I am honored to receive a direct response from the man himself.

So, yes, back some 20 years ago the Tiananmen protestors were the darlings of the U.S. media, and this resulted in exactly what actual political action on the part of the U.S.? Oh sure people loved them, who didn’t identify at the time with young men and women protesting peacefully against the Chinese state, and who didn't feel sympathy at the violent retribution doled out to them.

This however, does nothing to make your point, and in fact makes mine. Even with the most sympathetic counter insurgency ever mass televised around the world, and the U.S. ship of state did little to nothing to foster this insurgency. And just to make clear the point, the U.S. did far less to support the Tiananmen Square protestors than they did a few years earlier in support of Islamic freedom fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Now, some 20 years later, real world blowback from our support of the Islamic freedom fighters has lead to at least one of our current wars, and China's place on the global scene has only expanded and become more integrated.

Simply put, the Uighurs we captured in Afghanistan are suspect as being simply, passive resistance protestors of Chinese policy. They may well be terrorists, just not terrorists targeting the U.S. so some in the U.S. have little sympathy for them. As to the Uighurs in China, they receive the same support that the Tibetans and the underground Catholics receive. Our applause at luncheons when they are peaceful, and our earnest handwringing when they turn violent.

We are not going to sanction our global partner over any of those ground under the heel of communism. That is perhaps evidence of the lack of moral fiber of the American State, but said moral fiber is motivated not by disdain for one group over another, but desire for continued relative peace and prosperity.

It is fine to call the U.S. a coward for not standing up to the oppressive dictators of the world, but please put that hypocrisy in perspective, in what we have done in the past, why we did it, and what we do today.

The analogy holds true in one other respect: the Uighurs have oil. Wherever a minority in a Muslim country has grievances and oil- even if that minority is Muslim itself, as are the Darfurians or Kurds in Iraq- its grievances are exploited and it is urged to secede, the plan being, presumably, to install a pro-Western government that will make the oil available.

Probability.

They view it as cultural and linguistic suppression much the way the Tibetans do. That the Uighurs are in fact Islamic is somewhat besides the point. My recommendation would be to dial back on the paid pro Islamo-extremist rhetoric and try to at least frame some of these arguments in the same context that the people involved with them do.

What makes you think charging into anything with dross like this will work any better?

glenn has somehow figured out that America is primarily a christian country. How does he do it?

I think some remedial english courses are in order as well, given you can't figure out where to capitalize either.

The religious demographics of the US aren't germaine here anyway. What's your point?

And he's turned the world on it's head by deciphering that the "war on terror" is just code for a war on muslims based purely on the uighurs fight with china. Most people would have to look at far more information but glenn doesn't need it.

Odd then how all the detainees in this mess are Muslims, and that our major military actions are within Muslim countries, and that our foreign aid is going to prop up autocratic leaderships in Muslim countries in Central Asia and along the southern Mediterranean coast.

He's just the most amazing "journalist" living.

That's a fairly low bar to get over, given the quality of "journalism" these days.

-- farragut

glenn has somehow figured out that America is primarily a christian country. How does he do it?

That wasn't Glenn's point, but given that it's yours, can you explain it a bit? Are you saying that because the US has a majority of Christians, that it's only right that we should persecute terrorists (or non-terrorists, as the case may be) based on the fact that theirs is a different religion? Please elaborate.

And he's turned the world on it's head by deciphering that the "war on terror" is just code for a war on muslims based purely on the uighurs fight with china. Most people would have to look at far more information but glenn doesn't need it.

While Glenn may not have mentioned this in his original post, many others have pointed out the disparate treatment of our own Christianist terrorists, as compared to Muslim ones, to further support this point.

Rather than waste time with vacuous one-liners, why not come up with an alternate hypothesis to explain all this? Don't worry, I won't be holding my breath.

As to the Uighurs in China, they receive the same support that the Tibetans and the underground Catholics receive. Our applause at luncheons when they are peaceful, and our earnest handwringing when they turn violent.

How many Tibetans and Chinese Catholics were sent to Guantánamo?

You seem to think that the piece made some suggestion that the U.S. should somehow support the Uighur insurgency. If so, I urge you to read it again.

I don’t think it alters your argument one iota, Glenn, but we should concede that the Uighurs in Guantánamo as far as I remember were picked up in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. There their intent was to be trained for armed resistance against the Chinese. Thus, in a way allied to the Taliban, the American forces might be excused for detaining them in the first place. However, it was evident in quite a short time that they had no ill will toward the U.S.

For three years, the U.S. unwilling to provide shelter themselves, tried to pressure other governments into hosting the Uighurs. At least, the U.S. had the decency not to send them back to China. Governments of economic stronger countries like my own, Germany, cowardly denied them political asylum out of fear of Chinese reprisals – there are a few Uighurs in Bavaria, though, and therefore, Germany was and is particularly suited to give them shelter. Poor Albania in 2006 could not resist U.S. pressure, and five Uighurs wound up there, now convinced they had misheard ‘Alemania’ (Germany) for ‘Albania’.

Thus, while our European cowardice has more to do with fear of Chinese retaliations I think that it is indeed their being Muslims that they are not welcome in the U.S. Otherwise, how could you possibly explain that they are not praised as “Freedom Fighters” by the right wing press? Though had they been extradited to the People’s Republic, the clamour on the right would be deafening.

Other from the Uighurs themselves, there are no heroes in this story.