Not an exact or a literal analogy

Amnesty USA says Guantanamo is not really a gulag. Via the Chicago Sun Times:*

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked William Schulz, director of Amnesty International USA, if he stood by the description of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison.

Schulz responded by saying, “Clearly, this is not an exact or a literal analogy, and the secretary general has acknowledged that.”

Words that are more commonly used to describe an inexact, non-literal analogy are “exaggeration” or “lie”.

“In size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag,” Schulz said. “People are not being starved in those facilities. They’re not being subjected to forced labor.”

Schulz maintained that some similarities did exist, saying the United States keeps a network of prisons worldwide, “many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared.” In some cases, he said, prisoners are being tortured and killed.

From this report, there’s no indication that Schulz provided proof that these super-secret prisons exist. But if he offered proof, they wouldn’t be secret, would they?

After the Pentagon released reports of Koran desecration in Guantanamo, including damage done during a water-balloon fight, Senators Schumer and Biden stated that Guantanamo must be closed, and the prisoners should be housed in other facilities. I guess they think the American public would be safer if al Qaeda operatives are allowed to mingle with the general prison population.

Or maybe we’d be better off if we followed Tom Friedman’s advice and just released them. I’d feel a lot safer with al Qaeda living next door – wouldn’t you?

Biden, Schumer and Friedman claim that Guantanamo is a recruitment tool for terrorists, but they have no proof of this theory. Al Qaeda’s membership before 9/11 was 20,000. It has gone down a lot since then. American vulnerability and the perception that we will not fight back appear to be the strongest recruitment tool.

Biden, Schumer and Friedman are also employing an inexact, non-literal analogy. There’s a lot of that going around.

* Link thanks to Karol at Alarming News

[Posted by Mary Madigan, also at Exit Zero at Dean’s World]