The Liberal Patriot

The Point is, It Is What It Is….

J.G. Schwam - June 20, 2005

A Deputy Associate Attorney General named Michael J. Wiggins said in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee referring to the detainees at Guantanamo “it is our position that they can be held in perpetuity”.

On May 26, a Washington Post an editorial carefully parsed words of outrage at Amnesty International’s definition of Guantanamo as a Gulag. The Post wrote: “But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime”.

As reported by Reuters on June 5, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday (June 4) the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag." Executive Director William Schulz.

The administration and Pentagon statement that The Post reiterates that Gauntanamo is and ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime”, is false. As the editors of The Post well know, there have been at least three detainees at Guantanamo that were not seized on the battlefield that we know of. One that may still be detained was seized in Akron, Ohio. By the estimation of the Bush administration in the war on terror, any place in the world may be at anytime a battlefield, Akron, Kabul, Baghdad, Moscow, Hamburg; it simply must be stated so, and then it is.

The classic definition a GULAG, evolved from the Soviet name for Soviet Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps was orgainized in 1919 and grew to significance by 1934 was as it said, designed to be corrective, but the GULAG’s camps evolved effectively into a “state” that few ever returned from. Guantanamo while not designed to be corrective in nature nor actually a labor camp shares by the nature of the sentiment of the Bush administration and echoed in Deputy Associate Attorney General Michael J. Wiggins’ own words…a place where few if any ever may return. Hence the connotation is the same.

No specific law applies to the determination of whom, or for what crime any individual may be sent to Guantanamo. Without any such law then how then is it (Guantanamo) not dissimilar in practice from a GULAG?

While Guantanamo may not literally be a GULAG in a classic sense, the perception is clear as it is implicit. It is what it is, that is, it is what it appears to be. If the war on terror as the Bush administration defines it, may last for decades, then the point as they have said “held in perpetuity”. By perception Guantanamo is what it is, a place from where few may ever return. The Post and Bush’s apologists and any other parsers of words may parse all they want, but the facts remain and most deceptions are in fact, not what they are called in halfhearted attempts to legitimize the feigning of outrage, the point is it what it is, Guantanamo for the moment at least certainly appears to be a GULAG.

Let there be laws governing the remanding any individual into detention as our constitution demands, until then again, Guantanamo remains what it appears to be…..

Back to Liberal Patriot Main Page