My, don't you all have your panties in a bunch?
I saw the original newscast in which the Amnesty spokeswoman referred to Guantanamo as a Gulag. The comment was made by Irene Khan, Secretary General. Her exact words are "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time." (
Link)
She did not say that Guantanamo is the modern equivalent of any of the Gulags of Stalin, Mao, or any other dictator. She did not say that the regime carried on there is in any way equivalent to that of those dictators, or any other dictators.
What she sid is "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time." Which means that the same impulse toward total control is at work in the thinking behind the Guantanamo detention center as was apparent, in far more extreme forms, in the Gulags of Russia, China, and Iraq.
In that sense, and in that sense alone, I agree with her. Just like the Gulags, Guantanamo is a place of fictions, where fighters who were not soldiers are not held as prisoners but as detainees, where law does not apply but only the will of the State. That the will of this particular State is largely humane and that in the main prisoners there appear to be treated reasonably well, is beside the point.
The inherent tendency of every State is to dominate. In mainland America that will is curtailed and controlled by the Constitution, and the checks and balances of power instituted here. But in Guantanamo that will is made plainly manifest. And it was to
this that Irene Khan was pointing, not to some childish and entirely untenable equivalence between Guantanamo and the prison camps of China and Russia.
In essence, you are arguing over something that was not said, and taking positions which have no basis in reality (because the event they 'debate' did not occur) but only in your own ignorance and prejudice.
But hey, this is JU. What's new?
