Libertarian Litmus Test

The threat of Mssr Non-Volokh’s stance is that its natural consequence is to allow pro-torture people to create infinite levels of distinction between what we’re doing and what a ‘real gulag’ was, and thus, we’re still not nearly as bad, so why don’t you find something better to do with your time?

If we only step halfway to having a real gulag each time, we’ll never reach that point, will we?

In the meantime, squabbling over word choice distracts from the issue of actual Gulagesque evil being undertaken by the US government and our proxies.

I propose that this stance be mocked by adopting an “American Gulag Threat Level” metric, to be prominently placed at better blogs everywhere.

I figure it should be at “Orange” right about now.

Kieran,

What does Volokh have to do with libertarianism? The only libertarian I know of on that blog is Randy Barnett.

I don’t really have a problem with people attempting to make a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable variations in similar behavior, but if it really is the case that someone believes that certain degrees or variations of torture are acceptable, it’d be nice to hear exactly what the distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable torture are and how we can apply them to concrete situations.

Also, for the purposes of intellectual honesty, such a statement would have to admit that if such practices are morally acceptable for our armed forces, they must also be for those of our enemies or other nations and organizations at large. After all, if we can torture detainees to x degree, it seems reasonable that China may also torture dissidents to x degree and Al Qaeda do the same. Certainly, one cannot appear credible if one holds that certain behaviors are legitimate for oneself, but not for others.

(Of course, Al Qaeda obviously uses American torture practices to justify their own brutality as a matter of course, just as some American conservites do likewise).

Libertarians think I can do no wrong.

Love’em!

On “non-Volokh” — one of the awkward things about maintaining a pseudonymous internet identity is that the subtlest clues left lying around can risk exposure. So it is in this case. The logic, the prose style, the entire thrust of the argument bear a rhetorical style that is unique as a fingerprint. Only one mind could have given rise to this prose. “Juan non-Volokh” stands revealed as none other than…

The Medium Lobster.

At least he did say “varying magnitude of various evils,” so he appears to recognize that the American gulags are evil. Perhaps that’s a start?

The question is: are these people, who argue that comparisons of the US ‘ghost detainees’ (etc.) system to a Gulag are grotesque and misleading and all the rest……are these people prepared to admit that similar allegations about Saddam Hussein (specifically the ones about how he was ‘just like’ Hitler, and (presumably, therefore) Abu Ghraib was ‘just like’ Auschwitz and Treblinka) have proven to be equally grotesque and misleading? If not, their protestations are worthless.

Those making the gulag claims are a bunch of Neville Chamberlains.

When the original Amnesty report came out, many of the radical right and glibertarian bloggers stated that it wasn’t a gulag, because gulag means islands, and the Amnesty report only showed evidence of two or three such prisons.

Now we see islands of prisoners cut off from even the Red Cross spread around the globe, so the radical right and glibertarians in their strategic retreat find new talking points in an attempt to rationalise the liberty destruction that they should theoretically be against.

What was the punchline to the old joke? “Otherwise we’re just arguing about the price.”

I wish I didn’t live in a country where any discussion of foreign relations automatically runs afoul of Godwin’s Law (not that Americans have a monopoly on that tendency).

Jesus-
You invest this much vitriol and self-righteous indignation when you actually AGREE with the post?

“Nice to see a fine legal mind at work on such a hard problem. How difficult is it to enumerate the differences between what the U.S. is doing at the moment and what the Soviets did? Let’s see. Millions of people are not being spirited away to labor camps in Siberia. Whole segments of society are not being brutally annihilated. Dick Cheney doesn’t even speak Russian! QED, they are not gulags.”

And abb1: you are wrong no matter how I try to interpret your comment.

“but that does not make Gitmo and other U.S. facilities equivalent to the Soviet Gulag…

It sure does that – at the very minimum – and possibly worse. If not literally, then certainly as far as perception goes. And perception is reality. The PR hit is comparable with that of the 1950s when documents and inside info about the Soviet Gulag started coming out”

Objectively (literally), you are not correct; see Kieran’s original post explaining why (and as far as I can tell, even you admit it). But even on your own terms, you are wrong. If perception IS reality (as you claim), then isn’t Volokh entirely justified in attempting to change the perception (and thus reality) that the US facilities are identical to the Gulag? In fact, why don’t you-and the other useful idiots on this site-just change your post to say that the facilities are NOT like a gulag, and simply alter that reality of what they are?

So you are stuck with either saying that the facilities are objectively, literally like gulags (which they clearly are not), or saying that they are perceived as being like gulags-in which case you and Amnesty International are creating that objectively inaccurate perception. But then Volokh is entirely justified in attempting to change that perception by resisting the gulag comparison in the first place! Volokh is objectively right but ‘perceptively’ wrong, and also wrong to attempt to alter that objectively inaccurate perception!
Steve

Certainly, one cannot appear credible if one holds that certain behaviors are legitimate for oneself, but not for others.

The opposite of this statement is almost exactly what one of my few Bush supporting friends told me, just before the 2004 election. Obviously, not an intellectual analysis, but a gut instinct, and a very common one in the USA (and in every other tribe, for that matter). His type of reaction is the prerequisite for the non-Volokhian non-reasoning. Comforting such people in their instincts is the purpose of the endless round of tormented pro-torture “logic” — the conclusion is given, and they just need some words to get there.

Reminds me of the time in math grad school when the prof assigned a measure-theory problem to prove something that turned out not to be true (due to his error, not a deliberate head fake). About 2/3 of the class was able to “prove” it anyway. Not good, but at least not malicious.

Kieran, your argument was lost a while ago. The UN did make the Gulag comparison and it didn’t work. Rather, the hyperbole turns people away from the real problem. The argument that stirs people to action has to be that what the US is doing is different, our own brand of cruelty, insidious, unique, etc.

This post put me in mind of something I read during the manufactured controversy regarding Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize. On his website he has published the now much maligned poem American Football, with a lengthy commentary of his own hand about the trouble he had getting it published. While the poem is pretty ordinary, this passage from the commentary is both correct and appropriate to this topic:

I then sent the editor of the Observer a short fax, in which I quoted myself when I was at the US Embassy in Ankara in March I985 with Arthur Miller. I had a chat with the ambassador about torture in Turkish prisons. He told me that I didn’t appreciate the realities of the situation vis-a-vis the Communist threat, the military reality, the diplomatic reality, the strategic reality, and so on.
I said the reality I was referring to was that of electric current on your genitals. Whereupon the ambassador said, ‘Sir, you are a guest in my house,’ and turned away. I left the house.
The point I was making to the editor of the Observer was that the ambassador found great offence in the word genitals. But the reality of the situation, the actual reality of electric current on your genitals, was a matter of no concern to him. It was the use of the word that was offensive, but not the act.

(Emphasis mine.)

I just wanna know when I can say “gulag.” I said it before, and apparently that was really, really bad. I was sorry about that, and I apologized appropriately. So can I say it yet? Lemme know.

Cheney still wants to allow the CIA to torture people. Has anyone asked his boss, Prince Bunnypants, what he thinks about that?

Eudoxis,

In re ” Rather, the hyperbole turns people away from the real problem.”

Perhaps, but if people’s principal and, for some, only reaction to a revelation of a system of torture is that the metaphor use was inappropriate, then it seems that what we really need is to become people with a better sense of priorities.

Abb1 writes, “The effect of revelations about US facilities and practices is similar to the effect of revelations about Stalin’s Gulag. Is there anything wrong with this proposition, Steve?”
Yes. It is not true.

As I just emailed Mr. Juan, the Soviet Gulag was just the result of taking a core set of principles, and applying them over decades with great effort and efficiency.

With different core principles, the Gulag would have been relatively benign, no?

The problem for America is that the *principles* underlying our own Gulag would have similar end results if applied energetically for thirty years.

If Bush and Cheney’s warped morals were allowed to reign for 34 years, would be have a real Soviet-class Gulag? We probably would.

As it is, I’d be interested in hearing just how big the Soviet Gulag was when it was three / four years old.

Mr. Non-Volokh needs to explain why it would be injust to compare the American Gulag to the Soviet Gulag of, say, 1923.

Natalie, why is not similar? Many supporters of the USSR (Camus, for example) became severely disillusioned; others (like Sartre) suffered cognitive dissonance, communist parties lost membership, the opponents got powerful weapon for their anti-Soviet propaganda.

Why do you think it’s different with Gitmo, etc.? I think in many respects it’s probably even more striking, look at international polls. Of course the Iraq war itself played a huge role, but still…

jon h., I am 100% on your side, but the truth is that the Soviet gulag got very, very ugly, very fast. if there were anything even in order of magnitude of only 100 people being tortured and abused for no reason at all in the jails of the soviet union in 1923 then I will eat my hat, a hat which is approximately the size of Solovki island. US torture=evil, totally unacceptable, justifiably likened to the gulag when it involves hideous islands of extra-judidical punishment with no redress. Soviet gulag when it was only 3 or 4 years old=hideous, soul-sucking torment for tens and hundreds of thousands of people. although, typing this, it reminds me that the most hated tortures at solovki, as A.S. reported them were: sleep deprivation (zeks had to balance on logs with arms outstretched and were beaten if they fell) and exposure to extremes of heat and cold (zeks were chained outside in the summer or dead of winter, with feeble clothes, tormented by mosquitoes). So, let’s have some Gulag Archipelago reading all round, shall we?

Golly. Now I realize that all the democrats had to do back in the 90s to cut off the Contract with America before it even started was to enumerate the ways in which bipartisanship was unlike date rape, and explain that anyone who used such hyperbole had forever made the rest of their arguments not worth listening to. It must be wonderful to have a divine right of control over the terms of discourse.

Of course the Bulag is not the Gulag. Perhaps the Gestapo is a better analogy: fairly small, acting with wide popular support in Germany at any rate, using selective brutality mainly on lesser peoples and races, especially “terrorists” like Jean Moulin. Remember that the Nazis, like the Chekists, had an explicit legal doctrine justifying any measures in defense of the state.

Respondents please please note that this is not the tabu Holocaust comparison; the Gestapo ended up as part of Himmler’s satrapy, but was not the manager of the Final Solution.

What a strange post. Oh, well, sure the Gulag is wholly distinguishable from CIA secret detention facilities, but isn’t it more important that we take every opportunity to paint the Bush administration in an evil manner? Rather, we should not condemn blatant misuses of rhetoric. In fact, to be intellectually honest in such a desperate matter shows a “withered” sense of morality. Gimme a break.

Actually, belle, come to think of it, I think focusing on the number of people involved is a red herring.

If the Soviet Gulag were based on principles of humane treatment and fair trials, nobody would much care how many millions of people passed through, right?

If the guiding principles are wrong, then the high body count is just a matter of time and effort. Given the principles of the Bush administration, it’ll just take them a lot longer to match the Soviet record.

Actually, belle, come to think of it, I think focusing on the number of people involved is a red herring.

Even if directed at Belle who can hold her own to the 10,000ths, I have to say this is completely off the mark. If scale is not at issue why the comparison to the gulag at all? Why not compare Abu Ghraib to the Rodney King beating and watch the crowd jump to action?

Pictures must reach a receptive viewer or they can have a desensitizing effect. For example, during the lynching years, pictures of lynchings were proudly printed and distributed to an approving audience. Pictures of tortured prisoners feed into the republican dehumanizing hatred and fear of middle easterners. Especially when pictures of beheadings are also available.

The counter-argument to US torture practices becomes trivialized with the use of hyperbole. This is counter productive. We must appeal to a sense of human decency or morality or rule of law or something else. Do you have any suggestions besides characterizing anything out of lockstep as Republican?

eudoxis writes: “If scale is not at issue why the comparison to the gulag at all?”

Because the gulag was also a calculatedly designed geographically dispersed network of sites.

Rodney King, not so much.

By focusing on the number of people involved, you’re saying the Gulag wasn’t inherently bad, they just went overboard. If they’d kept it to fewer victims, it would have been fine.

When differences in scale become differences in kind, which they sometimes do, the resulting “kind” differences should be discernable without reference to the scale. Otherwise, we should not assert that things are unlike just because they differ in scale. Were Pol Pot and Kim il-Sung less vicious dictators than Mao because they ruled smaller countries and therefore operated on a lesser scale? To determine whether the comparison is valid, we need to isolate the features of the Soviet Gulag that distinguish it from “prisons” are as known throughout the modern world (especially in the United States).

I would say the salient features are these:

1) They operated in secret, making democratic oversight impossible and potential for abuse vast.

2) There was only a thin veneer of due process of law concerning who went in.

3) Torture and other “cruel and unusual punishments” were deployed.

4) By the end of their lifespan, at least, the bulk of the prisoners were not there for anything they did or were believed to have done, but to serve the interest of the gulag keepers in terrorizing the population or selected subsets of it.

1, 2, and 3 clearly apply. Because of 1 and 2, it is impossible to evaluate 4. I don’t imagine the majority of the prisoners are there for arbitrary reasons, though we know that some at Abu Ghraib were innocent bystanders. However, this is mere speculation; we cannot stipulate as fact that the prisoners are legitimate targets in any sense, because we don’t actually know this.

So America scores 75% on the “kind” test, without a definitive negative on the rest. Sounds like a comparison worth making.

And, Natalie, we’re not trying to market to you, or to people like you – hard-core Republicans, or self-described ‘libertarian’ who still needs to be persuaded. We’re trying to market to people who are persuadable, who have voted both ways.

I wrote: “Because the gulag was also a calculatedly designed geographically dispersed network of sites.”

Willfully obtuse tim responded:

“Like the internet?”

network of sites for punishment. The internet’s only like that when you’re around. [rimshot]

I’m reminded of the old joke about Vanderbilt and Harriman sitting around talking in their club. Harriman happens to mention that he caught his office-boy stealing two dollars from the petty cash, and is obviously going to have him fired. Vanderbilt replies “oh don’t be so hard on the boy, remember we started small ourselves”.

It’s not a gulag, it’s a freedom arhipelago.

Juan thinks that […] “hyperbole deadens the sensitivity to moral distinctions in public discourse.

I would think that moral “distinctions” would look for differences of kind, more than of magnitude. Sure, hyperbole can obscure, and it can be politically ineffective, but isn’t arguing “I only stole a little” more guilty of eliding moral distinctions?

“It’s a question of perspective.”

Kinda like complaining about racial injustice and pointing to, oh, affirmative action. Or looking for deviations from free-market ideals and always finding welfare programs. Or writing a book about the threat “Political Correctness” poses to our society.

Listen to yourself.

Sorry, too busy enjoying the silence that was your answer.
.

natalie solent writes: “the existence of dusk does not make day indistinguishable from night”

Yet the day eventually becomes night.

Question: How exactly would a person work to prevent the institution of a new Gulag, the rise of a new Nazi party, a new Holocaust, if they are unable to warn of the rise of a new Nazi party, unable to warn about the institution of a new Gulag, or the start of a new Holocaust?

How are you going to prevent such things from happening again if you’re too delicate to suggest they are, in fact, happening again?

So much for the tough-talking right.

The puppy blood link is the ruinous non-sequitur in this thread.

Gilbert Achcar and Alex Callinicos make kissy face and assure each other that they do support the Iraqi insurgency over on Znet. You know the Gilbert Achcar who is well enough read and influential enough that he merits multiple space over at informed comment. But Eugene’s condemnation of such deserves scorn and ridicule. (Deliciously or perhaps disgustingly ironic, a good deal of it, comes from CT commentators, who basically agree with Gilbert Achcar’s position regarding the Iraqi insurgency.) The number of such folks is equivalent to the number of puppy blood drinkers.

If I approached the whole Gulag question in the same manner, I would ridicule Amnesty International, by contrasting the millions killed in the Soviet Gulag with being wrapped in an Israeli flag. If I wanted to create an appearance of credibility, I might contrast the millions killed with the handful of documented deaths that occurred in US custody. I might highlight cases where the victim was actually a terrorist. Perhaps I could whip up a pie graph or bar chart with the millions killed in the Gulag versus the handful of deaths.

So I guess it really wasn’t a non-sequitur.

Rhetoric matters. Juan is right about that, even though you are righter.

Aside from the rhetoric it was a good post. I am just curious, are you really that certain Juan is depraved? I mean perhaps you could have approached the issue in this way? – I know Juan is right, but I think he is really missing the bigger point, and I wish he wouldn’t, because it is a very important issue, even if we limit the issue to very easily verifiable agreed upon bits, and Juan is influential. Do you think it is at all possible, that if you had made that approach, instead of the whole withered approach, you might have ended up with Juan agreeing with you?

Just curious.

Like the folks at Amnesty International, the Crooked Timberites seem to have completely lost their way, and no longer understand even the most basic foundational concepts of human rights.

The Gulag is not an appropriate analogy for the American detention centers abroad, and not just as a matter of degree. The Gulag existed to suppress domestic dissent against the government that ran it. As far as I know, not a single American citizen is being held at any of the centers being discussed here.

Why is this such an important distinction? Well, for one thing, if it did not exist, this discussion itself could not be taking place. The reason why the denial of basic democratic freedoms within a country is such a terrible injustice is that those freedoms are a crucial prerequisite for publicizing and mobilizing against other injustices. The Gulag was the shield that protected the perpetrators of the Soviet regime’s monstrosities from exposure and retribution. And that’s why keeping the Gulag in our collective consciousness, celebrating its demise, and refraining from diluting the emotional force of its memory with specious analogies is so important.

Of course, the fact that domestic repression is a unique and paramount danger doesn’t mean that the mistreatment of foreigners is morally unobjectionable. In particular, the intentional mistreatment of foreign innocents, if that’s what’s happening at the detention centers under discussion, would without question, be a terrible thing. (Indeed, in that case, there are historical analogies available–the Rape of Nanking, for example–that really would be egregious only as a matter of degree, not of kind.)

Now, we don’t know what measures the US government is taking to ensure that its foreign detainees aren’t innocent non-combatants. Nor do we know any of the other rules governing their detention and treatment. (Indeed, there are some compelling reasons for not making that information public.) I, for one, would be interested in reading thoughtful discussion of the right rules for the US government to follow in this regard–including intelligent arguments for the abolition of this sort of detention altogether. Unfortunately, the fatuous blather of the “Guantanamo=Gulag” crowd is making such discussion pretty much impossible here. That’s a shame.

Why the fuck does it matter precisely what reason the government has for illegally detaining some large and growing number of people without due procedure or any reliable way of ascertaining guilt or innocence and subjecting them to torture and death? For me, at least, the fact of deliberate choice to operate outside all law and review, and to subject people to torture and death without even the slightest reason to suspect them of any crime at all that could stand up to a moment’s consideration is far more important than the particular justification for it. I would consider it gulag-like for any reason at all, given the way it seizes, abuses, and destroys its victims to satisfy an executive desire for pain, blood, and fear.

Dan Simon,

In addition to being drunk, I am shocked and disappointed. I am long time admirer of your comments but not this one. Or at least not completely.

You have the cart before the horse. The Gulag was not so hideous because it denied freedom and democracy. If the Gulag had existed side by side with freedom and democracy, see US slavery, it still would have been hideous.

In large part the Soviet regime was monstrous because of the Gulag. Minus the Gulag and the millions of deaths, the Soviet regime would not have been nearly as monstrous. Don’t get me wrong controlling the production of tomatoes is criminally stupid and morally wrong, but if all the Soviet Union had done was control the production of tomatoes, communism wouldn’t have such a bad rap.

I am also not so sure the Soviet Gulag would have been less objectionable if it had been inflicted upon Canadians instead of Soviet citizens.

The compelling reason for making the information public is so that our current system never approaches 1% of the horror of the Soviet system.

As a side note I would like to point an enormous difference in kind between the Gulag and the current US terrorist prison system. The de facto goal of the Gulag was death. Death is merely an unfortunate side effect of the current US terrorist prison system.

Oh, Dan is right that the Gulag was targeted at those looking to champion freedom. The US system, despite Grand Moff and Abb1’s and Chomsky’s idiotic protests to the contrary, the US system is designed to target the foes of freedom. The aim is certainly questionable and an extremely important issue.

You have the cart before the horse.

I don’t believe I do. Yes, the Gulag, in addition to being imposed on Soviet citizens rather than foreigners, was an apparatus of inhumanity on a gargantuan scale that obviously dwarfs what the American government is currently doing in its overseas detention centers. But I’m under no illusions as to what the current–or any–American government–or any other government, for that matter–would do, to its own citizens or to foreigners, if equipped with a Soviet-style Gulag of its own with which to suppress domestic dissent. That we are arguing about the detention of a few suspected terrorists, rather than the atrocities that most of the world’s governments perpetrate routinely, is testament not to the moral rectitude of America’s leaders, but rather to the power of political freedom to address injustices.

The compelling reason for making the information public is so that our current system never approaches 1% of the horror of the Soviet system.

Indeed, that is a strong argument for full disclosure. Personally, I believe that that would be unwise, but I also fully understand the dangers of secrecy, and I would like to see strong procedures put in place for monitoring this sort of secret activity. (Something along the lines of Congressional oversight of intelligence work might be appropriate, for example.) Of course, if the detention system’s population ever grows to a more substantial number–let alone 1% of the size of the Gulag–then full disclosure will be absolutely necessary.

If the Gulag had existed side by side with freedom and democracy, see US slavery, it still would have been hideous.

Of course. But if you want to understand why slavery no longer exists in the US, freedom and democracy are critical factors.

It strikes me as incorrect to say that the Gulag would have been okay if the prisoners had been labeled as foreign insurgents.

Again, of course. By the same token, though, you’ll presumably agree that it’s incorrect to label a prison system holding a few dozens of suspected foreign insurgents a Gulag.

I think that any place sanctioned by the national authority in which people are held without plausible evidence, whose cases are never properly examined to determine guilt or innocence, who face pain, misery, and death, who are yanked out of the world and not ever necessarily accounted for again, whose loved ones are deliberately lied to about the whereabouts of the vanished, whose captors claim unbounded authority and complete independence from question or review or supervision of any kind…

…pretty much is a gulag.

I don’t think size matters much for this.

And I particularly don’t think that visible size at any given moment matters, since we know for a fact that the authorities are continuing to lie about what they’re doing, where, to how many people, under what sort of policy, guidelines, and internal review. We may feel sure that the number of those subject to this unbounded confiment isn’t smaller than what’s been officially acknowledged. We may also feel sure that it is larger, without having much foundation for speculation about how much larger.

(Prison camps in former Soviet territory? What the hell? That came out of the blue, at least for me. I hate to think what else is also still out there….)

Any argument of the form “the problem is only this big, so it can’t be directly compared to that other problem” seems to me the most obviously unsupportable right now. We won’t really know the scope of things until this crew have left power and the secret files can be examined by someone else. Until that happens, we know that the leaders we’ve got now want this, that they don’t feel bound by anyone else’s demand or request that they stop, and that they are willing to lie about it. So the problem is going to be bigger than it seems, as long as they’re able to continue it.

It’s not the size, it’s the power.

I think that any place sanctioned by the national authority in which people are held without plausible evidence, whose cases are never properly examined to determine guilt or innocence, who face pain, misery, and death, who are yanked out of the world and not ever necessarily accounted for again, whose loved ones are deliberately lied to about the whereabouts of the vanished, whose captors claim unbounded authority and complete independence from question or review or supervision of any kind…

…pretty much is a gulag.

How about a place sanctioned by the national authority in which people are killed without plausible evidence, whose cases are never properly examined to determine guilt or innocence, who face pain, misery, and death, who are yanked out of the world and not ever necessarily accounted for again, whose loved ones are never informed of the fates of the vanished, whose killers claim unbounded authority and complete independence from question or review or supervision of any kind?

It’s called a battlefield. Are you demanding the abolition of those, as well?

Dramatic descriptions of the ugly things that governments are sometimes compelled to do, are great for helping one work oneself into an emotional lather. Unfortunately, they lend more heat than light to the difficult question of how to manage the many painful tradeoffs between national security and collective compassion.

It’s called a battlefield. Are you demanding the abolition of those, as well?

I think you just served up an apple pie with a distinct citrus taste.

Yes, the Soviet gulag was a means of stifling internal dissent under the auspices of the criminal justice system. What I find rather disturbing about the array of American tactics — extraordinary rendition, black prisons, ghost detainees, torture memos — is that they honour the US constitution in the breach rather than the observance.

Unfortunately, many in the public seem happy to sign onto this ‘I see no ships’ approach too. But for the moment, the tacit admission that they couldn’t get away with this on the books is marginally heartening.

Well, I guess she’s gone pedantic and missed the point, then. The phrase ‘our detention centers’ is telling. They are certainly not my detention centers.

Dan, your quote of Anne Applebaum doesn’t make your case; rather, it proves that she’s a fool. At best.

“Technically, wouldn’t it have been the fact that the USSR wasn’t a democracy that made democratic oversight impossible?”
Posted by Brett Bellmore

That certainly made sure of it, but secrecy, extreme executive power, and a don’t know/don’t care/quietly support attitude on the part of 50% of the American people can make up for a lot.

Question: How exactly would a person work to prevent the institution of a new Gulag, the rise of a new Nazi party, a new Holocaust, if they are unable to warn of the rise of a new Nazi party, unable to warn about the institution of a new Gulag, or the start of a new Holocaust?

That would seem to be rather difficult if the distinction between a possible future threat and the current situation is lost.

Maybe it’s a failure of perspective, but reading about the rise of Hitler, I tend to lay more blame on the stupidity of the opposition than the actual wickedness of the Nazis, which gets taken for granted. There is always going to be some vicious evil bastard out there, the real question is ‘will the non-evil people stop him, or not?’.

The basic necessity of maintaining some kind of prisoner of war camps, given that you are in a war, should be obvious. But if you just hold any camp of that kind, no matter what its standards, porocedures and oversight, to be a ‘gulag’, because it is not a civilian jail, then that’s one less word you will be able to use if and when something like the real thing shows up.

The new set of camps do come rather closer to being worthy of the word. Pity the impact of that sad fact is so blunted by overhyping earlier.

soru

In a further advancement of the dialogue over secret US torture facilities, Amnesty International calls Bush “Bushitler” and the Executive branch a “bunch of Nazis” to “draw public attention to a real scandal”.

Your complaining about the misplaced focus of Volk’s discourse? The only way Amnesty could have put Bush supporters more into a “attack the messenger” mode is if they’d said Bush liked to eat babies.

For comparison let us say the anti-war protesters who call Bush a Nazi aren’t mocking the true horror that was Hitler and the holocaust, or turning any purposeful dialogue into a round of juvenile name calling; they’re simply bringing attention to the issue. What can we call the French to “draw public attention to a real scandal”? I know, let’s equivocate the riot to “The Terror”. Maybe then those Frenchies will get something done.

What’s the word I’m looking for, when someone attacks someone for not focusing on the issue, and then defends an outrageous exaggeration? Oh right, “hypocrisy”, silly me.

Dan: I support rules of war, actually, including punishment for some kinds of cruelty and barbarism. I think that the right response to barbarism like the use of gas weapons, civilian shields, and the like is the intelligent and strong use of means that don’t descend to the same level of inhumanity, followed by open and lawful justice.

Jet: The real question here is why the level of care in captivity that worked for Nazis and imperial Japanese soldiers is insufficient for Muslim terrorists – and, more importantly, for people we aren’t yet sure are Muslim terrorists. The awful tragedies like the deaths of that cab driver and the general who went looking for news of a missing relative wouldn’t have happened precisely because these things are conducted a lot more openly and quickly.

And honestly, these folks fighting in the Middle East are not any more butcherous than the slavemasters of Bataan, to pick a handy example. It wasn’t necessary to whisk those people out of the world and subject them and randomly grabbed rice farmers to torture unto death. There’s a burden of proof here that the advocates of torture and unlimited confinement this time just aren’t meeting. Show us the failures of standard prisoner of war treatment.

Jet: There’s an implicit standard in your objection to the gulag language that I think is bullshit. Let’s make it explicit.

Show us a criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of justice that Bush and his administration listen to and make significant changes in response to.

Saying “don’t talk to me that way, it makes me mad” only gets any way if there’s a way of talking to you about a potential crime or sin that doesn’t make you mad. And Bush and his crew don’t have that. They have precisely two responses to challenges to their basic policies and the foundations of those policies – dismissal, and anger. There is no history of these folks ever saying “Yes, that’s a reasonable criticism, you’re right, we need to make significant changes.” Instead we get assertions that they were right, or the announcement of changes that turn out not to deal with the problem at all…or attacks on the critics. And that’s it.

So if intemperate language is bad because it loses the audience – starting with those in power, the only ones who can make the changes – we have to see some examples of temperate language being good because it keeps the audience and gets the changes. And, um, there aren’t any. Or at least not many.

Bruce Baugh,
Nice argument, and I agree (although your comparison to captured Nazis and Imperial Soldiers is off as they were often simply executed on the field if, in a rare case, there was some information needed from them). But my point is that the perfectly well reasoned argument you just presented is great for changing someone’s mind. Calling Bush “Mr. Gulag” is going to piss off his supporters and close their ears to anything of substance.

And now reading your next post I see you deny the existence of inflammatory language and that those who would be inflamed are just weak-minded imbeciles. Perhaps you could run for office on that plank.

Perhaps the Israel Palestine conflict could use your advice. We could start by calling the Palestinian mass-murdering child killers and the Israelis Fascists Imperialists willing to crush minorities under bulldozers. Yeah, that would lead to some serious advancements (towards full blown war).

Uncle Kvetch,
That quote was simply the second lowest form of wit, mockery.

Abb1,
What is needed here is a big mug of STFU for you to drink down quickly then go sit in the corner.

Barry,
So you are stepping up to plate for Abb1? You’re going to back up his “who’s the bigger child killer” (not as an example, but as an argument) when the topic is inflammatory rhetoric? Yeah, criticism from you is pure compliment.

Oooh, jet, you’re so manly. You must have had two cups of coffee this morning. Looks like you have a soft spot for the IDF.

Barry,
I guess the 60 million voters who went for a weak incompetent President like Bush were just overwhelmed with the quality of the opposition’s arguments? Yeah, keep at it with the knee-jerk (nazi, fascists, gulag) rhetoric. It’s just about to work.

…soft spot for the IDF.

Masterfully played man, you’re some sort of debating genius.

Jet: Nice argument, and I agree (although your comparison to captured Nazis and Imperial Soldiers is off as they were often simply executed on the field if, in a rare case, there was some information needed from them). Er, there were something like 50-70,000 German POWs in camps in Texas, plus others elsewhere; I’m having a hard time getting a good overall number. The total for captured Japanese soldiers seems to be about 20,000. (I’m not counting the interned civilians as POWs. If you disagree what are your sources?

Jet, I’m not the one asserting we have to throw out our existing tradition of military justice for prisoners of war and captured possible combatants. So I’m not going to do your homework for you. What about this situation is in fact so much worse than World War II, and what about these prisoners so much worse than Nazis or imperial Japanese, that it’s desirable to operate an undisclosed network of facilities in which torture and death are routine practices and no external review is to be entertained?

I don’t get it. And I’ve not yet seen an answer that really amounts to more than “I hate these guys a lot”.

Well, Jet, they made a documentary, show it on Italian TV. You can watch is online here. Names of the former US soldiers interviewed are on the screen. It’s not pretty.

Another side note: Scott Horten has a fascinating post on the intellectual precedents of Bush administration views about executive power and the demands of war against monstrous enemies.

abb1,

And you can read what a complete crock of sh*t that entire Independent piece is here.

On the substantive topic, BOTH sides agree that torture is not acceptable. So the question comes down to the comparison, the rhetoric. The substantive issue – that torture and extra-judicial detention are bad things – is not in doubt.

On the rhetoric, to call Gitmo a gulag is just rubbish: for goodness sake – many prisoners are gaining weight because they are being fed properly. In what way is this similar to the Gulag?

The comparison is simply not necessary to raise the issue: it represents an “own-goal” as it makes AI appear to have lost all sense of proportion.

Bruce Baugh,
Holy shit, what part of “Nice argument and I agree.” do you not understand? This is like going to an anti-war protest and talking to the retards.

Disagreeing with your statement that WWII was a full on love fest for captured POWs does not equal disagreement with you over how Bush needs to change the torture policy. Granted that might take a 4th or 5th grade reading level to discern, but trust me, it is there.

Jet: I don’t think I asserted anything like WW2 POW camps being love-fests. I said that they followed a standard of conduct a lot better than the one being now applied. And honestly, I did read your comments as defending the Bush administration’s policy on this one. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. Do you mean to say that you find what they’re doing now unnecessarily cruel and undesirable?

Bruce Baugh,
Thank you for the apology, and I shouldn’t have responded so unkindly to you, so I also aplogize.

As for “Do you mean to say that you find what they’re doing now unnecessarily cruel and undesirable?” No, not in the least. Revenge is sweet and cathartic. In a perfect world, I’d have no problem with criminals suffering the exact same consequences as their victims. If you shoot your wife, rape a stranger, kill someone during a mugging, what mercy do you deserve?

But I’m still against torture because innocents get caught up in the machine and the gains will almost certainly never justify the torture of innocents.

abb1, (belatedly in response to “Why do you think it’s different with Gitmo, etc.? I think in many respects it’s probably even more striking, look at international polls.”) I doubt it. Communism was a whole belief system, shared and lost by hundreds of millions. I think most people in the West shrug at lack of due process for people they don’t believe are innocent anyway. They may be sorry they did later (cf my #56) but they do.

BTW, Not that it matters, but I was surprised to learn you are male. I always thought you were a female called Abby.

Barry,
You have said the code word correctly. The countersign is “Rove”. Let us proceed with the plan!

So to review…

We’ve learned that for most vocal libertarians, a war on fraudulent grounds, incompetently fought, used as an excuse for torture and the general trampling of civil liberties at home and abroad, plus fraud in every major policy initiative and incompetence in most or all agencies including the ones most necessary for the core functions of civil order and safety, is all preferable to a balanced budget and competent administration leading to improved conditions for the poorest if *gasp* there are tax hikes involved.

It’s not the size of the state, because Bush’s administration has expanded it greatly.

It’s not civil liberties, because Bush’s administration has been much worse. Giving full credit here to Bush I and Clinton Justice Department vileness with regard to Waco, more people are dying, more capriciously, and many more people are subject to investigation and harassment.

It’s not incompetence, since overall the Clinton administration did well on this and the Bush administration has rivalled or met the low-water mark for competence of any previous administration.

It’s not anything, as nearly as I can tell, except two to four things:

1. Taxes for the wealthy. It’s apparently very important to keep cutting taxes at the top, no matter (among other things) what this does to taxes for everyone else.

2. International cooperation. Any threat of impinging on US business’ right to do as it damn well pleases, like the state’s right to do likewise, must be resisted at all cost. Apparently no war or state of alienation could begin to approach the horror that would be, oh, the Kyoto accords or abiding by the Geneva conventions or paying our UN bill or anything like that.

3. Health care. Never mind all the evidence of other countries getting better care at less cost, and never mind the obvious and growing risks from epidemic and the light. It’s apparently very important that a large minority of American be left either to rot on their own devices or to bear in perpetuity the costs of expensive emergency fixes for what could have been prevented or treated earlier.

4. Gun control. After all, look how well it’s done since 2000 in keeping the government in line.

*sigh*

Natalie, I’ve been living in Europe for the last few years. I think the idea of America was (and still is to a degree) just as romantic as the idea of the Soviet Union. People with entrepreneurial streak often imagine America as a land of magic. I know a French security guard who writes movie scripts and he has no doubt whatsoever that he would’ve made it in Hollywood in no time – it’s the corrupt French movie industry responsible for him being a loser. Yeah, it’s a romantic idea, but this ‘gulag’ stuff really does disgust people.

rollo,

“Setting aside the obvious flaw, that there are no “exact same consequences” ever, for anything or anyone.” While you can’t actually inflict the same kind of terror, humiliation and despair as a kidnapped person feels right before his head is sawed off, you could get a close approximation.

I had added something in my post about how revenge is imperfect so all we have is justice, but took it out as too rambling. Apparently I should have left it in. My point was that if the tortured people turned out to actually be bad guys, then who gives a shit what happened to them?

But the policy needs to be changed either way, because even if, by some miracle, no innocents had been tortured yet, it is only a matter of time before one does get tortured which makes the whole endeavor unworthy. Just like the death penalty, just because there are no documented cases of killing an innocent, there have been enough close calls and false imprisonments to prove the system has strong flaws that will eventually kill innocent (this of course doesn’t count the innocnets killed while in prison).