American Gulag
First it was Amnesty International who caused consternation by calling the detention of detainees at U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo "the Gulag [of] our times".
Then it was Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, who made very much the same comparison:If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their Gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.More consternation follows. Senator Durbin is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and the remarks were spoken on the Senate floor, so it doesn't matter that he never directly compared our troops with Nazis or referred to Guantanamo as Gulag, as the quote itself is quickly forgotten and the incident becomes paraphrased as "Durbin calls our troops Gulag-loving Nazis."
Comparing Guantanamo, which is after all a single facility, with Gulag, which was a term used to describe a network of such facilities, is of course on its face incorrect. Noting the pluralization of Gulag in his remarks, it seems clear that the Senator didn't understand that. Even if we desired to do so, I rather doubt a single facility like Guantanamo could process as many prisoners as an entire prison system, especially one run by as large a nation state as the Soviet Union.
What if instead of comparing a single prison to Gulag we were to instead compare our entire prison system, as it exists today, with the prison system under the Soviet Union called Gulag, as it existed then (and as I suspect was Amnesty's and Senator Durbin's intent)?
As it turns out, that comparison has already been made, and by a prominent American official no less. I refer to comments made in 1996 by the drug czar under the Clinton Administration, General Barry McCaffrey.
"We've created an American gulag, 1.6 million prisoners," McCaffrey notes. "Probably two-thirds of those in the federal prison system are there for drug offenses." But, McCaffrey adds, "we're not going to arrest our way out of the problem."
When Gen. McCaffrey uttered these remarks, reaction was muted. Is it that Americans were less patriotic back in 1996? That's certainly possible I suppose, this would of course be before the attacks of 9/11. Another answer however is that there was so little reaction because very few chose to challenge the comparison.
In fact, our penal system and Gulag are similar in many respects.
Before proceeding further, let's observe that Gulag constituted the entirety of the Soviet penal system and was made up of many different prisons, some of which served very different roles. So, if we are to make this comparison, we should include the entirety of our own penal system, including local jails and state prisons, and federal prisons, including those facilities run by the military, both here at home and abroad, like Guantanamo. We should also include the "special" facilities throughout the world to where the CIA sends prisoners for what it calls rendition, which would then require us to also include facilities run by other nations to the extent that we send prisoners there to allow for the kind of torture that we are told isn't sanctioned in places like Guantanamo.
Numbers make for the best starting point, so let's start there. According to the current incarnation of the Wikipedia, the number of prisoners within Gulag has varied over time.In 1931–32, Gulag had approximately 200,000 prisoners in the camps; in 1935 — approximately 800,000 in camps and 300,000 in colonies (annual averages), and in 1939 about 1.3 millions in camps and 350,000 in colonies. By contrast, the US prisoner labourer population (on chain gangs and in prisons) remained around a few hundred thousand prisoners...
After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies rose again sharply and reached the number of approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 millions of whom in camps). While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also repatriated Russians prisoners of war and "Eastern workers", were universally accused of treason and "cooperation with an enemy" (formally, they did work for Nazis)...
Officially the GULAG was liquidated by the MVD order 20 of January 25, 1960.The U.S. prison population in 2004 was recorded at 2.1 million people, an all-time high. That is, the population has been growing for some time now, and continues to grow.
It can reasonably be expected that we will soon see 2.5 milion people behind bars, which would match the Gulag record of 2.5 million achieved in the early 50's. It is true that the overall Soviet population then was less than ours is today, so this number constitutes a higher percentage of inmates than we see in America today, however it has to be remembered that they only reached these levels in the aftermath of World War II as they struggled to reintegrate those who faught in the war, not all of whom were seen as heroes. There is no analogy in American history to what the Soviets experienced in World War II, the closest being perhaps the Civil War, but that saw less than a million dead.
Estimates for Soviet dead in WWII that I've seen range up to 25 million, most of whom were civilians.
So I would argue that the American penal system for some time has been comparable to Gulag. Not only do we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, save perhaps North Korea — which it is said refuses to report their numbers — it also appears to be correct that, overall, the American penal system has incarcerated at least as many people as Gulag over the same interval of time.
The reason that this is so is of course because of the war on drugs.
Which brings me to the next important feature of both of these penal systems; the emphasis on punishing what are essentially political prisoners. It's very easy to point at political prisoners when overseas, and quite a bit harder to perform the same feat at home. Ultimately, what constitutes a political prisoner must come down to the question of whether he actually committed a crime, that is, did this person actually do something to somebody else to justify being incarcerated?
In the Soviet Union of old, many of those incarcerated were peasants who objected to the effort on the part of the state to "collectivize" the nation's agriculture. In America today many of the incarcerated are non-violent drug offenders. Neither group committed any real crime save that committed against the will of the state, thus, each qualifies as a political prisoner. They had theirs. We have ours. I see little difference between the two in this regard.
Various institutions within Gulag featured a horrific mortality rate. Bad food, little clothing, bitter cold, and work quotas that seem beyond belief. I'm reading, again from The Wikipedia, that a prisoner might be expected to process 29,000 pounds of ore, per day. Doing the math reveals that that would roughly be the equivalent of lifting a rock weighing 100 pounds, every three minutes, over a sixteen hour day. I don't doubt for a moment that — being the flabby middle-aged American I am — I'd be dead tomorrow if made to perform a simliar work product.
That's being kind. It assumes I'd survive both the day and the night.
Yet, I'm very sorry to report that the American penal system has that beat (or is it a tie?) Prison rape. It is endemic in our penal system — at least within the domestic institutions — and if you actually bother to read some of these stories, I mean, my God, what have we become that we can actually see fit to permitting this kind of behavior? OK, so you don't think people should smoke pot. Fine. But is the proper punishment here being locked in a cage with a violent felon who then proceeds to rape and torture you without end until you finally find yourself submitting to such treatment, simply to survive, only to then be "traded" to some other inmate and see the process repeat all over again? And again? And again?
For months?
For years?
Not everybody in America's prisons are brutalized so. And not everybody in Gulag had to haul 29,000 lbs of ore every day. I guess what I'm asking is, can you really say that one is better than the other? That, if given the choice between hauling a dozen tons of rock every day, or being sexually violated and humiliated in as disgusting a manner as is imaginable, that a preference immediately occurs to you?
You could point to the fact that so many died in Gulag from the mistreatment there. But then, I could counter by pointing to the fact that many in our penal system die as a result of their incarceration, even if not while in prison. You get raped by somebody with HIV/AIDS. Now you have HIV/AIDS. You get released, looking to reclaim a little bit of your manhood maybe, and what happens? Now your mate has HIV/AIDS.
Is this the other choice we're requested to make? Do I die from some horrific combination of starvation, exposure, and over-exertion? Or do I contract a deadly disease that carries with it very gruesome consequences, not the least of which being the possibility that I might spread it to others?
It doesn't stop here of course. There are still other qualities of our penal system that are supposed to set it apart from Gulag. In America, we have certain unalienable rights. There is this thing called due process, a system of checks and balances that it is hoped minimizes the opportunity of tyranny on the part of the state while maximizing the possibility of justice to those who stand accused.
This process has to be testable. That is, sometimes, the guilty must go free, simply to demonstrate that due process reigns, and not the momentary passions of the few or the many.
What is being traded here should be clear to everyone. When we talk about limiting the power of the state, the only way of knowing that we in fact have achieved that is if, sometimes, the state loses.
That can be an ugly thing, yes. People who we can otherwise be sure committed horrible acts can be exonerated as a result.
The alternative however is the state that can never do wrong. That the state can pronounce guilt or innocence as it will.
Very much like the Soviet Union used to do.
I think it is this final quality that Amnesty and Senator Durbin had in mind when choosing the symbol of Guantanamo to condemn our new 9/11-inspired penal system. Within a span of only several years, huge gaping holes have been torn in a legal system that is the product of centuries of deep thought and noble effort and that was once also the standard of justice worldwide.
In the final analysis of the two, America vs. Gulag, there is one indisputable fact remaining. Gulag is dead. The penal system of America however continues to grow, not only in the number of incarcerated, but the ever-devolving conditions the incarcerated are subject to.
The broad view of humanity sees progress as a result of varied and isolated efforts at arresting the aggregation of power. America is easily one of the most important milestones in this progression. We flit from tyranny to liberty, over and over, sometimes so quickly that you can barely notice, other times so slow that you can barely stand it. But always the trendline was upward; always the gains outpaced the losses.
Until today.
The Soviet Gulag ended in 1960. When does ours cease? When do we stop incarcerating ever greater numbers of people? When do we stop treating them in ever more inhumane fashion?
What else are we to compare the America of today to? If the failure to know history condemns us to repeat it, isn't it imperative that we establish clear guidelines as to that history which is unacceptable to repeat?
Let's put it another way... let's assume America isn't Gulag yet. Does anybody believe that, once it becomes Gulag, that we bloggers would be able to do anything about it?
Isn't the time to make the comparison now, while we still can?
Lest I seem too supportive of Amnesty and Durbin, let me say this: it was very clear a long, long, time ago that this would be the state of affairs once we allowed tyranny to reign, yet the many who should of objected remained silent, and an evil was born that is the root of much of what we see happening today.
I'm talking of course about the war on drugs.
You let what may be the greatest atrocity in mankind's history EVER pass without comment, and now you're surprised to see further atrocity result?
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
Fight it always, regardless of what you might think of some of those whose liberty you are fighting for.
