Closing Down Club Gitmo

[lars573]

I also hear that the guards have guns too. Another frightening similarity.

Which makes it even more shocking.

[Lord Winter]

Godwins law no , you don't suppose I knew full well what I was doing. Do you? Any how it's not as much of a stretch as you might think. Gitmo has people inprisoned for years without any kind of trial for political beliefs and political action (or just the suspicion of action). Action in the form of revolutionary violence. Soviet GULAG camps had the same kind of prisoners. NAZI concentration camps too (in the begining). But as similar as Gitmo and the GULAG camps/Concentration camps were their are differences.

Firstly is that the US military and intelligence services wants it's Gitmo inmates alive and talking. I'd have a hard time believing that the NKVD and the SS wanted the same for their camp inmates. The US government used a military base in a hostile foregin nation so that they could get away with this illegal operation. The Soviets and the NAZI's has no such needs. Any person who complained about the camps (if they knew about them), woud become their next guest. Also the NKVD had the power to imprison people for 5 or 10 years with no trial at all. Being suspected/accused of actions "against the revolution" was enough. The US doesn't work the Gitmo inmates half to death either (google the road of bones for more on that).


Gitmo and the Soviet/NAZI camps may not be exactly alike. But they are discomfortably similar.

I agree they have to be stoped, I'm not arguing for them, merely against the hyberbole in your statement.


One question, would FDR be as bad the Nazis too? After all had the internment camps, which are far bigger then Gitmo is now.

[LittleGrizzly]

One question, would FDR be as bad the Nazis too? After all had the internment camps, which are far bigger then Gitmo is now.

You could probably make some argument for it, though you are really streching it with that, the gitmo comparison is a bit of a strech to make in my eyes, afaik fdr's interment camps weren't as bad*

*no torture, and at least the people could look to the end of ww2 as a probable release date, admittedly that must have seemed a long way off but in comparison to when a 'war on terror' could end it doesn't seem like it would take anywhere near as long...

[Watchman]

From what I know of it, while it was indeed rather rude of the Allies (the Brits put their Germans behind barbed wire too) to intern people of certain backgrounds "just in case", the internees were then treated well enough, on the whole properly cared for, and let out without hassle as soon as the war was over.

That's quite a few points where Gitmo fails in comparision.

[lars573]

I agree they have to be stoped, I'm not arguing for them, merely against the hyberbole in your statement.


One question, would FDR be as bad the Nazis too? After all had the internment camps, which are far bigger then Gitmo is now.

That's hard to say, I've always respect his cunning. And really as unpleasant as carting up Japanese-americans to concentration camps* was, he probably did them a favour by doing it. In those camps they lost their freedom of movement, lively hood, and their dignity. But they were housed, fed, and clothed by the US tax payer. If they hadn't there lives could have been more miserable. I heard a story that during WW1 the Canadian government rounded up every single man with German and Austrian pass ports and put them in camps too. But in 1916 a few hundred/thousand families petionned the Canadian government to be put into the camps too. Because the anti-German/Austrian sentiment the war had whipped up made it impossible for them to make a living on the outside.








*The British actually coined the term concentration camp. For the camps where they sent every Boer man, woman, and child who hadn't taken up arms against them in the second Boer war.