Guantanamo prison and communism’s real gulags

Re “American gulag,” Current, Feb. 26

The revelations about Guantanamo Bay should sicken any American regardless of political affiliation. The establishment of this prison outside legal safeguards was perhaps justifiable in the initial aftermath of 9/11, but it should have been brought under proper judicial control long ago.

Many detainees appear to have had little, if any, involvement with 9/11. Their continued incarceration under degrading and abusive circumstances is a blot on this country’s conscience and an international embarrassment.

Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the rendition program have undermined the moral force of the United States. Whereas our positions used to be respected and often accepted with little dissent, we are now viewed with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility.

Guantanamo must be disbanded not only because it is immoral but because it works against the interests of this country.

PAUL ROSENBERGER

Manhattan Beach

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Your splashy, emotion-grabbing, overblown pictorial leading into Thomas Wilner’s article was a bit much. We are thereafter presented with a tear-jerking article purporting to equate Guantanamo with communist Russia’s gulags.

Of course, the logical fallacies in the article probably come as second nature to Wilner, an experienced lawyer. His appeals to emotion and special pleading flow freely, the facts and objectivity be damned.

Apparently Wilner is unfamiliar with conditions at the real gulags as described by a famous former inmate of those gulags, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his book, “The Gulag Archipelago.”

Unlike the relatively benign conditions at Guantanamo, at the real gulags there were no special Islamic meals, no clean cells with their own separate toilet facilities, no clean clothes, no special handling of the Koran or Bible and none of the other numerous perks at Guantanamo.

Furthermore, the “real gulag” victims were not fanatic terrorists. A great many of the real gulag prisoners were, like Solzhenitsyn, law-abiding citizens who just happened to disagree with Joseph Stalin or his henchmen.

FRANK DIANI

Goleta, Calif.

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My parents and siblings lived near London during World War II, and I grew up hearing stories of the horrors of the German regime at that time.

For the last 50 years, I have always struggled to understand how a government can lead an entire country into an acceptance of a culture of immorality in the national interest.

After reading Wilner’s experience with Guantanamo, I now get it.

CHRIS ALDWORTH

Upland