Closing Down Club Gitmo

[Lord Winter]

I try my best. However. Gitmo does fit the parameters of both a Soviet GULAG camp and an early NAZI concentration camp.

Not even close, there's a difference to be something that is a threat to human rights and the full scale indiscriminate murder of a race.

[HoreTore]

Not even close, there's a difference to be something that is a threat to human rights and the full scale indiscriminate murder of a race.

As Lars correctly pointed out, and you would've known if you bothered to read his post, is that the nazi concentration camps wasn't about extermination until later in the war(after Hitler's "final solution").

[Lord Winter]

As Lars correctly pointed out, and you would've known if you bothered to read his post, is that the nazi concentration camps wasn't about extermination until later in the war(after Hitler's "final solution").

I'm sorry he posted at the same time I was composing mine, I didn't see it.


It's still an incredibly major stretch. Gitmo isn't being used domestically to enforce Bush's rule. Its a botched, immoral holding place for POW's. Random democrats aren't being arrested in the middle of the night for opposing the state. Comparing Bush to the nazi's is laughable, honestly I don't like Bush but he's no hitler or Stalin, or even any other lesser dictator.

Godwins law by the way

[Husar]

That Bush isn't Hitler doesn't mean that his camps aren't similar to Hitler's.
FYI similar is similar, not equal.

Anyway, good to know that America is removing this ugly stain from it's gray west.

It's vest, isn't it?

[Lord Winter]

That Bush isn't Hitler doesn't mean that his camps aren't similar to Hitler's.
FYI similar is similar, not equal.

Anyway, good to know that America is removing this ugly stain from it's gray west.

True, but they each have completely different goals, which makes any comparison irrelevant.

[Ja'chyra]

True, but they each have completely different goals, which makes any comparison irrelevant.

Not true, it might have been true if you'd said methods but then you'd be.

Illegal detention and torture seem to be quite similar to me. Mind you if I was in charge I'd have done the same and then killed them so hey ho.

[HoreTore]

Illegal detention and torture seem to be quite similar to me. Mind you if I was in charge I'd have done the same and then killed them so hey ho.

Now what was that reason we invented the legal system again...?

[lars573]

I'm sorry he posted at the same time I was composing mine, I didn't see it.


It's still an incredibly major stretch. Gitmo isn't being used domestically to enforce Bush's rule. Its a botched, immoral holding place for POW's. Random democrats aren't being arrested in the middle of the night for opposing the state. Comparing Bush to the nazi's is laughable, honestly I don't like Bush but he's no hitler or Stalin, or even any other lesser dictator.

Godwins law by the way

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.

[Vladimir]

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

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

[lars573]

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

Which makes it even more shocking.

[HoreTore]

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

They are, at the very least, the closest a civilized democracy and legal system has come.

And that should enough, really. In that camp, we* have treated completely innocent people, people who did NOTHING except being in a very wrong place at a very wrong time, worse than convicted mass murderers. If that's not unsettling and bonechilling, I don't know what is.

There was never a need for Gitmo, the people responsible for 9/11 would've been found guilty in an ordinary trial. Heck, they'd probably plead guilty and ask for the death penalty(like a couple of them just did)! The other reason for Gitmo, intelligence, is just as ridiculous, as it has been an established fact from the time of Aristotle that torture is NOT a good way to extract intelligence - and judging by the current status of OBL(ie. not captured and probably alive), I'd say his argument is still bloody valid.

Gitmo is an affront to civilization, an enormous stain on the american flag and arguably the largest policy failure of our time. Let it burn. It has done absolutely nothing good, and has destroyed almost everything.



*actually I mean you, I'm from norwayland

[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.