I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself -- Internment May Be the Best Answer

For years, as did many Americans, I swallowed the propaganda of the multicultural Left, believing that the big, bad United States had unfairly, and against their will, rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. But of course we were wrong in our belief.

Today America is faced with the prospect of making a choice. The choice is to round up American citizens who happen to be Muslim and others, non-citizens to prevent a repetition of what happened in the Japanese-American community prior to and in the early moments of World War II: some Japanese American citizens and non-citizen aliens were collaborators and even agents of the Japanese government that worked tirelessly to infiltrate and undermine America at every level.

Daniel Pipes has refreshed my memory of Michelle Malkin’s book on the subject. Michelle Malkin has written an exposé of the attempt at historical revisionism that has occurred since World War II. In her book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), she has given us a review of historical record of the early 1940s:

· Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no prior history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.

· The Japanese government established “an extensive espionage network within the United States” believed to include hundreds of agents.

· In contrast to loose talk about “American concentration camps,” the relocation camps for Japanese were “spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely.” As proof, she notes that over two hundred individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.

· The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of The Nation), for taking place “without a hitch.”

· A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Malkin explains, “Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists – but not a single military officer or intelligence expert.”

· The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly US$1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees were premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed Tokyo’s plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.

Most Americans are unaware that the U.S. Government also interned Germans in the United States and in Central and South America through consultation with those governments. In turn, unlucky American citizens who were unable to return to the United States before December of 1941, were interned by the Germans and Japanese in various locations after the American declaration of war on those countries. However, the Germans and Japanese with great efficiency, had made advanced efforts to locate and dispense with foreign internees, whereas Americans had to scramble for a solution.

Throughout history, whenever possible, internment has been a tool for managing enemies. The other solution was elimination as internees can become a liability or a nuisance that some are unable or unwilling to tolerate.

Early on Europeans and then Americans notoriously interned prisoners in abysmal conditions. During the world-wide conflict between French and British dominance over North America, prisoners were interned, left to rot in the hulks of prison ships, a practice continued from previous wars and continued during the American Revolution. As well as on ships, internment in dungeons and filthy prisons, developed at the behest of the Inquisition, were the norm before the notorious 20th century death camps of both the Nazis and Japanese.

The American Civil War brought an improvement with prison camps where prisoners could at least see the sunlight, although some gained a notoriety of their own. The notorious Andersonville

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many established prison camps during the American Civil War. It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union Solders were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements.

That Civil War camps could be improvements over dungeon ships, citadel dungeons, and prisons up to that time tells how abysmally prisoners were treated.

Modern Western prisons are no picnic, but they are a paradise in comparison to most other parts of the world. World War II Japanese-American internment or relocation camps were a “paradise” in comparison to the degrading and deprived conditions of the Nazis and the Japanese prisoner camps in the same way that most other countries’ prisons are when compared to those of the United States. No one wants to go to a camp or to prison, but almost all prisoners would rather be in a prison in the United States or Western Europe.

But we are talking about American citizens! Yes, American citizens can be sympathetic to the enemy and aid and abet their cause. Immigrants can lie when taking the citizenship oath and many Americans hold a dual-citizenship, meaning that they have a split allegiance between the loyalty they owe the United States and that of another country. How can they decide to which to be truly loyal?

Muslims have a further complication. Nationalism is frowned upon in the Muslim community, and even those that promote a Pan-Arab agenda are considered to be un-Islamic. Instead, Islamists demand that Muslims adhere to the Koranic ideal of a one world under Islam, a membership in the Umma, the community of Muslims in which nationality plays no part. Instead, the Ummah must be governed by Sha’ria law within the Islamic empire, the Caliphate. Thus, how can we judge the loyalty of American Muslims when some of them hold dual citizenship and all profess to be members of the Ummah?

Michelle Malkin has raised our conciousness with her book’s thesis, one that has received and continues to receive much criticism. In any case, we must look at internment in light of advantages and disadvantages as our country is under siege from without and from within. Although many Muslims and their supporters are loyal and are working for the United States, many are not. It is necessary to make arrangements and take precautions in case, out of necessity, we must move large numbers of people that are working against us into secure situations or for their protection if Americans feel that they are.

The solution that the Nazis took was torture and death, the Japanese were little better, reflecting the historical reality of internment until that time. The World War II American camps can not be compared to these in any respect.

During a time of war we all pull together for survival. Will Muslims step up to the plate and fight for American against their nihilistic Islamist co-religionists that want to destroy America and enslave or kill the non-Muslim population? If they aren’t willing to give one-hundred-percent of their loyalty to America, they are working for the enemy and should be interned.