Ex-Soviet Dissident: Gitmo is not a Gulag
Not to flog Amnesty International’s dead horse forever, but it’s worth noticing today’s op-ed by Paul Litvinov , a former Soviet dissident, in the Washington Post:
Several days ago I received a telephone call from an old friend who is a longtime Amnesty International staffer. He asked me whether I, as a former Soviet “prisoner of conscience” adopted by Amnesty, would support the statement by Amnesty’s executive director, Irene Khan, that the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba is the “gulag of our time.”
“Don’t you think that there’s an enormous difference?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said, “but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees.”
..
There is ample reason for Amnesty to be critical of certain U.S. actions. But by using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty’s spokesmen put its authority at risk. U.S. human rights violations seem almost trifling in comparison with those committed by Cuba, South Korea, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
Now, as a supporter of capital punishment, I believe Amnesty International lost its way long before 9/11 and our war on terror. Like so many organizations, AI drifted leftwards, where it pretty much automatically became anti-American.
It would probably be for the better for AI to disband, thereby allowing a new organization, better suited to today’s reality - rather than the Cold War one out of which AI was born - and human rights needs.
But that won’t happen, so instead AI will muddle along for years and years as an increasingly irrelevant outlet for the ever Leftier and loonier.
