In a splendid illustration of O’Sullivan’s law (discovered and named by John O’Sullivan, the eminent political commentator), Amnesty International has joined the ranks of patently left-wing, ideologically driven organizations. O’Sullivan’s law, I remind readers, holds that any organization (foundation, university, international bureaucracy, etc.) that is not explicitly conservative will, by a sort of moral entropy, gradually become left-leaning. You see it again and again, especially with organizations that were founded to be neutral. In the case of Amensty International, its original mandate was to discover, publicize, and thereby help stamp out torture. Good idea! But for many years now, Amnesty International traded on its moral stature in order to indulge in the dubious pleasures of anti-Americanism. The latest example is the absurd claim, voiced by Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s secretary general, that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our times." Instead of distancing itself from that preposterous remark, Amnesty International defended Ms. Khan: William Schultz, the American head of Amnesty International, acknowledged that there is a difference "in scale" between Gulag and Guantanamo--Thanks, Bill!--but insisted that otherwise the comparison is apt.
As Dennis Prager noted in an astute essay for RealClearPolitics.com,
Calling Guantanamo "Gulag" smears America and trivializes the suffering and deaths of millions upon millions of innocent people. But this does not matter to leftist organizations and their defenders in the mainstream media. What matters is hatred of President Bush.
The apotheosis of liberal moral confusion, The New York Times editorial page, wrote: "What Guantanamo exemplifies . . . may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union’s sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies." Guantanamo "may or may not" be compared to Gulag! What a courageous stand. . . .
Leftist moral confusion and animosity toward America and President Bush are not the only reasons for the widespread acceptance of the Amnesty International libel of America and its trivialization of Stalin’s horrors. The other is the simple ignorance of history -- especially concerning Communist atrocities -- among many of the world’s journalists. An Associated Press report of May 26th (printed in The Washington Post and countless other newspapers) described the Gulag thus: "Thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork."
Thousands? This is our mainstream news media. I am certain the average journalist has little idea about how many people Stalin murdered in the Gulag.
Mr. Prager then furnishes us with this admirable summary (taken from an article by David Bosco in The New Republic) of what went on in the real Gulag as compared to what is going on at Guantanamo Bay:
Individuals detained:
Gulag: 20 million.
Guantanamo: 750 total.Number of camps:
Gulag: 476 separate camp complexes comprising thousands of individual camps.
Guantanamo: five small camps on the U.S. military base in Cuba.Reasons for Imprisonment:
Gulag: Hiding grain; owning too many cows; need for slave labor; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious; being middle class; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about Stalin.
Guantanamo -- Fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan; being suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.Red Cross Visits:
Gulag: none that Bosco could find.
Guantanamo: regular visits since January 2002.Deaths as a Result of Poor Treatment:
Gulag: at least two to three million (Bosco understates). Guantanamo: no reports of prisoner deaths.
Mr. Prager concludes: "If Amnesty International does not fire Irene Khan and retract her obscene comparison, it is unworthy of respect or support. A new non-leftist anti-torture organization must be built." To which I can only add, "Amen."
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