want to offend Beijing. When we called the German government, the reply was a curt "no comment."

Chancellor Angela Merkel has done much to repair the diplomatic damage done by her predecessor Gerhard Schröder. But even she found it necessary to open her first visit to Washington in January with a call to close Guantanamo. Ms. Merkel will be back in Washington next month, giving her an opportunity to show that she wasn't playing to the anti-American gallery. Reserving 15 seats for the Uighurs on her flight back might do the trick.

So desite the fact that they have loudly criticized our illegal detainment of prisoners at Guantanamo, because Europe "supported" our invasion of Afghanistan, they are obliged to take these guys off our hands? I'm sure we don't want to offend Beijing any more than the Germans do, which I assume is why we're trying to pawn off the Uighurs to them.

This is yet another example of those who presumably fight for the cause of freedom speaking out of both sides of their mouth. If freedom for Iraqis is worth fighting a war over, surely freedom for Uighurs is worth offering them asylum.

This is not about Europe's lack of concern for Guantanamo detainees. This is about the US government not standing up and taking responsibility for its own actions.

The Uighurs are not Europe's problem, but our own.