I don’t understand; are you accusing AI of disloyalty, or something? They’re not an American organization and they have no requirement to hold back from criticizing the U.S. “during a time of war”.
Would your attitude change in the slightest if you knew your close relative (as in your son or your father) to be innocent? And would it anger you in the least to also know that he was being denied basic human rights and due process of law? And all because of a US manufactured legal black hole that goes against the very treaties and conventions it helped create and still endorses – if in signature only. The same US that is said to be bringing “Freedom and Democracy” to your own country.
Beyond the blatant hypocresy of said actions, do you not see how resentment towards this selective US behavior is very likely to create additional anatagonism in a region already known for same?
Rather non-responsive don’t you think? Again, in the hypothetical involved, it is a close relative of yours that’s subject to confinement without due process. Allow me to doubt that if that was the case you’d find much solace in the fact that “others do it as well – and worse.”
As for the way your relative is being treated, well, beyond the “food and medicine” is not the link in your OP the result of the very, and I quote you again, “investigations of human rights abuses and religious freedom”? That you like it or not is irrelevant to their findings. Or is the real issue here that because you don’t, their “respectabilty” is suddenly questionable?
Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too.
yo no se,
If nothing else, your user name aptly describes the extent of your knowledge on this matter.
Too funny. 
To pose the other side…would your attitude change if you knew they were guilty? If not, why not…and if so why? For myself, even if every one was innocent, it STILL wouldn’t be a ‘gulag’ in the historical sense. Even if my own son was inside there it wouldn’t be a ‘gulag’…though I’m sure I’d have some other choice words to describe it if that were the case.
However, I have zero doubts that some of those folks (if not most or even all) are completely guilty. Having said that though, I think its a mistake for the US to be using Gitmo this way, or to be putting these terrorists outside normal channels of the law.
-XT
No.
We’re Americans, dammit. We’re not supposed to do this sort of s–t. :mad:
Much of our current international troubles come from us saying one thing and doing another. We’re not fooling anyone except ourselves…
You don’t see any contradiction between these two statements?
I think it is. Not in the “boy cries wolf” you mention in the OP’s title, but because it give tu quoque ammunition to those for whom “human rights” are a meaningless catchphrase.
It’s like some feminists labelling every instance of a college girl regretting a drunken interlude with an equally drunken frat boy as “rape”. It lumps together the regrettable with the truly horrific. Or like calling the detention camps for the nisei Japanese during WWII “concentration camps”. It just isn’t the same order of magnitude as Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. And lumping them all together makes it easy - too easy - to dismiss everything.
Whatever human rights abuses have occurred at Gitmo are sad and aberrent - worthy, certainly, of condemnation. But not worthy, IMO, of either dismissal or exaggeration. I hear that there was “desecration of the Qur’an” in, what, five instances. Is that horrible? Well, one of the instances, IIRC was that they put the Qur’an on top of a TV set. If you wanna equate that to the systematic death from overwork and exposure of the Soviet gulags, go ahead, but be aware that you are making it that much more difficult to maintain respect for your commitment to human rights.
Can’t we retain any sense of perspective about this at all? Can’t we see the distinction between isolated incidents and what is a matter of policy?
It strikes me that Amnesty International is engaging in a sort of “false objectivity” that I have heard objected to under other circumstances. They want to maintain the idea that they are fair-minded and impartial, no matter what country they are examining. If they concentrate solely and entirely on the most appalling abuses, they are going to look biased against the Third World and the Mid East, since that is where really horrific abuses tend to appear. So they have to condemn abuses by the US in somewhat the same terms they use for the killing fields of Cambodia.
But I think it is a mistake to attack every instance of the palest gray as if it were the inkiest black. What was done at Abu Gharib was bad enough. Equating it with what went on there during Saddam’s regime obscures your point almost altogether.
Regards,
Shodan
Xt, I despise the hell out of people like Timothy McVeigh. But I support his right to a fair trial.
In other words, there’s a distinction to be made between supporting individual rights such as due process, and supporting individual actions. I can make a blanket statement on the former , while harshly condemming the latter.
Hope that helps.
The Taliban wasn’t a terrorist organization, it was a group that tolerated terrorists organizations. So, no, there is no contradiction.
I think the Gulag comparison is pretty fair. Any place where innocent civilians are randomly swept up and dumped for years without charges, without access to family (and that is the most inhuman, grotesque torture of all), tortured, humilated and sometimes killed for no reason during peace time (we are not at war, despite the sloganeering from the neocons) is in no moral position to snivel about such pointless distinctions as whether or not it uses forced labor. It is an inhumane political dungeon which victimizes innocents. As far as I know, not a single person there has been charged with any crime against the US (and even if any of them have been, they sure as hell have’t ALL been). It’s a disgraceful, sickening, racist* concentration camp and it’s dishonest to call it anything else.
- Yes, I said “racist.” The only reason many of them are in there is because they had a particular ethnicity in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s also unverified hearsay, plus there’s the very real possibility that some of them could be lying about that out of bravado or to try to strengthen their social position with other prisoners. It definitely doesn’t amount to proof of anything, and the possibility that a few real Taliban ended up by chance in Guantanamo does not then excuse us for the crimes we’ve committed - and continue to commit - against the others.
The Taliban are/were not a terrorist organisation.
Your attitude here is an indication of exactly what is wrong with the neo-con view of the world.
Al Qaeda are a terrorist organisation. The Taliban is not.
US Forces are not a terrorist organization. The CIA probably is
cite:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510792005?open&of=ENG-USA
Date: 18 May 2005
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
An extrajudicial execution by the CIA?
Amnesty International is concerned by the reported killing on 7 May 2005 by US forces in Pakistan of Haitham al-Yemeni, a Libyan national who is alleged to have been a senior member of al-Qa’ida. He and another man, identified as Samiullah Khan, are reported to have been killed in Toorikhel in Mirali, Pakistan, when the car they were in was hit by a missile fired from a CIA-controlled Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Haitham al-Yemeni is alleged to have been the target.
Amnesty International fears that, if the circumstances of these killings have been reported accurately, the USA has carried out an extrajudicial execution, in violation of international law. Amnesty International reminds the USA that it has condemned such unlawful actions when carried out by other states in the past.
And I agree with you. And I’ll go further. I think that the status of the detainees should be decided one way or the other. If they are terrorists I have no problem with them locking the door and throwing away the key. But their exact status should be verified, and they should have the oppurtunity to defend themselves in some kind of court.
But Gitmo is still not a ‘gulag’ and calling it so is hyperbole of the worst sort. I think Shodan actually did a better job than I did earlier in explaining why it is not such a good thing to try and make those kinds of exaggerations. It doesn’t help the cause at all…just takes things to the nuclear level of hot words and hand waving.
The point I was trying to make, and one I assume you would agree with is it shouldn’t MATTER if its my son in there or not…or if the terrorists in there are guilty as sin or innocent. What matters is that they have access to due process and the chance to defend themselves and to make a determination one way or the other as to their status. Just like any other potential law breaker in our system. And much as it pains me to say this, even if some of those there are guilty of horrible crimes, if it can’t be proved they are they should be let go…that whole (to paraphrase) ‘let 99 guilty men go if it frees one innocent’.
-XT
Have you looked up Gulag in a dictionary yet?
No…why would I want too? Have you ever looked up the definition of ‘jackboots’? The definition is something like “A stout military boot that extends above the knee.” However, the emotional impact and association of the word ‘jackboots’ (especially to someone from the proper era) is ‘what Nazi soldiers wore’ when doing all those nasty things they did. How useful is the definition from the dictionary there? When AI uses the term ‘gulag’ they aren’t using the dictionary definition for accuracy sake…you know it and I know it. They use that term because its charged with all kinds of baggage.
But sure Squink, I’ll play that game if you like. From dictionary.com
Is Gitmo a ‘gulag’? Well, its not a forced labor camp…and its certainly not in the former Soviet Union. Its certainly a prison, but not for political dissidents, unless you are going to be pretty broad in your definition of that term. Its not a place of GREAT suffering or hardship IMO, but I suppose you could loosely use definition 3 if you wanted to look at it right.
-XT
[hijack/nitpick]
Actually, I would say the Japanese internment camps were concentration camps. (Concentration camps weren’t invented by the Nazis; they go back to at least the Cuban insurrection and the Boer Wars.) It’s not that calling the Japanese internment camps concentration camps is an exaggeration, but that calling Auschwitz a concentration camp is a huge understatement: Auschwitz was an extermination camp, which of course the Japanese internment camps were not. Also, even if Dachau (at least during its early years) and Manzanar belong to the same general class of thing, this doesn’t mean that Manzanar was run with nearly the same level of cruelty as Dachau.
[/ hijack/nitpick]
See, now you’re a little wiser, and the Ed Angeresque prose some of the contributors to this thread look a little sillier.
AI has argued for a long time that the actions of USA contributes to giving justifications for human rights abuses by others. A few examples:
(Link, link.) Claiming that AI is at fault because AI’s statements about USA’s actions give justification to human rights abuses elsewhere place the burden of guilt on the wrong perp.
When you use “Qur’an on a TV” as your chosen example of Gitmo abuse, you come terribly close to the dismissal you warned against. Does your respect for my human rights commitment disappear if I compare torture at US prison camps with torture in Soviet? Unlawful detention at US prison camps with unlawful detention in Soviet? Murder at US prison camps with murder in Soviet? USSR has a huge lead in quantity, but in quality the similarities are obvious.
When looking at the number of “isolated incidents”, at different US-run facilities in several different countries, over a period of several years, it becomes really hard to believe that it’s not a matter of policy.
Yes, we’re on the same page, AFAICT. Couple of questions come to mind: Why are things being done the way they are and who is ultimately responsible? Is ‘Democracy’ just a catchword for the masses void of any real meaning when found inconvenient? Quite the slippery slope we’re talking about.
From your follow-up post on this issue:
Not sure I follow. Why wouldn’t we want to “look at it right”? Sure, it’s painful introspection for Americans. But it’s still right by definition as you yourself have shown.
I’m with you a 110%. Next: any suggestions?
What i’d like is to not equate starving people to death and making them work 16 hours a day with false reports of flushing a Koran/book down a toilet, or calling the latter ‘the gulag of our time’ instead of the former. Tons of labor camps in the world deprive people of the rule of law, lawyers and legal recourse. Maybe the US system is the most public which would make the label ‘the gulag of our time’ more applicable, but it came across as saying it was the worst camp in the world, which is grossly ignorant.
I really don’t know what you’re getting at, “respectability” of what? Would I prefer AI report on Guantanamo if a close relative was there so that the people there have rights? Yes. If I felt it was devaluing the word ‘gulag’ and maybe giving ammunition to people who dislike amnesty international so they could discredit them, I don’t know honestly. Maybe yes, maybe no. I really don’t have an answer for that.
Thank you. From someone creative enough to choose a name like ‘Red Fury’ that means alot to me. Maybe next you can shout from the passenger window your 89 lebaron about what a nice car I have.
It worth quoting again the actual statement made
Now I don’t read that as saying that GITMO is a perfect match to the gulag of old. I read it as it is a institution that shares some similarities with the gulags but it has its own modern day identity.
It’s quite ironic that the politicians(and some posters) that bang on about freedom and the superior nature of western culture the loudest when the argument suits them are the same people who defend this disgrace.
GITMO has shone a light on the hypocrisy of the neo-con mindset. Some people are willing to carry out or at least support the kind of actions that they hold up as reasons to go to war against.
It is always easier to just dispose of legalities and intern people for no proven reason. We(the west) talk the talk but in reality a lot of people and even more worryingly governments seem to be quite happy to say the words but not carry it out.
Show in a real court that these people are terrorists or at least actual dangers or let them go. End of argument AFAIC.
What you’d like is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
What I’d like is for the US to gain some credibility in light of recent events. Not going well.
It obviously came across that way to you. But again, I must ask you to park personal feeling aside and look at situation objectively. Makes no difference if “others are worse.” Really, it does not. Think about it.
See? You really can have your cake ande eat it too. Because that is exactly what I mean.
It’s accurate as per definition provided by XT. What would you like me to say? That I am more outraged with semantic quibbling that I am with real events? Not gonna happen.Not in my world anyway.
Not trying to be openly mean, but you’ve got quite a whoosh going on – not you but yo no se that that reply was geared to. As a Spanaird who lived Stateside for many a year, I confess I have no idea what an “89 Lebaron” is a refence to.
As for my moniker, this is all it means> I am a hardcore footy fan, and my two teams for the past fourty years remain unchaged: the Spanish NT and Real Madrid in that order. Though tthere’s no denying Real Madrid’s Merenges provide most of the pride.
OTOH, I humbly suggest you go back and brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
~Red