2005-06-08 - 9:43 a.m.
We were going back and forth with some friends the other day about the merit of calling Guantanamo ‘the gulag of our times’. The opposition point was that strong language is sometimes needed to send a strong message and, anyway, to take offense shows churlish defensiveness at being rebuked. Ordinarily, we like strong language, the stronger the better. We have no objection to rebukes and condemnations cast down upon sinners. But, as others have noted and we have been quick to notice, the analogy fails somewhat due to matters of kind and degree.
We won’t burden our reader (in hopes there may be one) with a discussion of the Gulag and what it entailed, there being at least one good and rather large book written about it that can accomplish the task much better. We shouldn’t dare presume to cover the topic in a short sentence or two and would only invite those who have not read the book to do so in order to fill any gaps in knowledge and—dare we say it?—understanding.
No, our purpose is different. We merely wish to suggest an obvious problem with the term ‘gulag of our times’, even absent an adequate understanding of what the word ‘gulag’ entails. The framing of the characterization 'of our times', as well as the defining singularity of the article 'the', suggests we are meant to know there can be only one true gulag (whatever one’s impression of that institution may be) per era, and Guantanamo is ours.
We begged to differ on that particular point, and did so—wondering if the state of madness perpetrating itself on the people of North Korea might not better deserve nomination for title ‘the’ gulag of our times. Predictably, our suggestion met with little approval, it being told us that one aims one’s criticism where it is likely to do the most good.
We have read the Amnesty Report speech and agree with many of its concerns, and wish success to a mission pledged to raising awareness of human rights abuses while seeking to curtail them. But it is our perhaps meager thought that in at least one instance Amnesty has done the U.S.—and itself—a disservice by misdirecting a particularly harsh judgment, while effectively letting the keepers of the real gulag of our times escape unscathed. We can’t help thinking that accusations directed (or not) in inverse relationship to guilt might be petty and foolish and, ultimately, defeating—defeating not only for the U.S. and Amnesty International, but to the just cause that both of them presumably serve.
