An open letter to the New Republic

by Ted on June 8, 2005

To the editors of the New Republic:

I am a former subscriber to your magazine who has let my subscription lapse. I’m one of the people who periodically receives invitations to resubscribe as an “old friend”. I should explain that when I let my subscription lapse, I was simply choking in reading materials and not reacting in horror to your non-left positions. (For what it’s worth, my most-read weekly nowadays is BusinessWeek.). The New Republic is excellent far more often than it’s infuriating, and we’d be better off if all journals of political opinion shared your willingness to seriously consider the arguments of the other side. Unfortunately, not all arguments are worthy of serious consideration.

Recently, Amnesty International released its 2005 annual report of human rights violations around the globe. In connection with this report, Irene Khan, the Secretary General, made a wide-ranging speech criticizing the United States, the UN, Western Europe, and the governments of Sudan, Zimbabwe, China, and Russia, among others. In this speech, she made an overheated and historically ignorant comparison of Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet gulags. In response, Bush administration officials joined the ignoble ranks of leaders who have responded to Amnesty International reports of human rights abuses with spin and self-pity. President Bush said, “I’m aware of the Amnesty International report, and it’s absurd.” Vice-President Cheney said that he didn’t take Amnesty seriously, and Donald Rumsfeld called the description “reprehensible”. A small army of pundits rushed forward to attack Amnesty International’s credibility.

We had a truly remarkable debate. On one hand, we had an organization with a 40-year history of standing up for human rights regardless of borders and ideology, criticizing the United States for holding prisoners without due process and torturing them. Only a fool would deny that this is, in fact, happening. On the other hand, we have an Administration accusing Amnesty International of poor word choice. Your contribution to the debate was a piece criticizing Amnesty for the use of the term “gulag”.

I completely understand the objection to the term. After all, the gulags were a vastly larger evil, and a part of a far more sinister and omnipresent system of repression. However, I have to question your priorities. Your magazine supported the war on Iraq on the basis of human rights. (Like the Administration, you used Amnesty’s reports of Saddam’s tyranny without hesitation in arguing for the war.) Surely human rights abuses performed in our name, by our elected government, deserve scrutiny and criticism, even if such abuses don’t approach the depths of Stalin or Saddam. It seems obvious to me that Amnesty doesn’t deserve your sneers.

We have seen horrors, great and small, in the past century. There have always been some who have done what they could to oppose them. History will not look kindly on those who made excuses, looked the other way, or told the supporters of justice to keep their damn voices down. I expect no better from the alleluia chorus of movement conservatives. Too many have shown that their interest in human rights ends when it ceases to be a useful club against domestic opponents. But I expect more from the New Republic.

As I mentioned, I’m frequently invited to resubscribe to your magazine. I see that a digital subscription to the New Republic can be had for $29.95. I’m not going to buy one. Instead, I’m going to send that money to Amnesty International, who have done more for human rights than perhaps any volunteer organization existing. And I’m going to encourage my readers to do the same thing.

Sincerely,

Ted Barlow

P.S. You can imagine a world in which the term “gulag” had not been used in that speech. In that world, do you imagine that the Amnesty report would have set off a serious effort on the part of the Bush Administration to correct its abuses? Or do you think that they would find another excuse- any excuse- to belittle and ignore the report? The question answers itself, doesn’t it?

{ 133 comments }

1

pedro 06.08.05 at 10:31 am

How insignificant all ongoing American violations of human rights seem when compared to the larger atrocity of comparing Guantanamo to the gulags!

2

dsquared 06.08.05 at 10:33 am

Dissenting opinion: I don’t think that the use of the word “gulag” was overheated or historically ignorant. The entire point of Amnesty International is that it’s not acceptable to just suspend human rights a little bit, only for bad people. If you don’t respect habeas corpus then you’ve opened up a gulag, and the fact that you haven’t killed lots of people in it yet doesn’t let you off the hook, any more than the fact a drunk driver happened not to kill anyone means that he wasn’t drunk.

3

Anderson 06.08.05 at 10:42 am

I still look at TNR online (they were so lackadaisical getting my online sub activated that I think they gave me an extra year or something), but increasingly, I have no idea why I’m doing it. They’re more likely to have a good book review than to have anything worthwhile to say on current issues.

4

vanya 06.08.05 at 11:03 am

I completely understand the disgust with right-wingers trying once again to change the discourse to a frivolous non-issue. But honestly I do have a real problem with Amnesty using the word “Gulag”. It really is disrespectful to millions, literally millions, of Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, Latvians, etc. etc. who died in those camps under circumstances that would make Abu Ghraib seem like a picnic. Would it be fine for Amnesty to compare Guantanamo to the Nazi death camp system? If you know anything about what the Gulag was, then that’s pretty much what Khan did. The use of the word “Gulag” was lazy and stupid, there has to be a better way to express moral outrage at the US without making patently ridiculous comparisons. She should have compared the Guantanamo/Iraq/Afghanistan network to the British emergency detention camps in 1950s Kenya, or the French detention camps in Algeria. A far more accurate comparison, which underscores the essentially imperial nature of the US venture in Iraq.

5

Jimmy Doyle 06.08.05 at 11:08 am

I’m with D2. In an important respect, the badness of this kind of abuse doesn’t depend on how widespread it is. Primo Levi’s objections to what he was confronted with didn’t depend primarily on its *scale*. There’s not much grounds for diminished levels of outrage if the degree of this sort of abuse is brought down to ‘more acceptable levels.’

6

James Emerson 06.08.05 at 11:15 am

The difference between a Soviet gulag and Gitmo is one of degree not of kind. Perhaps AI should have stated it differently. I understand the argument for that, but I disagree with it. The rhetorical battle we’re engaged in requires the deployment of our own nuclear options. The term gulag exhumes the same ghastly imagery and disturbing emotional baggage amongst the neocons as the term holocast does among the Jews. Of course they’re upset, they’ve been embarrassed in a way that necessitated an abrupt response.

The fact that the term gulag technically isn’t correct isn’t the point. The point is that our secret prisons operate surrounded by officially sanctioned secrecy and legalistic evasion. What are we to think when all the reports that do get out suggest that “we are all torturers now?” Have we become what we once found so loathsome in the Soviet Union? I remember from across the years our own American propaganda machine warning us about the moral bankruptcy of “the ends justifying the means,” and I have to ask, were they lying to us then or are they lying to us now?

7

RSL 06.08.05 at 11:20 am

The lack of due process makes our military prison system equivalent to a gulag in many (if not all) ways. Amnesty’s rhetoric was justified both because of its significant truth and its effectiveness in bringing the issue to the forefront. I’ve just sent them another check.

8

Katherine 06.08.05 at 11:23 am

I had the words “the truth is bad enough” drummed into me by a journalism professor and would not have used the word “gulag”. At first I thought it was a terrible PR move on Amnesty’s part. Now–I don’t know.

They are desperate to get the press to cover it, and the press will only cover stupid tempests-in-teapots over word choice. Maybe they knew they were being over the top. Maybe they thought it was necessary to get anyone to care, even momentarily. Maybe they were right.

I wonder if the prisoner abuse and torture stuff has anything at all to do with Bush’s suddenly declining approval ratings on the war on terror? I’d really like to think so, but it seems unlikely to me–on the other hand what else is it?

9

consigliere 06.08.05 at 11:29 am

Vanya, perhaps it’s an understandable human weakness to attempt to privilege the suffering of one’s own friends, relatives, compatriots, etc, in comparison to the suffering of others, but is it necessary to slide all the way down the slope to ascribe “picnic” conditions to the victims of torture in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and forty some other US extra-territorial detention facilities because in your estimation they suffered less (or somehow differently) than victims of Stalin? Do you believe death by torture admits to such fine and extensive distinction? Whatever disrespect you accuse Amnesty of for its use of “gulag” might apply to “picnic,” too. Unless you, perhaps like Amnesty, were simply trying to make a rhetorical point with your intended audience instead of establishing objective criteria for judging acts of horror and immorality.

The current administration is enabling, subborning, encouraging, permitting, or sanctioning (or however you want to describe what they’re doing) torture — via extra-territorial camps, the suspension of habeas corpus, and rendition. I think we’re all better served by focusing our criticism on that outrage than Amnesty’s Barnumesque choice of words.

10

jet 06.08.05 at 11:32 am

Vanya,
Perhaps the 1950s Kenya camps are comparable. But to campare the open, unrepentant French torture in Algeria with Guantanamo and Iraq is certainly in the same vein of disrespectful comparisons as the Gulag comparison.

Ted,
“On one hand, we had an organization with a 40-year history of standing up for human rights regardless of borders and ideology, criticizing the United States for holding prisoners without due process and torturing them. Only a fool would deny that this is, in fact, happening.
So what’s your evidence that torture is the norm in Iraq and Guantanamo. Your post is so full of links I expected a link citing your proof. Instead I see that part of the arguement is covered by calling those who disagree with you fools.

11

David 06.08.05 at 11:33 am

You say,

“The New Republic is excellent far more often than it’s infuriating, and we’d be better off if all journals of political opinion shared your willingness to seriously consider the arguments of the other side.”

As a longtime (and continuing) subscriber, I agree. It infuriates me a lot–but I still subscribe, because it’s a journal that allows serious space for rethinking liberalism (Too many other journals (and blogs) seem more concerned with defining a party line). For that reason, I understand, it’s the only major journal of opinion to have lost subscribers in the past several years. Some (including you, Ted?) may regard that as a good thing–I’m not so sure. One thing I am sure of–someone who thinks a magazine is excellent far more than it is infuriating shouldn’t refuse to subscribe out of pique with one article. I personally side with AI, but a decent case can be made that the “Gulag” comparison did our cause more harm than good Indeed, E.J. Dionne made the same point on Friday; do we write him off as well?

12

engels 06.08.05 at 11:49 am

Human rights:

(i) Everyone has them, whatever their moral standing.
(ii) You can’t get away with violating them to achieve some greater good.
(iii) In an important sense, it matters just as much that one person’s human rights are violated as it does that a thousand’s are.

If this is a fair characterisation then I think from the standpoint of human rights the comparison holds.

13

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 11:51 am

The difference between a Soviet gulag and Gitmo is one of degree not of kind.

This is exactly what I find so outrageous about Amnesty’s statement. The difference between Guantanamo and the Gulag is most decidedly not merely one of degree. People were thrown into the Gulag merely for being suspected of voicing dissent against the Soviet regime. The few hundred prisoners at Guantanamo were placed there because they were suspected of being involved in a murderous terrorist organization.

There is no ambiguity about this distinction. One can complain about the treatment meted out at Guantanamo, the standards being use to warrant their imprisonment, or the wisdom of imprisoning them in the first place. But one cannot hope to understand the first thing about the horrors of the Gulag without understanding the fundamental thing that distinguished it from Guantanamo: it was designed for anyone judged capable of flinching from unquestioning obedience to the state.

It’s true that Amnesty International has long fudged this distinction–by treating capital punishment for murderers indistinguishably from torture of political prisoners, for example. But the reason why it garnered widespread support in its early years is that it was seen primarily as a non-partisan advocate against political repression around the world, and for universal principles like democracy and freedom of speech.

The New Republic these days stays, for the most part, true to this tradition–criticizing the Bush administration for coddling repressive allies, for example, while applauding its actions in support of democracy abroad. Where it parts company with Amnesty is in the latter’s willingness to lump freedom of conscience with humane treatment of suspected criminals. The former is a powerful universal value that deserves the support of all the world’s free people. The latter is a difficult judgment call on which different societies may choose somewhat different tradeoffs. By choosing to place its public emphasis on the latter, Amnesty has forfeited the pure moral clarity of its vision, and its accompanying huge prestige as a non-partisan, universally respected organization.

14

norbizness 06.08.05 at 11:51 am

Bush Administration approach to child-rearing:

“I can’t believe it, Johnny. You smeared paint all over the walls, hit your little sister, took a dump in the sink, and shaved the cat. You’re as bad as that Damien kid in The Omen! Go to your room and stay there!”

“But Damien was the Anti-christ? Are you saying that I’m the spawn of Satan, Mom? Fuck it, I ain’t goin’ anywhere! In fact, you owe me an apology and three Twinkies!”

15

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 11:52 am

Schultz’s word choice didn’t offend me, but clearly it was pretty bloody stupid from a political standpoint, on the general grounds that people who might otherwise listen to what you have to say won’t do so if you shout at them. Amnesty has value only if it preaches to more than just the choir. And why shouldn’t its friends criticize it when it blunders?

16

Jacob T. Levy 06.08.05 at 11:57 am

“The truth is bad enough.” Just so.

It seems to me that dysphemism is not as bad as euphemism in describing moral horrors but it’s still bad; it contributes to a debasing of the currency of moral language. Not every mass murder is a genocide, and it needn’t be a genocide in order to be a moral horror; calling it a genocide both diminishes the latter concept and subtly implies that the truth isn’t bad enough.

(When something that really isn’t a moral horror is referred to in language that suggests that it is– when a noncoercive and nonviolent policy of cultural assimilation is referred to as a genocide or is directly compared to the Holocaust, when a welfare program is compared to Stalinism– the debasement is even greater; but the subtle implication cost falls out.)

Part of the mission of human rights groups is to maintain the sense of moral seriousness about human rights abuses. That makes it more important, not less, that they use apposite moral language to describe abuses. If they get a reputation for crying wolf there’s a real loss to the world. Here it’s not quite traditional wolf-crying– there’s a real predator there that doesn’t happen to be a wolf. But it’s something that rightly diminishes their reputation as observers and evaluators. If they can’t tell the difference between Gitmo and the Gulag, they’ll be less trusted next time they point to abuses.

17

neil 06.08.05 at 11:58 am

One scarcely knows where to begin. For one thing, when did the American right suddenly start caring about hyperbolic comparisons? Was that before or after the objectively pro-Saddam Democrats were all found guilty of treason for mounting a fifth column with the homosexual terrorist-supporting media?

18

neil 06.08.05 at 12:04 pm

19

engels 06.08.05 at 12:06 pm

But one cannot hope to understand the first thing about the horrors of the Gulag without understanding the fundamental thing that distinguished it from Guantanamo: it was designed for anyone judged capable of flinching from unquestioning obedience to the state.

Look at it from the point of view of the individual. You have had your liberty wrongfully taken away (without a fair trial). Whether or not this is part of a greater system of repression is hardly relevant to you.

I’m not saying the ethical differences you point to are not important: they are. I am saying that I think they are not important from the standpoint of human rights, at least as I understand them.

20

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:08 pm

Most of the above comments illustrate beautifully why the left is f@#$ed politically here in the US. Too many liberals still have a political tin ear and vastly prefer stroking one another to reaching out beyond the shriveling liberal political base. The predictable right-wing tactics rightly derided above would be far less effective if liberals were more effective.

21

engels 06.08.05 at 12:12 pm

Last sentence should be: I am saying there is a sense in which they are not important, from the standpoint of human rights, and the comparison can be made.

22

Barry 06.08.05 at 12:19 pm

norbizness and neil summed it up quite well.

Steve, I’m not sure what you meant – if you meant that the left should have told the right to STFU when they raised this cry, then you’re correct.
If you are joining in the chorus of people seeking to distract us from the actions of this administration, then….

23

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:23 pm

See, you just don’t get it. “Gulag” _handed to the right on a silver platter_ the opportunity to create that distraction. _Think_, people. Sigh.

24

engels 06.08.05 at 12:26 pm

Yeah well there is always the temptation to say something because you happen to believe it is true, not because it is politically expedient… AI, by the way, is not a political party.

25

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:29 pm

Do you just want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, or do you want to win election so we _actually have the power to stop_ things like Gitmo? For me that’s an easy choice.

26

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:32 pm

P.S. AI is not a party but, as an organization dedicated to influencing governmental and public opinion (as opposed to just being a voice crying in the wilderness), it is inherently political, in an entirely positive sense. As such its leaders need to exercise sound political judgement.

27

Andy Vance 06.08.05 at 12:42 pm

Jacob Levy – So what term adequately describes the system the administration has established and conveys moral seriousness?

“Detention facilities” certainly doesn’t do it justice, given the fact that it was specifically designed to be extralegal and that unequivocally innocent detainees have been held for years without recourse, brutalized and murdered.

I understand the analogy to massacre and genocide (although “massacre” doesn’t convey the sustained nature of the injustice in this case), but what’s the word for massacre in this case?

28

bi 06.08.05 at 12:50 pm

Steve LaBonne: you got it wrong. All wrong.

That mythical “liberal political base” which only listens to reasoned commentary isn’t your target. If they listen to reason, they wouldn’t have voted for Bush in the first place.

The people you want to reach are those who are easily swayed by clever diction, who think words speak louder than actions, who think with their butts and not their heads. And when seen in this light, hyperbolic negative words like “gulag” are a clear win.

Of course, to provide Balance to the Force, in addition to using negative words to describe Dubya, the Democrats will also need to find positive words to describe themselves…

29

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:53 pm

Of course you’re right, that’s why the Democrats took power in the last election and put a stop to the detentions. [bangs head against wall]

30

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 12:54 pm

P.S. “That’s why” again referring not specifically to this incident but to the general political astuteness of the left.

31

george 06.08.05 at 12:59 pm

“If you don’t respect habeas corpus then you’ve opened up a gulag….”

Disagree. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s my understanding that POWs (let alone “unlawful combatants”) have no right to habeas corpus under Geneva or any other international law.

32

bi 06.08.05 at 1:00 pm

Yeah, “Help Is On The Way.” That was _so_ positive, you know…

33

bi 06.08.05 at 1:01 pm

…and so forceful. As compared to, say, “Bush lied! People died!” People won’t stand for this sort of reasoned elitist discussion!

34

bi 06.08.05 at 1:03 pm

george: isn’t the war _over_?

35

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 1:07 pm

Look at it from the point of view of the individual. You have had your liberty wrongfully taken away (without a fair trial). Whether or not this is part of a greater system of repression is hardly relevant to you.

Actually, “from the point of view of the individual”, it doesn’t matter in the least whether there was a “fair trial” or not, if the result is a stay in prison. “From the point of view of the individual”, what matters is the absolute freedom to do as one pleases, without fear of punishment, and with as much assistance as possible in achieving one’s goals, regardless of who else might suffer as a result. That’s why morally aware people don’t simply “[l]ook at it from the point of view of the individual”.

In the old days, Amnesty International used to focus on publicizing individual cases of prisoners of conscience who had been subjected to terrible mistreatment merely for voicing political opposition to their own government’s repression and cruelty. They rarely, if ever, spotlighted, say, a murderer on death row, or a convicted terrorist enduring harsh prison conditions. Their rationale was obvious: virtually everybody living in a democracy can agree that imprisoning and mistreating people merely for expressing disagreement with the current government is wrong. That consensus breaks down completely when the accusation shifts from mere political dissent to criminal–and especially violent–conduct.

That’s presumably why Amnesty has shifted its strategy in the Guantanamo case, from highlighting specific “prisoners of conscience”–any one of whom is highly likely to turn out to be a terrorist foot soldier, after all–to outrageous broad-brush historical analogies like “Gulag”.

I’m not saying the ethical differences you point to are not important: they are. I am saying that I think they are not important from the standpoint of human rights, at least as I understand them.

Precisely. You and I understand them in two entirely different, utterly irreconcilable ways. And frankly, I consider your understanding to be morally indefensible.

36

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 1:09 pm

If you think “Bush lied, people died” is a slogan that had any broad resonance outside Manhattan, Cambridge, and the Bay Area, you’re severely delusional. Perhaps you should get out more?

37

bi 06.08.05 at 1:09 pm

… _any one of whom is highly likely to turn out to be a terrorist foot soldier, after all_ …

Oh, really? Which bum did that come from?

38

bi 06.08.05 at 1:10 pm

Steve LaBonne: oh, apologies. “Help Is On The Way” is so much more resonant. Look, people are still chanting it to this very day!

39

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 1:13 pm

Another of your delusions apparently is to mistake me for someone who thinks Kerry was anything other than a deeply pathetic candidate. So you can stop chanting now, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

40

lemuel pitkin 06.08.05 at 1:18 pm

I’m a little puzzled why Steve Labonne thinks we should trust his judgement over the best way to call attention to the abuses at Guantanamo than Amnesty’s.

I’ve seen quite a few articles about the Amenstyr eport in recent days, including in my local tabloid which generally follows a strict support-the-troops line. It’s pretty clear that the “gulag” line, justified or not, contributed to that.

Steve, besides “getting out more,” what’s the basis for your expertise in practical politics? You seem quite confident in it.

41

Doug 06.08.05 at 1:25 pm

13: People were thrown into the Gulag merely for being suspected of voicing dissent against the Soviet regime. The few hundred prisoners at Guantanamo were placed there because they were suspected of being involved in a murderous terrorist organization.

Oddly enough, suspicion of being involved in a murderous terrorist organization is what many (perhaps most, perhaps the vast majority, I don’t have all my sources at hand) Soviet citizens with were charged with.

“… by 6 December [1935, following Kirov’s murder], sixty-six ‘White Guardists’ arrested for planning terrorist acts even before Kirov was assassinated, were sentenced to death… Another twenty-eight were shot in Kiev. On the 8th, Nikolai Yezhov [NKVD], accompanied by [Yakov] Agranov, returned from Moscow from Leningrad to report for three hours on their hunt for the ‘terrorists’.” (Stalin: The court of the red tsar, Simon S. Montefiore, pp. 159-69)

“In retrospect, this is one of the most unique aspects of the Soviet camp system: its inmates arrived, most of the time, via a legal system, if not always the ordinary judicial system. No one tried and sentenced the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, but the vast majority of inmates in Soviet camps had been interrogated (however cursorily), tried (however farcically), and found guilty (even if it took less than a minute). Undoubtedly, the conviction that they were acting within the law was part of what motivated those working within the security services, as well as the guards and administrators who later controlled the prisoners’ lives in the camps.” Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum, p. 122)

I want to say that Yevgenia Ginzburg, author of Into the Whirlwind, was arrested for being associated with a terrorist, Trotskyist organization. Don’t have the book here, so just going by memory here. People who have read more Gulag memoirs than I will certainly be able to furnish more examples.

Of course we know now that people went to the Gulag because they were denounced by neighbors settling old feuds, because police coveted their girlfriends, because names got mixed up, and for no real reason at all. (Though there was always a stated reason, one often related to terrorism.)

Do we know that the same is not happening in Afghanistan? In Iraq? Here at home? Can we know?

42

engels 06.08.05 at 1:26 pm

Actually, “from the point of view of the individual”, it doesn’t matter in the least whether there was a “fair trial” or not, if the result is a stay in prison.

Yes, it does. It matters to me whether or not I have been wronged, not just what the outcome is for me. At least, can you see that the assumption you are making here is controversial?

You’ll see I changed that last sentence slightly. What I do think is there is an important standpoint – the individual standpoint – from which they are not important. Recognising this implication is essential to taking seriously the point that we are each separate people with individual lives to lead.

43

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 1:27 pm

I can read election returns. Can you?

44

Hederman 06.08.05 at 1:38 pm

Here’s what AI has accomplished by using the word “gulag”..or at least from my perspective in Washington, DC.

*Gotten a lot more media coverage of the report
*Gotten more media coverage of Amnesty International
*Alienated moderate Americans
*Painted themselves as a partisan, anti-American group
*Changed the Debate from Gitmo to AI and their motivation

AI should have issued a scathing report decrying the abuses at Gitmo and Iraq. That would have been newsworthy. But instead they would over the top and look like biased. The content of the report can be more easily ignored because folks are alienated by the language. Very few people in the US find the use of “gulag” reasonable. Including that word alienated many people from the rest of the report.

Now, instead of columnists writing about Gitmo, they have to write about the excessive zeal of AI as well. Just a dumb mistake on their part.

45

otto 06.08.05 at 1:40 pm

“we’d be better off if all journals of political opinion shared your willingness to seriously consider the arguments of the other side”

The argument that Israel should give up all its colonial settlements (including in and around Jerusalem) on the land conquered in 1967 is one where it would be delightful to see TNR see the other side. The typical TNR piece on Israel-Palestine is Peretz, in full colonialist mindset, describing the Palestinians as an “immature people”. How’s that for unsuitable rhetoric?

46

rd 06.08.05 at 1:50 pm

What precisely is the alternative regime that people want to replace the “gulag”? To give every battlefield capture in Afghanistan a trial in US courts, where the difficulties of applying US rules of evidence to army operations in the Hindu Kush will make convictions almost impossible? To give them POW status, which since the war on terror never ends will mean endless detainment, sort of like, say , Guantanamo. Or if it does “end”, to be returned to their native Saudi Arabia, Algeria, etc., which according to most amounts to collaborating with their torture? Some form of military hearing? We were just handed an Al-Queada figure we had wanted from Pakistan. Should he be released?

47

engels 06.08.05 at 1:55 pm

Dan,

Are you saying

(i) (SUSPECTED!) “violent criminals” don’t have human rights,

or

(ii) that Amnesty International shouldn’t be concerned with human rights abuses?

48

RSL 06.08.05 at 1:55 pm

Why is it that so many people who claim to be against Gitmo and similar prisons put so much energy into attacking anyone (like Newsweek or Amnesty International) who makes a minor “error” in criticizing Gitmo?

I think the only answer is that these folks really aren’t against Gitmo after all. They just are ashamed to admit their support for such unconstitutional detentions.

The key fact here is that detention at the sole discretion of the executive branch without due process for the detained is gulag-like. And it’s wrong. And it should be stopped. If you’re against illegal detentions, stop attacking those who are trying to expose the problem. If you’re for illegal detentions . . . well, all I can say is hope you’re illegally detained some time–and sooner rather than later! Who knows who King George will accuse of terrorism next. Maybe it will be you.

49

engels 06.08.05 at 1:58 pm

(It only requires a one character answer.)

50

james 06.08.05 at 2:02 pm

There is a risk in sensationalism. AI and many human rights groups have a long and storied history of screaming loudest at the nations least involved in human rights violations. This may be due to the fact that these nations are more likely to listen. It may be due to the idea of cleaning up your own house first. There is a limit on how long this tactic will work. The nations and their citizens will look at the unequal application of blame and ignore the messenger. This is the risk AI is running. North Korea and China both have actual gulags. Zimbabwe is actively starving its people. Sudan is committing an ongoing genocide. AI is spending its time complaining that non-uniformed enemy combatants haven’t had a trial.

51

neil 06.08.05 at 2:03 pm

I would like to hear Steve LaBonne convincingly explain why the people who get turned off by Amnesty calling American prisons a ‘gulag’ don’t get turned off by Ann Coulter calling everyone who’s anti-war ‘treasonous.’ I think he will find it exceedingly difficult, since he can’t point to any electoral returns and stick his tongue out.

52

Scott 06.08.05 at 2:06 pm

It won’t be a ‘gulag’ until the gas chamber they’re threatening to build is operating.

Would “concentration camp” be more accurate? Would BushCo have complained about that term just as loudly?

53

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 2:28 pm

I don’t care why. I only care that it’s a fact, as evidenced by the scathing reaction of middle-of-the-road organs (TNR; Kurtz and Applebaum in WaPo.) Politics works by dealing with reality, not the comfy world of liberal righteousness.

By the way, the reason for the non-reaction of such moderates to Ann Coulter (although I’ve certianly ssen her trashed in TNR) is that nobody takes her seriously enough anymore to bother replying to her. Is that the status you want Amnesty to reach?

54

pjs 06.08.05 at 2:28 pm

I understand why someone would insist that Gitmo and the gulag exist in altogether different moral universes, despite the fact that various human rights violations are taking place in both conexts. People were sent to the gulag for being suspected of doing someone they had a right to do – express political discontent – against a regime that didn’t deserve to exist. By way of contrast, people end up at Gitmo because they are suspected of doing something they do not have a right to do – engage in terrorism – against a regime that is (we believe) very different in character than the Soviet Union. That seems like a difference of kind, not degree.

The problem, however, with getting too self-righteous about this distinction is we really don’t seem to be trying too hard to ensure that the people who end up at Gitmo actually have any connection to terrorism. All the “ticking time bomb” debates, while important, are obscuring what seems to be a basic fact – very few of the people were torturing for information are guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Given our lack of interest in sorting these kinds of things out, it seems a bit fatuous to attempt to describe what we’re doing as being illegitimately overzealous in support of legitimate ends as opposed to engaging in a great moral evil.

55

fred lapides 06.08.05 at 2:38 pm

Object to the word Gulag? Use it but let us call any attack that kills 30 people a Holocaust and 150 people killed “Genocide”…

56

RSL 06.08.05 at 2:44 pm

People were sent to the gulag for being suspected of doing someone they had a right to do. . . . By way of contrast, people end up at Gitmo because they are suspected of doing something they do not have a right to do . . .

The contrast is less important than the similarity: i.e., what should concern us is that people are sent to both gulag and Gitmo “because they are suspected” and there is no due process for confirming the suspicion. The lack of due process is what makes Gitmo and the Gulag similar and what makes them so revolting to basic liberties.

I wish Americans would read the constituion, damn it. It’s pretty clear: “No person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The words mean what they say. There’s no due process at Gitmo.

57

Slocum 06.08.05 at 2:46 pm

We have seen horrors, great and small, in the past century. There have always been some who have done what they could to oppose them. History will not look kindly on those who made excuses, looked the other way, or told the supporters of justice to keep their damn voices down.

Quite so. But the problem is that Amnesty is ‘looking the other way’ with respect to great horrors by focusing on small ones when the small ones can be blamed on the U.S. Even when the same U.S. that is responsible for the small horrors has actually done something to remedy horrors many, many orders of magnitude greater than Gitmo. And even when the small horrors are intricately bound up in the fight against great horrors (as, unfortunately, they always have been when great horrors are fought–Gitmo also pales besides atrocities committed by the allied side in WWII).

It is not the word ‘Gulag’ that is the problem–it is the absence of a sense of proportion that it represents–especially because Gitmo is a response to enemies whose tactics are crimes against humanity by design, who dismember more innocent victims in a single bombing than are alleged to have died in the entire, ‘Gitmo Archipelago’, and yet AI focuses on Gitmo and relegates mass murder of civilians via suicide bombings of mosques and markets to the back pages. What does Amnesty have on the front page of their “Amnesty International Report 2005”?

The “war on terror” appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international “terrorism”.

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/index-eng

International “terrorism” in scare quotes? My god, they have truly lost their moral bearings. I was once an AI supporter, but I have a hard time seeing that ever happening again.

I’m afraid the bottom-line may be the bottom-line — there probably is a lot more money to be had in focusing their efforts on Gitmo than “terrorists”.

58

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 2:48 pm

Okay, Doug–if you can quote Anne Applebaum, then so can I….

I find this comparison infuriating because in the Soviet Union it would have been impossible for the Supreme Court to order the administration to change its policies in Guantanamo Bay, as it has done, or for the media to investigate Abu Ghraib, as they has done, or for Irene Khan to publish an independent report about anything at all.

Like Khan and Schulz, I am appalled by this administration’s detention practices and interrogation policies, by the lack of a legal mechanism to judge the guilt of alleged terrorists, and by the absence of any outside investigation into reports of prison abuse. But I loathe these things precisely because the United States is not the Soviet Union, because our detention centers are not intrinsic to our political system, and because they are therefore not ‘similar in character’ to the gulag at all.

Ann Applebaum, today in the Washington Post

59

engels 06.08.05 at 2:48 pm

People were sent to the gulag for being suspected of doing someone they had a right to do – express political discontent – against a regime that didn’t deserve to exist.

Pjs – The idea of human rights is that they are universal. The point is to enable you to get above the arguments about Liberal Democracy v. Communism, so you can persuade people who do not share your political views. If they were dependent on the “right to exist” of the regime in question then you wouldn’t be able to do this.

60

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 2:49 pm

Are you saying

(i) (SUSPECTED!) “violent criminals” don’t have human rights,

or

(ii) that Amnesty International shouldn’t be concerned with human rights abuses?

I certainly believe that violent criminals have fewer “human rights” than others. For example, they don’t have the right not to be imprisoned.

Do you disagree?

61

engels 06.08.05 at 2:53 pm

Do you disagree?

Yes. Dan, nobody has the right not to be imprisoned. Everybody has the right not to be imprisoned indefinitely without a fair trial.

62

RSL 06.08.05 at 2:55 pm

I certainly believe that violent criminals have fewer “human rights” than others. For example, they don’t have the right not to be imprisoned.

Do you disagree?

Convicted violent criminals have fewer rights. Suspected violent criminals retain their rights until conviction. Conviction requires due process. None of the Gitmo detainees have received any “real” due process. Until then, they retain all their rights.

63

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 2:58 pm

The problem, however, with getting too self-righteous about this distinction is we really don’t seem to be trying too hard to ensure that the people who end up at Gitmo actually have any connection to terrorism. All the “ticking time bomb” debates, while important, are obscuring what seems to be a basic fact – very few of the people were torturing for information are guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Actually, neither of us has any idea how hard the US government did or didn’t try to separate the guilty from the innocent, or how many of the Guantanamo detainees are in fact innocent of the accusations against them. If Amnesty International were to investigate this issue seriously–that is, to try to determine whether any of the detainees is clearly innocent, and if so, to champion his cause–then I suspect most of the people criticizing it would be much more sympathetic towards its efforts.

In fact, though, AI has taken the approach of most of the commentators here: that Guantanamo is an atrocity on a par with the Gulag, regardless of whether the detainees there are in fact Al Qaida terrorists or innocent bystanders. That is, to put it simply, a morally indefensible position.

64

engels 06.08.05 at 3:03 pm

Rsl – You’re right to note this of the Guantanamo detainees but actually you can keep it simpler and say:

everybody retains all their human rights all the time.

In other words, these rights are (i) universal and (ii) inalienable. A convicted criminal has had his fair trial so you are not violating any of his human rights by imprisoning him.

65

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 3:05 pm

The idea of human rights is that they are universal. The point is to enable you to get above the arguments about Liberal Democracy v. Communism, so you can persuade people who do not share your political views.

This is simply ludicrous. A supporter of a political system that involves single-party “dictatorship of the proletariat”, exercising complete, unaccountable control over the organs of government, has no common ground with any supporter of liberal democracy on any issue having to do with human rights. And any definition of “human rights” that allows such an opponent of liberal democracy to embrace it fully is a sham definition.

66

RSL 06.08.05 at 3:06 pm

Actually, neither of us has any idea how hard the US government did or didn’t try to separate the guilty from the innocent, or how many of the Guantanamo detainees are in fact innocent of the accusations against them. If Amnesty International were to investigate this issue seriously—that is, to try to determine whether any of the detainees is clearly innocent, and if so, to champion his cause—then I suspect most of the people criticizing it would be much more sympathetic towards its efforts.

Dan, why don’t you read the report before blowing wind. If you’d bother to read the report, you’d realize that a large portion of its criticism relates to lack of due process for determining who is guilty or innocent. Of course Amnesty International has no way to find out who’d guilty and innocent because the U.S. goverment isn’t charging these people or giving them trials.

After you’ve finished the AI report, may I suggest you spend some serious time reading the U.S. Constitution and trying to understand it?

67

BigMacAttack 06.08.05 at 3:08 pm

engels,

‘Yes. Dan, nobody has the right not to be imprisoned. Everybody has the right not to be imprisoned indefinitely without a fair trial’

What about POWs?

68

Barry 06.08.05 at 3:14 pm

Wow; suddenly POW’s are the issue. I thought that there weren’t any; that the magic vision of Our Dear Leader determined that.

69

RSL 06.08.05 at 3:16 pm

Engels,

I agree with your point about human rights. Thanks for the clarification.

Bigmacattack,
Under the Constitution, non-criminal detainees (i.e., POWs) are covered by the rules established by Congress. (In Article I, section 8, the Constitution gives Congress the power “to make rules concernng captures on land and water.” Right now, the only rules I know of that Congress has approved and therefore can be applied to the Gitmo detainees are the Geneva Conventions.

70

fifi 06.08.05 at 3:17 pm

Gitmo is small potatoes. See http://www.pbs.org/now/society/prisons2.html If you believe, as I do, that crime is politics, then we’ve surpassed the soviet gulag.

71

engels 06.08.05 at 3:21 pm

BigMac: All wars violate human rights on a massive scale: that’s one reason they are a Bad Thing.

But POWs have their own legal protections and they can only be imprisoned until the end of the war (not ‘indefinitely’).

72

Barry 06.08.05 at 3:25 pm

“See, you just don’t get it. “Gulag” handed to the right on a silver platter the opportunity to create that distraction. Think, people. Sigh.”

Posted by Steve LaBonne

Nah – they’d have found something else, and hyped that in unison

(about the reaction of ‘moderates’ to the word ‘gulag’):

“I don’t care why. I only care that it’s a fact, as evidenced by the scathing reaction of middle-of-the-road organs (TNR; Kurtz and Applebaum in WaPo.) Politics works by dealing with reality, not the comfy world of liberal righteousness.”

TNR? The media whore Kurtz?
(don’t know Applebaum from jack; so won’t comment)

Kurtz is a whore to those in power; ‘Even The Liberal New Republic’ ranges from sanity through insanity (see: Peretz, the owner).

“By the way, the reason for the non-reaction of such moderates to Ann Coulter (although I’ve certianly ssen her trashed in TNR) is that nobody takes her seriously enough anymore to bother replying to her. Is that the status you want Amnesty to reach?”

How many NYT best-sellers has Coulter had? How many cable news appearances? In my Borders bookstore, in a liberal university town, I’ve frequently seen her book prominently displayed.
Sorry, wrong.

At this point, Steve, I’ve got to put you in the group which has seized up on the word ‘gulag’ to cover for the administration.

73

RSL 06.08.05 at 3:26 pm

Gitmo is a response to enemies whose tactics are crimes against humanity by design, who dismember more innocent victims in a single bombing than are alleged to have died in the entire, ‘Gitmo Archipelago’ . . .

Slocum, how can you be sure the people held at Gitmo actually are the people who committed such crimes? You just have faith in the government? You think our government is incapable of lying or making mistakes? And while the suicide bombings may have killed a lot more people than have been killed at Gitmo, Bagram, and other prisons, the suiciders still have a way to go to catch up with the number of civilians killed by their jailers in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

74

george 06.08.05 at 3:33 pm

Barry, there are two types of people in Guantanamo: POWs and unlawful combatants. Setting aside for a moment the argument over which is which and what that means in terms of Geneva, I don’t think either has any right to a “fair and speedy trial.” They can be held until the end of hostilities. (I’m not a lawyer, so correct me if I’m wrong; RSL seems to be implying that Geneva does confer such a right.)

Two qualifiers: first, I’ll acknowledge that even here the Bush Admin is pushing the envelope, since no war has been declared and thus the end of hostilities becomes a lot more subjective. But I think it’s fair to say we’re not there yet. Even in Afghanistan, much more clearly a legal war than Iraq, al Qaeda is still a legit fighting force in certain parts of the country.

Second, this analysis becomes a lot more dicey if we starting throwing in people who were not picked up off the battlefield. I’m just unaware of whether and to what extent we’re doing that, at least at Guantanamo.

I’m a lot less happy with the way the US is treating detainees in other locations or caught in other contexts. For instance, US citizens do retain their due process rights; they’re either guilty of treason (a capital crime) or they’re innocent and should be let go. Or I suppose they’re guilty of some lesser crime, but there’s no grounds to detain these people indefinitely without trial.

I’m also not happy that the US is detaining people indefinitely in secret locations, but I don’t know what to say; after all, they’re secret.

75

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 3:35 pm

Of course Amnesty International has no way to find out who’d guilty and innocent because the U.S. goverment isn’t charging these people or giving them trials.

But AI has championed the causes of literally hundreds of prisoners throughout its history who were not given fair trials. As far as I know, its policy in its heyday, prior to the collapse of the East Bloc, was never to throw up its hands in despair at the Herculean task of trying to sort out the prisoners of conscience from the millions of common criminals receiving similarly unkind treatment. Rather, it focused its attention on the cases of specific individuals who were (a) pretty clearly innocent of any serious wrongdoing, and (b) being punished primarily for their political opposition to the government.

This policy reflected the (at the time, at least) blatantly obvious observation that freedom to participate in non-violent political activity–even in opposition to the current government–was the crucial right from which other rights could be expected to flow, as they have in the “free world”. It’s sad that AI is now burying this basic truth under a mountain of nonsense about the moral equivalence of Guantanamo and the Gulag.

76

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 3:40 pm

Barry, if you’re a registered Democrat, please do the rest of us a favor and register independnet, Green, whatever. The damaage you and people like you have done to my party is a big part of the reason why the Republicans have the power to perpetrate outrages like Gitmo.

77

engels 06.08.05 at 3:42 pm

A supporter of a political system that involves single-party “dictatorship of the proletariat”, exercising complete, unaccountable control over the organs of government, has no common ground with any supporter of liberal democracy on any issue having to do with human rights.

No, Dan, this is exactly why the concept of human rights came to prominence in the last century. It was supposed to be a neutral concept on common ground by which, in theory, either side could criticise the other, without an ideological shouting match. As it turns out, it gave the West a very powerful means of criticising Stalinist Russia.

78

george 06.08.05 at 3:42 pm

For what it’s worth, this whole brouhaha is consistent with my impression of AI as an organization with its heart usualy in the right place, and that does crucial work, but sometimes steps on its own foot by going overboard. By contrast, I’ve generally found Human Rights Watch more balanced and fair-minded.

79

BigMacAttack 06.08.05 at 3:48 pm

Wars do not have definite end dates.

So where are we with the folks who are at very least pretending to be engaging in reasoned discourse?

Not applying the Geneva Conventions to illegal combatants.

A vast difference in both kind and degree from the gulag.

Now, that doesn’t mean that decision was right.

I think it was wrong.

Without some other meaningful legal framework you are bound to have abuse.

And the very nature of a war with illegal combatants might require granting extra rights to those taken as POWs. I certainly think it does. But I am not impressed with gulag comparisons and I am not about to require a bail hearing for everyone taken prisoner by the US Army.

80

Barry 06.08.05 at 3:56 pm

“Barry, if you’re a registered Democrat, please do the rest of us a favor and register independnet, Green, whatever. The damaage you and people like you have done to my party is a big part of the reason why the Republicans have the power to perpetrate outrages like Gitmo.”

Posted by Steve LaBonne ·

‘Your’ party, Steve? Gee, for somebody who’s a Democrat you seem to do yeoman work for the GOP.

81

Slocum 06.08.05 at 4:08 pm

Slocum, how can you be sure the people held at Gitmo actually are the people who committed such crimes? You just have faith in the government? You think our government is incapable of lying or making mistakes?

I didn’t say I was sure that the people held at Gitmo are all guilty–just on a statistical basis, I’m sure they’re not. What I said was only that “Gitmo is a response to enemies whose tactics are crimes against humanity by design” — and that it is. I’m certainly not saying Gitmo is justified — I’m saying there’s a big picture that AI is intentionally and perversely ignoring for political reasons.

And while the suicide bombings may have killed a lot more people than have been killed at Gitmo, Bagram, and other prisons

Not just that–many, many individual suicide bombings kill more than are alleged to have died in custody in all the prisons of the ‘modern gulag’ (and the vast majority of those blown to bits by the bombers are civilians who have been intentionally targeted).

the suiciders still have a way to go to catch up with the number of civilians killed by their jailers in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

True enough (though, of course, few of the current jailors were yet born in 1945). But by that token, AI’s fixation on Gitmo is analogous to focusing exclusively on Hiroshima or Dresden and relegating Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, Blitzkreig, and the Holocaust to footnotes.

Or, as AI might have put it the “bombing” of Pearl Harbor, the “rape” or Nanking, the “invasion” of Poland, and the “holocaust”.

82

RSL 06.08.05 at 4:14 pm

The core protections provided by the Geneva Conventions are:

To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons [SEE MY NOTE BELOW]: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

[NOTE: The dispute is over whether the Gitmo and other detainees are included in the “above-mentioned people.” As I read the Conventions they are, but the Bush administration argues otherwise. If the detainees are covered by the GCs, then there’s clearly a problem with compliance at least as regards points (c) and (d). If the detainees are not covered by the GCs, I have to then ask what law does cover them? Under U.S. law you can’t deprive people of life, liberty, or property without some kind of legal authorization and due process. So if criminal process and GCs don’t apply, what does apply? I don’t think the Bush administration has provided an adequate answer to this question.]

83

es 06.08.05 at 4:16 pm

Yes, Hederman (and others), because usually AI reports get so much coverage. I remember the last one … CNN wouldn’t stop talking about it for days!

84

RSL 06.08.05 at 4:27 pm

Slocum . . . AI has addressed terrorism in other documents. However, the purpose of this annual report (and the main mission of AI) has always been to review the practices of recognized states. Maybe they should expand the scope of their report in the future, but it’s unfair to accuse them of “intentionally and perversely ignoring [terrorism] for political reasons.” For years, this report’s focus has been exclusively on the practices of states. AI’s focus on states in this report does not automatically mean that AI thinks terrorism is unimportant or less offensive than state actions.

Also, as a point of clarification–the gulag term isn’t in the reports. It was used in comments made by an AI spokesperson.

85

BigMacAttack 06.08.05 at 4:41 pm

Rsl,

I think Slocum is objecting to this AI blurb –

‘The “war on terror” appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than in countering international “terrorism”.’

See it really isn’t just the use of the word gulag, it is the general characteriztions that some might find objectionable.

86

Barry 06.08.05 at 4:52 pm

Steve, I should apologize for my ill-temperate post.

The point that I am trying (ever so badly) to make is best outlined in this very blog, in the thread “A Barrel of Bad Apples”:

“Ted’s open letter and this post from the Poor Man make the point that outrage at Amnesty International’s use of the word “gulag” seems to have provoked more response from the Administration (and some parts of the media) than any amount of confirmed evidence or clear moral argument about the actual practice of torture and other human rights abuses by the U.S. government.”

This has led me to three important points:

1) The administration, and it’s water carriers, can certainly get worked up at the use of a single word. Multiple, repeated, and (by now) clearly deliberate actions don’t seem to arouse their rage. Funny, isn’t it? Almost as if they were just making up an excuse, and trying to rag on their crowds.

2) The administration, and it’s water carriers, can always find a pretext for this mob-whipping. Always, without exception. If it’s not gulag, it’d be something else, like the page count devoted to each country. In 2004, the GOP (and it’s media whores) made a Vietnam war hero look like sh*t compared to a screw-up who had his daddy get him into the TANG to avoid Vietnam, and then screwed up a war he got us into through fraud, *after* he screwed up and let Al Qaida kill more Americans in a single day than they had been able to in the entire Clinton administration.

3) The GOP has gotten where it has by hatred, attacking and lying. When people ask about Iraq, they lie, and insult people who refuse to believe the lies. The reason that they have power is not due to the Democrats screwing up with poor word choice, but from the fact that too many Democrats apologize when they shouldn’t, rather than striking back.

So to h*ll with undeserved apologies – the fault lies here purely with Bush and the GOP. They are responsible.

87

RSL 06.08.05 at 4:55 pm

Bigmacattack . . .

I don’t see what’s so offensive about the statement you quote. If they had said the following, I’d agree they were biased:

‘The “war on terror” appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than did in countering international “terrorism”.’

This claim–that the war on terror was worse than terrorism would clearly offend some. But AI’s claim is that the war has done more to errode human rights than it has done to rid the world of terrorism–something that’s probably true, given the recent proliferation of terrorism in Iraq.

88

RSL 06.08.05 at 4:57 pm

Oops, my html tags didn’t work. In the following

‘The “war on terror” appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than [did] [in countering] international “terrorism”.’

“Did” should be underlined as an addition and “in countering” struck out.

89

Barry 06.08.05 at 4:58 pm

BTW, there’s a good thread on Anne Applebaums’ coments over at Obsidian Wings (http://obsidianwings.blogs.com).

90

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 5:00 pm

Barry, you don’t need to apologize to me or anybody. I’m not offended- not by you, not by Amnesty even though I think they jumped the shark. I’m simply damned frustrated at the way left-liberals keep feeding into the very effective right-wing sterotyping of Democrats. Yes, they’ll do it anyway; NO, it is not bright at all for us to help them in their dirty work. I don’t give a damn about fine points of doctrinal purity, I just want to get the stinking militaristic, theocratic wingnuts out of power. I think over-the-top stuff like Amnesty / Gulag makes the achievement of that goal significantly less likely, and I’ve given my reasons for thinking so. Just my opinion, worth what you paid for it.

91

Barry 06.08.05 at 5:08 pm

Thanks for your graciousness, Steve. I think that the big difference is in perception – both parties have people who have cringeable utterances. But note who has whom on the defensive – and it’s not because we’re more ‘cringeworthy’ – the recent outbreak of Nixon worship and revisionism shows that; as does the past four years of our ‘Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity’.

The GOP has figured it out – attack, attack, and attack some more. Attack the patriotism and morals of those who don’t support the GOP.

And after years of that, I think that striking back is both necessary and justified. And I’m not frightened of alienating the American people, because the GOP has said things much more often, much worse, and without the truth behind them.

And they win.

92

RSL 06.08.05 at 5:08 pm

” . . .there are two types of people in Guantanamo: POWs and unlawful combatants.

George (or anyone) . . . can you point me to the legal document that defines “unlawful combatants” and/or “enemy combatants.” The Bush administration claims that this category is legitimate, but I have no idea where it is defined by any law or treaty. It’s not in the Constitution and I can’t find it anywhere in the GCs (which do define POW and a broader class of “protected persons”).

My suspicion is that the category “unlawful combatant” has been invented by the administration and has no basis in any law (and therefore is invalid). I have asked this question repeatedly and never once found anyone who can point me to any law or treaty that establishes the category and defines rules for treating people in it.

93

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 5:12 pm

That they win says much about where the poitical center of gravity lies (it has shifted quite far to the right since the 70s) as well as, sadly, the intelligence of the average voter. But those are the facts on the ground and a successful party has to take them into account. Education of the voters can follow the regaining of power but is unlikely to be effective from the opposition. Cynical? I plead guilty. Again IMHO.

94

RSL 06.08.05 at 5:13 pm

Steve . . .

I agree with your general premise that the Democrats usually hit all the wrong notes when singing to the American mainstream, but I think the tune is starting to change and the Democrats are starting to harmonize on this Gitmo issue (and other issues, like Social Security), while the Republicans are suddenly starting to go off key.

Americans are getting fed up with Bush all of a sudden . . . including his costly venture into Mideast nation building.

95

BigMacAttack 06.08.05 at 5:14 pm

Rsl,

I think you missed my point. The issue is with the “”s around the war on terror and terrorism.

Such “”s when placed around a word are generally understood to denote at least skepticism regarding the generally understood meaning of the word. They are used to denote that the author does not think the terms apply. Substituting the words so called for those quotes would render a meaning generally equivalent to what they are generally understood to denote.

So the phrase could fairly be interpreted as

The so called war on terror appeared more effective in eroding international human rights principles than [did] [in countering] so called international terrorism.

As in the so called invasion of Poland.

Twist your lip and roll your eyes and scornfully say the so called rape of Nanking.

There you go, “”‘s denote something = skepticism regarding the generally understood meaning of the word.

Hopefully now you can see how some might take offense at this sort of characterization on the front page of AI’s report.

96

BigMacAttack 06.08.05 at 5:18 pm

Opps >s don’t come out. I should know that. What is the escape clause for greater than and lesser than signs.

There you go, “”‘s denote something lesser than or equal to that and something greater than or equal to skepticism regarding the generally understood meaning of the word.

97

RSL 06.08.05 at 5:20 pm

Slocum . . . well, I guess I can see your point, but I tend to place quotes around the war on terrorism too, only because I think war is a specific thing that needs to be declared by Congress (as specified in the Constitution), and therefore the so-called war on terrorism isn’t a true war.

My biggest objection to everything happening around the so-called war on terrorism is that it seems to flout constitutional principles. I guess I’m very conservative and a strict constructionist, but I think the constitution needs to be followed precisely as written.

98

RSL 06.08.05 at 5:21 pm

Meant to address my last bost to bigmacattack. Sorry Slocum.

99

engels 06.08.05 at 5:34 pm

bigmacattack – Do you really think the “War on Terror” is a war in the same sense that the Vietnam War was, or the Iraq War is? Do you think the same applies to the “War on Drugs”?

100

Steve LaBonne 06.08.05 at 5:38 pm

rsl- from your lips to God’s ears.

101

Barry 06.08.05 at 5:39 pm

“That they win says much about where the poitical center of gravity lies (it has shifted quite far to the right since the 70s) as well as, sadly, the intelligence of the average voter. But those are the facts on the ground and a successful party has to take them into account. Education of the voters can follow the regaining of power but is unlikely to be effective from the opposition. Cynical? I plead guilty. Again IMHO.”

Posted by Steve LaBonne ·

Steve, and I see a major technique being attacks and propaganda. The GOP turned the word ‘liberal’ into a swear word. The GOP turned Democrats into draft-dodgers, despite the fact that GOP politicians/apparachniks were pretty good at not having to take that all-expenses-paid trip to SE asia. The GOP tarred the Democrats as the ‘tax and spend’ party, while spending insanely. Then handed the bill off to their successors, and blaming it on an out-of-control Congress.

BTW – anybody whose interested in a truly sickening thread should head on over to Obsidian Wings. The right-wingers are in full counter-attack mode, spending far more words on the evils of saying ‘gulag’ than they did on torture and dententions themselves. Or lies, incompetancy and evil of the war in the first place.

It’s an excellent illustration of what I’m saying. However, please do wear your rubber boots, and get your immunizations up to date.

102

Dan Simon 06.08.05 at 6:00 pm

No, Dan, this is exactly why the concept of human rights came to prominence in the last century. It was supposed to be a neutral concept on common ground by which, in theory, either side could criticise the other, without an ideological shouting match. As it turns out, it gave the West a very powerful means of criticising Stalinist Russia.

This is revisionist drivel. For as long as the phrase “human rights” has existed, it has included political rights–including rights, such as the right to form political parties independent of the government, that doctrinaire communists have always explicitly rejected.

Indeed, its primary partisan use during the Cold War was hardly against Stalinist Russia (as if Stalin would have cared!), but rather against “authoritarian” allies of the U.S. The latter may have been relatively non-brutal towards their citizens compared to, say, the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, or Cambodia under Pol Pot, but they nevertheless often denied their populations the political rights they deserved, thus (quite rightly) incurring the wrath of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

That’s precisely why AI used to receive the accolades it did: it fought for political freedom wherever it was threatened. But today, sadly, its priorities have shifted from defending the politically repressed everywhere to dickering about the treatment of a few hundred suspected terrorists captured during the overthrow of a brutal theocratic tyranny. How far they have fallen….

103

RSL 06.08.05 at 6:20 pm

But today, sadly, its priorities have shifted from defending the politically repressed everywhere to dickering about the treatment of a few hundred suspected terrorists captured during the overthrow of a brutal theocratic tyranny.

Dan, the U.S. is not the only nation included in AI’s report this year. AI is still after all the other tyrants too. It’s just that now that the U.S. is holding tens of thousands in detention without due process means, we’ve joined the club. No change in AI’s priorities . . . just in ours.

104

NeoDude 06.08.05 at 6:22 pm

But I thouhght Hussein was Hitler, 9-11 was Pearl Harbor and the GWOT is more dangerous than WW2?

105

Josh 06.08.05 at 6:47 pm

I’m in for the three bones. Thirty bones? How many bones is that?I run hot and cold on Amnesty, but I feel like I still owe Ted for the lightbulb jokes.

106

george 06.08.05 at 9:14 pm

RSL, I can’t point you to a document, but I’m pretty sure the Bush Administration did not invent the category of unlawful combatant. The term maybe, but not the concept, which includes spies and saboteurs and such. I heard some dude on NPR the other day (now there’s the gold standard in sourcing!) who was saying that, historically speaking, the US was treating the WoT’s unlawful combatants with kid gloves; they are usually just summarily killed.

Regarding the sections of the Conventions that you cite, I don’t see where they guarantee a fair and speedy trial, just that detainees not be punished without one. They certainly describe other detainee rights that have been abused in certain cases; I’m not disputing that.

107

nick 06.08.05 at 11:35 pm

Shorter Dan Simon: “My demonstrated ignorance of Amnesty International’s work does not preclude my capacity to pontificate on it.”

108

Dan Simon 06.09.05 at 1:48 am

No change in AI’s priorities . . . just in ours.

Shorter Dan Simon: “My demonstrated ignorance of Amnesty International’s work does not preclude my capacity to pontificate on it.”

I suggest that everyone read the 1961 article that inspired AI’s founding, and then the Secretary-General’s message from this year’s AI report. The contrast is striking. AI’s original goals were:

· To work impartially for the release of those imprisioned for their opinions.

· To seek for them a fair and public trial.

· To enlarge the Right of Asylum and help political refugees to find work.

· To urge effective international machinery to guarantee freedom of opinion.

These goals barely rate a mention in the 2005 Secretary-General’s message. Instead, we read about “economic and social rights”, “HIV/AIDS, illiteracy, poverty, child and maternal mortality, and development aid”, and “violence against millions of women….including genital mutilation, rape, beatings by partners, and killings in the name of honour”. The two countries that come in for the most criticism are Sudan and the US–the former for mass murder in Darfur, and the US for denying due process in some cases to “suspected terrorists”.

In short, AI’s agenda has expanded immensely, in bizarrely distorted ways: to save everyone everywhere from want and suffering, and to obtain fair trials for suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan. No wonder it no longer has any time or energy to devote to freeing actual prisoners of conscience.

No, I’m not ignorant of Amnesty International’s work. Yes, AI has changed over the years. No, most of the commentators here don’t have a clue about AI’s noble founding mission, the admirable work it did in service to that mission, and its more recent scandalous betrayal of it. I hope this comparison will at least begin to set matters straight.

109

abb1 06.09.05 at 3:38 am

I object to the AI slandering the Soviet GULAG.

Only convicted terrorists, foreign spies, saboteurs, enemies of the people and their relatives were sent there. And they all were tried and convicted according to the law. They were given a term and they were released upon serving it, after paying for their wicked crimes and being reformed by hard labor and other rehabilitation efforts. They were never tortured.

The AI metaphor is offensive.

110

RSL 06.09.05 at 5:42 am

I can’t point you to a document, but I’m pretty sure the Bush Administration did not invent the category of unlawful combatant.

Until someone points me to an actual law or treaty, I will remain skeptical. No one (and I’ve asked many people) has been able to show me the legal document that establishes the category of unlawful combatant or defines how they should be treated.

As far as trials are concerned, both the U.S. Constitution and the GCs would require a trial if the detainees are being held as criminals. If they are being held as combatants, they don’t necessarily get trials but, under the GCs as I read them, they also can’t be punished (because they have not been proved to be guilty of crimes). The legal basis for interrogating these people is also unclear to me.

111

Slocum 06.09.05 at 6:02 am

rsl: AI has addressed terrorism in other documents. However, the purpose of this annual report (and the main mission of AI) has always been to review the practices of recognized states.

Well, as I pointed out, AI doesn’t ignore terrorism in this report, it expresses skepticism about international “terrorism”.

But an exclusive focus on Gitmo is no more sensible from the perspective of restricting attention to recognized states–Gitmo abuses also absolutely pale beside those of repressive governments throughout the world. We have the perennial leader, North Korea. We have Zimbabwe, where Mugabe seems now to be taking a page from Pol Pot (driving penniless city dwellers–and likely opposition supporters–into the country where they have no shelter or means to obtain food). We have Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Syria, China, Iran…

But AI surveys this landscape and decides it sees two principal problems: Sudan and Gitmo.

112

Doug 06.09.05 at 6:31 am

Re 58: I would direct Applebaum to re-read her own column of May 18, “Blaming the Messenger.” The key sentence: “Blaming the messenger, even for a bungled message, doesn’t get the administration off the hook.” That about wraps up our rhetorical inquiries.

My substantive questions still stand, to wit:

Of course we know now that people went to the Gulag because they were denounced by neighbors settling old feuds, because police coveted their girlfriends, because names got mixed up, and for no real reason at all. (Though there was always a stated reason, one often related to terrorism.)

Do we know that the same is not happening in Afghanistan? In Iraq? Here at home? Can we know?

113

nick 06.09.05 at 6:37 am

No wonder it no longer has any time or energy to devote to freeing actual prisoners of conscience.

Oh, fuck right off: your apples/oranges act is no better demonstration of your utter ignorance of AI’s day-to-day work.

114

nick 06.09.05 at 6:48 am

But AI surveys this landscape and decides it sees two principal problems: Sudan and Gitmo.

Of course, this categorical untruth is >a href=”http://www.amnesty.org/actnow/”>very easily refuted. As is Dan Simon’s snarky calumny.

115

Nicholas Gruen 06.09.05 at 8:07 am

Marvellous post. Thanks.

116

james 06.09.05 at 8:51 am

rsl –

From the Geneva Conventions. Convention III article 4 categorizes the requirements for military personnel to be protect under the convention. The convention makes allowances for militias, citizens taking up arms, national guard groups, fulltime military, etc. One consistent and primary requirement for being included in these groups is easily recognizable distinction between such individuals and non-combatants. This may be uniform, insignia, openly caring arms, etc. While the standards to meet this requirement changes based on classification (civilians need only openly bear arms), in all cases it is mandatory. This is intended to prevent either side from using the non-combatant civilian population as human shields. Combatants who fail to meet any of the classifications are not granted protect persons status under the conventions.

Convention IV goes into more detail on who is not protected. Of potential application “Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it.” This only being applicable if the non-member state is not meeting the requirements of the convention. Article 5 also list requirements to deny protect status. Namely: “5 Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.” This goes on to state “be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention”.

These rules within the Geneva Conventions give a reasonable argument that combatants not meeting the requirements can be treated as non-protected persons. The rights of non-protected persons under the convention is less than those of protect persons and has historically granted the state the right of summery execution. Please note, the United States has not ratified all conventions in their entirety. Even granting the above assumptions, it can be reasonably argued that US constitution reads as granting rights to individuals in the US not protected under the Geneva Conventions.

http://www.genevaconventions.org/

117

BigMacAttack 06.09.05 at 9:32 am

Rsl and Engels,

Ok now curl up your lip roll your eyes back and say so called terrorism.

I am somewhat open to expanding the definition.

But exactly what are we to think about people who at a minimum are expressing doubt that terrorism exists?

That is the kind of stuff you expect from brutal cynics not a human rights group.

Again let me clear that I agree with much of criticisms of the administrations detentions policies. As I stated earlier, And the very nature of a war with illegal combatants might require granting extra rights to those taken as POWs. (Rights above and beyond the Geneva Conventions) I certainly think it does.

But my current conversation is about the AI’s characterizations of gulag and “terrorism” and why many might find them offensive.

If the usage of terms like gulag and “terrorism” are red herrings why do so many(obviously not all Steve Ted etc.) seem unwilling to concede that they are grossly offensive and/or inaccurate and move on to the substantive criticism?

118

Dan Simon 06.09.05 at 11:09 am

But AI surveys this landscape and decides it sees two principal problems: Sudan and Gitmo.

Of course, this categorical untruth is very easily refuted. As is Dan Simon’s snarky calumny.

Thank you for proving my point. AI’s worldwide appeals for June 2005, to which you helpfully provided a link, list prisoners in Guantanamo, Israel and Uzbekistan. The latter is plausibly a “prisoner of conscience”, in the sense of having been jailed solely for disagreeing with the government. The first two were imprisoned by countries that allow virtually complete freedom of speech and political dissent, and there is absolutely no evidence that either was imprisoned merely for expressing their beliefs, political or otherwise. That two-thirds of AI’s June 2005 priorities have nothing whatsoever to do with “freedom of opinion” or prisoners of conscience simply demonstrates how far AI has drifted from its original focus.

119

Dan Simon 06.09.05 at 11:49 am

Sorry–another victim of previewless comments….

120

abb1 06.09.05 at 12:06 pm

Dan, I’m not following the discussion here, but do the US and Israel really allow ‘virtually complete freedom of speech and political dissent’ to every individual on earth, or only to certain categories of individuals and only within a certain range of opinions?

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, personally authorised the expansion of a special programme which ultimately led to the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison, the New Yorker magazine claims today.

The operation, which encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation to obtain intelligence, was known to President George Bush and fewer than 200 operatives. It was approved by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, according to the report. The programme was governed by the rules: “Grab who you must. Do what you want,” a former intelligence officer told the magazine.

How’s this so different from Uzbekistan?

I have to say, I’m slightly surprised by your denials. I thought you’d be defending the Uzbekistan-style methods – after all it’s for a good cause…

121

Nash 06.09.05 at 2:29 pm

Permission to challenge the received wisdom expressed here that there is an established connection between left-of-center-types saying mean or exaggerated things about right-of-center types and the actual, behind-the-curtain votes of all of those offendees?

The conventional take, ala Steve et al., is that saying mean and over-the-top things sends the moderates trampeding over each other at the polls in a frenzy to vote for the Republicans, any Republican, hell, just someone who isn’t a mean ol’ Democrat who said mean ol’ things about those abused Republicans. The conventional take holds that if we’d just learn to desist and talk nice, the moderates would go into those booths and calmly and firmly vote Democratic.

I say feh. I say prove it.

And I mean a proof that goes beyond (1) Steve et al. claiming it is so because of the results of recent elections without providing any actual linkage or (2) Steve et al. claiming here or in any other blog that it is so because a close confidante who also happens to be a moderate, an independent, or heaven forfend, a Republican fed up with the current government told them that they would have voted for the Democrat if only they hadn’t said those mean things.

Again, I say prove it.

122

Dan Simon 06.09.05 at 4:17 pm

How’s this so different from Uzbekistan?

Well, what happens to people who object publicly and strenuously to the government and its actions in the US? What happens to people who do the same thing in Uzbekistan? Is this really such a difficult question? And what on earth does this have to do with a US government program to round up members of a terrorist network?

I have to say, I’m slightly surprised by your denials. I thought you’d be defending the Uzbekistan-style methods

But Abb1, you know less than nothing about me. (Not that it stopped you from casually comparing me with Hermann Goering at one point, mind you.) What would it have contributed to the discussion to bring up your ignorant idle speculations regarding my off-topic opinions–even in the unlikely event that you’d been correct?

Here’s an idea: why not stop the filthy ad hominem insults against people you believe you disagree with, and instead actually engage the issues being discussed? You might just find that the conversation becomes both more civil and more productive as a result.

123

engels 06.09.05 at 4:27 pm

Dan, you have quite obviously lost the plot on this one.

Do you think the USSR refused to sign the 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights? Or were the Communists there insufficiently “doctrinaire” for your tastes? (I know you love using that phrase because it allows you to pretend you are still fighting the Evil Empire.) Or do you think signing a treaty is consistent with “explicitly rejecting” its terms?

Are you trying to say that people in the West haven’t criticised and don’t criticise Stalinist Russia on human rights grounds? For someone with a clearly unhealthy obsession with the Red Menace your knowledge of Cold War history seems remarkably sketchy. Do you think Amnesty International has no business concerning itself with torture and lack of due process? WHY?

And please stop droning on about how Amnesty has gone down in your estimation since the start of the Iraq War. Amnesty is an international organisation with a proud history of fighting human rights abuses wherever they occurred. You are an ignorant fool. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your estimation of them.

124

james 06.09.05 at 4:28 pm

Steve seems to be claiming that stupid or outrageous statements only appeal to those of similar viewpoints. Through excessive rhetoric or diminished credibility, these statements tend to repel those outside the core group. To say it another way, Ann Coulter type statements do not bring in the independents. Amnesty International’s comparisons of Gitmo to Gulags, the US to Sudan, etc, cause the middle and the right of the nation to view AI, at the very least, as less reliable.

To convince those with a different system of mores, you need to use the imagery and language that reaches them. Amnesty International’s comments only appeal to their constituency. The excessive and inaccurate comparison degrades their position as a believable entity with everyone else. If AI wanted to reach the middle and right it should have gone with the ideas of “The US needs to meet a higher standard” and “This is a threat to individual freedoms in the US.”

125

Nash 06.09.05 at 4:35 pm

james, those are the claims that I’m challenging.

Other than anecdotal complaints, I’m not seeing it. In order for what you are saying to be true, it must follow that the same Americans who are offended enough by an AI “gulag” or two to run into the arms of the Republican Party ARE NOT offended enough by the bumper sticker beneath the W2004 sticker that says “Democrats & Terrorists support Kerry” to immediately send Howard Dean a check. And that’s just not happening, wouldn’t you agree?

If your claim is that the out-of-power party must play nicer or by a different set of rules, I will go against that CW and say the out-of-party should do anything but.

Everyone keeps quoting this idea that Democrats talking trash is losing them voters. I say it’s an urban myth.

126

james 06.09.05 at 4:38 pm

Engels – Dan’s (or people like Dan) estimation of Amnesty International is precisely the point. AI has issued a statement that has some significant portion of the US population viewing it as excessive, rude, false, or otherwise objectionable. You (and people like you) are encouraged by the statement. On the other hand, Dan’s view of AI as an organization has diminished. In effect AI statement has not brought new people around to their point of view. It has only edified those with a similar view point. It is entirely probably that AI could have released a statement that could have brought in the group represented by Dan’s point of view. Instead AI has opened itself up to the risk of marginalization.

127

Nash 06.09.05 at 4:45 pm

It goes without saying that I risk the Wrath of The Moose by saying “feh”.

I’m learning that sometimes, just sometimes, Senators, their aides, a Carville, a Klein, a Peretz and yes, even a Moose have poorer political instincts than those of we mere citizens. Group think is great when it’s correct, but what’s to do when it might be a continuation of the lemming parade? Hey since I’m not getting paid for saying “feh” it doesn’t cost me anything to be wrong; it doesn’t cost me anything but frustration if I’m right.

128

Nash 06.09.05 at 4:49 pm

On the other hand, Dan’s view of AI as an organization has diminished. In effect AI statement has not brought new people around to their point of view. It has only edified those with a similar view point. It is entirely probably that AI could have released a statement that could have brought in the group represented by Dan’s point of view.

There you go again, james. Can you honestly assure me that the Dan’s of the world didn’t feel exactly that way before they said AI gave them an excuse to get upset. Meaning no offense to the Dan’s of the world, but because so many of them show up in blog threads, I’m beginning to smell a fix. The blogosphere and those people it riles up are a notoriously poor group to consider representative of anything that actually approximates The Voters.

129

engels 06.09.05 at 5:31 pm

James. Dan thinks that Amnesty’s attention should be focussed exclusively on prisoners of conscience held in authoritarian regimes. I don’t believe that omitting the word ‘gulag’ word have “brought [him] around to their point of view”, but you’d better ask him.

130

abb1 06.10.05 at 1:07 am

Dan,
Well, what happens to people who object publicly and strenuously to the government and its actions in the US? What happens to people who do the same thing in Uzbekistan?

The point is: what happens to people who object publicly and strenuously to the US government and its actions outside the US? In Iraq, for example, or Afghanistan. They are tortured. Disappeared. Journalists killed. Newspapers raided and banned.

What happens to people in Iraq or Afghanistan who object publicly and strenuously to the Uzbekistan government and its actions? Nothing, they’re safe, they feel fine.

131

Tom Doyle 06.10.05 at 2:09 am

Amnesty International did not invent “gulag” as a metaphor for the US detention scheme. Excerpts from two articles which use the term synonymously, and pre-date the Amnesty statement, appear below. (Use the links to access the full texts.)

Google gulag + guantanamo to find more such instances.

December 5, 2004
TORONTO SUN

By Eric Margolis — Contributing Foreign Editor

Uncle Sam Has His Own Gulag

The Lubyanka Prison’s heavy oak main door swung open. I went in, the first western journalist to enter the KGB’s notorious Moscow headquarters — a place so dreaded Russians dared not utter its name….I explored the fascinating museum of Soviet intelligence and was briefed on special poisons and assassination weapons that left no traces. I sat transfixed at the desk used by all the directors of Stalin’s secret police, on which the orders were signed to murder 30 million people…

I saw some of the KGB’s execution and torture cellars, and special “cold rooms” where naked prisoners were beaten, then doused with ice water and slowly frozen…Other favoured Lubyanka tortures: Psychological terror, psychotropic drugs, prolonged sleep deprivation, dazzling lights, intense noise, days in pitch blackness, isolation, humiliation, constant threats, savage beatings, attacks by guard dogs, near drowning.

Nightmares from the past — but the past has returned.

According to a report leaked to the New York Times, the … International Red Cross has accused the Bush administration for a second time of employing systematic, medically supervised torture against suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, and at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The second Red Cross report was delivered to the White House last summer while it was trying to dismiss the Abu Ghraib prison torture horrors as the crimes of a few rogue jailers. According to the report’s allegations, many tortures perfected by the Cheka (Soviet secret police) — notably beating, freezing, sensory disorientation, and sleep deprivation — are now routinely being used by U.S. interrogators.

[…]
All of these practices flagrantly violate the Geneva Conventions, international, and American law. The Pentagon and CIA gulags in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan have become a sort of Enron-style, off-the-books operation, immune from American law or Congressional oversight.

Suspects reportedly disappear into a black hole, recalling Latin America’s torture camps and “disappearings” of the 1970s and ’80s, or the Arab world’s sinister secret police prisons.

The U.S. has been sending high-level anti-American suspects to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and, reportedly, Pakistan, where it’s alleged they are brutally tortured with violent electric shocks, savage beatings, drowning, acid baths, and blowtorching — the same tortures, ironically, ascribed to Saddam Hussein.

Protests over this by members of Congress, respected human rights groups, and the public have been ignored. President George W. Bush just named Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general, his nation’s highest law officer. As White House counsel, Gonzales wrote briefs justifying torture and advised the White House on ways to evade or ignore the Geneva Conventions.

Grossly violating the Geneva Conventions undermines international law and endangers U.S. troops abroad. Anyone who has served in the U.S. armed forces, as I have, should be outraged that this painfully won tenet of international law and civilized behaviour is being trashed by members of the Bush administration.

Un-American behaviour

If, as Bush asserts, terrorism suspects, Taliban, and Muslim mujahedeen fighters not in uniform deserve no protection under the laws of war and may be jailed and tortured at presidential whim, then what law protects from abuse or torture all the un-uniformed U.S. Special Forces, CIA field teams, and those 40,000 or more U.S. and British mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan euphemistically called “civilian contractors”?

Behaving like the 1930s Soviet secret police will not make America safer. Such illegal, immoral and totally un-American behaviour corrupts democracy and makes them no better than the criminals they detest.

The 20th century has shown repeatedly that when security forces use torture abroad, they soon begin using it at home, first on suspected “terrorists,” then dissidents, then on ordinary suspects.

It’s time for Congress and the courts to wake up and end this shameful and dangerous episode in America’s history.

January 3, 2005

THE PROGRESSIVE
Matthew Rothschild
The Bush Gulag

Welcome to the Bush Gulag.

Unconstrained by a Supreme Court decision last June that required at least some semblance of due process for detainees, the Bush Administration is now contemplating lifetime detentions for suspected terrorists without granting them access to any courts, according to an article by Dana Priest in The Washington Post. So Bush will be sending detainees to some modern-day Siberia to rot for the rest of their lives.
[…]

132

james 06.10.05 at 9:20 am

nash – Strong language is most defiantly required. The point I am failing to make is that the language chosen needs to be carefully considered. To use a gross generalization, the left is influenced by guilt and the right is influenced by pride. Amnesty International already has strong support on this issue from the left. It should have used the language of pride to influence those on the right.

133

hal 06.11.05 at 6:13 pm

It seems that most people that have commented on the use of “gulag” feel that the word is off the wall and does not match what we are doing.

Good. Now tell me how many places we have around the world where we are hold people without charges and torturing them? Is it three, four, five. Just what is the number?

You complain about the word but without any knowledge of the extend of the system we have created and the number of people being held, tortured and killed.

Do we count the idea of shipping people off to countries that are a little better at torture than we are? If so how many have been so shipped? Or does that preclude the use of “gulag?”

How many times are we going to get caught up in the White House trap of playing the word game or in Newsweeks case how they caused the death of 17 because they reported on the mishandling the Koran?

We don’t know what our government is doing but I do know this, they are doing it in our name and we are responsible. To quote Camus on the death penalty it makes us all murders. Yes and tortures too in this case.

Comments on this entry are closed.