Asia Times: Gulags: Shooting the messenger

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Gulags: Shooting the messenger
By Ehsan Ahrari
Jun 2, 2005

America was often described by former president Ronald Reagan as the "shining city on the hill" and a beacon of hope to the world. Others talked about American "exceptionalism" - that is, the uniqueness of the country for its unfaltering commitment to uphold human dignity worldwide. That shining city and that exceptional force, under the simplistic slogan of the "war on terrorism", have now created their own gulags: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay prison on the island of Cuba. In Abu Ghraib there was a widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners, while in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility some detainees - whose crimes were never proven, and who were never charged with offenses or given rights to defend themselves - were tortured and abused. There were reported incidents of the desecration of the holy book of Islam, the Koran.

In a speech accompanying the release of Amnesty International's 2005 human-rights report last week, Irene Khan, the organization's secretary general, said, "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law." She urged the US to close the detention facility at its Cuban base and either release or charge its prisoners.

What was George W Bush's response? In a news conference on Tuesday, he dismissed as "absurd" a charge by Amnesty International that his administration has created "the gulag of our times" at Guantanamo. He went on to add that allegations of mistreatment originated from detainees who "hate America" and who were trained to lie. Bush's dismissive reaction notwithstanding, something very serious has gone wrong, and America's status as a global moral force has been seriously damaged.

G K Chesterton wrote, "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence ..." Eminent American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, expounding on Chesterton's preceding statement, observed, "Being an American ... is an ideological commitment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values are un-American." Such a concept is so unique that all believers in these values can lay certain claim to being Americans. The US - or America, as it is affectionately or even somewhat conceitedly called - has always stood for freedom, human dignity and the rule of law.

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