A Gulag For Our Times

[dvandom]

Okay, I'm behind the curve on this one, it's something I just didn't get around to blogging on right away.

On the one side, you have Amnesty International calling Camp X-Ray "The Gulag of our times" or words to that effect. On the other, you have hordes of people angrily mocking AI for comparing the horrors of the Gulag to the relatively mild imprisonment of X-Ray. Meanwhile, the government takes the accusations seriously enough to bend over backwards showing how nicely the detainees are being treated.

To me, this is a classic case of people arguing at utterly different levels. The people mocking AI are looking purely at surface features. The government is trying to direct people's attention to the surface features. And on the surface level, X-Ray is MUCH nicer than a gulag. Several orders of magnitude nicer.

But that is not the point. On an "underlying meaning" level, Camp X-Ray may not be THE gulag for our times, but it's certainly A gulag.

At its core, the purpose of the gulag is not directly to torment someone. The purpose of a gulag is to remove enemies of the state from direct contact with anyone else, strip them of their rights, and leave them no real way to remedy this situation. Once you have them in the gulag, then you can do whatever else you want to do to them, freely. Stalin made sure the victims suffered, the US Government is playing nice.

But make no mistake: the detainees at X-Ray have no real rights. They are not citizens, so lack those rights. They are not prisoners of war, so they lack those rights. They are not prisoners of the civil system, so they lack those rights. They are only entitled to such treatment as the government decides to give them, with no LEGAL recourse. They have recourse in the court of public opinion, but with the Bush Administration being so bulletproof, it doesn't get them a whole lot.

(Aside: legally, the Geneva Convention doesn't apply. It's one of those conventions that only applies to signatories among each other. Signing onto the Geneva Convention doesn't require you follow its rules all the time, only in dealing with citizens of other nations who have signed on. Again, public opinion is the only real reason a nation has to follow it when not in a declared war with a signatory nation.)

So, yes...Camp X-Ray is a gulag in the important ways. The fact that its inhabitants aren't being mistreated is irrelevant, as they have no rights. At all. That we are merciful does not change that they are at our mercy.


We now return to being silly and irrelevant.