Guantanamo, Holocaust parallels

Great Debates
1

Part 1 of my assertion: that when some historical perspective is achieved – say, 10 years or so – Americans will look back on this period in our history with shame. In particular, we will have found that the detention center at Guantanamo is filled with hundreds of unfortunates, most of whom committed no deed worse than fighting for the Taliban; but they fell into a grey area without recourse to the US Constitution or the Geneva Convention. They are held for years without counsel and without hope, and subject to abuse bordering on torture.

Part 2: Americans know this is happening, if they stop and think for a moment. And yet they don’t want to know. They’d rather not stop and think, and are happy to accept the status quo. And that this mindset is identical to that of German citizens in WWII, who probably knew what was happening to their Jewish neighbors, but didn’t want to know.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

2

Perhaps they will. Or, perhaps the rest of the world will look on what was done and agree that it was the right thing to do at the time. Jury is still out on any of those assertion, and its difficult to guess how ‘history’ will judge events when you are experiencing the events first hand. Seems to me ‘history’ always judges events differently than the people of the times do.

As to the rest of your assertion…are you really equating the deaths of millions of Jewish men, women and children deliberately murdered by a state with the incarceration of a few hundred men? Even if we pretend that all of them are innocents, even if we make the claim they have all been brutally tortured, even if they are all eventually summarily shot…even then the two events are hardly comparable unless you are so far down the partisan fantasy path that rational discussion isn’t possible.

-XT

3

aw. Come on. The comparison is ridiculous beyond measure. But beyond a proof of an abyssal history knowledge, such comparisons are a little more than just wrong; they’re reprehensible since they belittle and demean the real victims of holocaust. And moreover dangerous, since they trivialise and normalise the Nazi crimes - making a repeat performance so much the more likely. You might think you’re helping a liberal cause, however, what you are in fact doing is running errands for the brownshirts.

4

Can we say “hyperbole”, boys and girls?

5

Slow down, guys. Let me try to make myself more clear. I did not mean to equate the crimes committed by the nazis with whatever may be happening at Guantanamo, which are trivial in comparison. I meant to equate the mindset of 1940s Germans with the mindset of 2000’s Americans, in willfully turning a blind eye to unpleasant reality. I’m trying (not too well, apparently) to make a point about human nature, rather than about Guantanamo per se.

6

Excerpts from the rememberances of German citizens after the war -

They Thought They Were Free, But Then It Was Too Late:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

…In your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?

If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in “43” had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in “33”. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

Once the war began, the government could do anything “necessary” to win it; so it was with the “final solution” of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its “necessities” gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

7

But the analogy only holds to the extent that the condition is Gitmo approximate those of Nazi concentration camps. Otherwise, anyone who turns a “blind eye” to any unpleasantness falls into that cactegory.

8

I see your point, JM, but I’m not sure I agree. I don’t think there’s a sliding scale on which we can decide whether or not the actions of our government are justified; if we’re 1% Auschwitz it’s ok; 5% Auschwitz is not ok?

And to some extent, yes: turning a blind eye to an unpleasantness is never the right thing to do.

Manzanar was a slice of heaven compared to Auschwitz. But that doesn’t mean that the internment of the Japanese was justified.

9

Is there a worse deed than fighting * for * the Taliban? This was a ruling party that refused to allow women to attend school or see a doctor.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who sought to keep them in power.

Are you really going to compare innocent Japanese and Jewish civilians minding their own darn business to people who fought to defend one of the worst governments to disgrace our planet?

10

Yup.

It is possible to fight wrongs without careening around on the slippery slope of Nazi similes.

Otherwise, you’d have someone who parks in a handicapped spot being guilty of .02% of Auschwitz, and so on.
Pretty damn silly.

11

Yea, almost as stupid as, “But we’re not as bad as Saddam”

12

Or how about the under new management joke?

13

Iraq - now with 25% less injustice!

14

Now, that’s funny! :slight_smile: If the abused prisoners get a portion of the procedes from the inevitable web site, can we lower it to 10%?

15

It’s not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. The German concentrations camps were set up in order to wipe out (kill) an entire group of people. Until and unless you can demonstrate that Gitmo is of that kind, your analogy doesn’t hold.

To the extent that injustice is being done at Gitmo, it would wrong to turn a blind eye. However, it’s not necessary (or even correct) to make the comparison to Nazi Germany.

16

You’re absolutely right. The Taliban was a barbaric regime, and the world is better off without them.

But the Geneva Conventions don’t differentiate between prisoners taken while fighting for Governments We Like, and those from Governments We Don’t Like. We used to be able to say that the standards set by the Geneva Conventions weren’t a hardship for us to meet as a country.

17

Yes, and in the same league as “We’re as bad as Saddam”.

Ridiculous hyperbole and false analogies sabotage whatever argument one is trying to make.

18

I’m glad the Taliban is out of power. Hell, I wanted them gone after they blew up the Buddhas before 9/11, but that’s besides the point.

I do have sympathy for the Taliban soldier. He’s been taught all his life that Americans are evil, sinful people, and now they’re invading his country. We cannot blame him for perfering to believe his family, his friends, and his religious leaders over American leaflets dropped from planes, or from what he hears of a translated speech from the leader of the “evil” people. Who knows what you or I would believe if we had been born and raised in such an environment?

Personally, I despise the views of those who would subjugate women, but that is their religious beliefs. I may not agree with them, but this is what they have been taught all of their lives. We can’t expect them to espouse a liberal viewpoint on women’s rights when the concept is completely foreign to them. It would be much like demanding that the Amish let their daughters wear pants and ride motorcycles-- something that is totally alien to them. I believe that women should be allowed to dress and behave as they see fit, but that was how I was taught. Basically, we’re asking them to change their entire culture because we think it’s wrong, while their heritage and religion tell them that it’s right. From their viewpoint, who are we to tell them how to live?

People are products of their environment. Children raised in racist homes will most likely become racists themselves, especially if they’re never exposed to non-racist viewpoints. The solution is education and patience. No culture can change overnight without catastophic upheavals. Liberalization takes time. Through exposure to other cultures, ideas become slowly assimilated.

I believe that the same thing will happen to the Middle Eastern as happened with Christian countries after the Industrial Revolution: with economic prosperity comes religious liberalization. Slowly, radical religious beliefs will lose their grip as the people become distracted by consumerism and technology.

19

To revise my own statement: False Holocaust parallels are a quantum leap more ridiculous and insulting to all involved than other forms of out-of-control hyperbole. They’re in a class by themselves.

20

That is the entire point. The world is a better place because they aren’t in power anymore.

So I assume you also have sympathy for the Nazi soldier? Afterall he was taught that all non-Germans were evil, sinful people. I don’t care what the heck the Taliban soldiers were taught. People still get held to certain moral standards.

I’m not an expert on the region but my understanding is their heritage and religion did NOT tell them to deny women access to doctors or education. That is barbaric and inexcusable. Even the Saudis denounced them.