Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan, in the foreward for the latest Amensty International Annual Report, manages to insult the memory of the countless victims of Soviet Communism and demonstrate a complete lack of any historical perspective. She calls the prison at the U.S. Navy's base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where approximately 540 men are held on suspicion of links to the Taliban or al-Qaida, "the gulag of our times."
The question has got to be asked, is her hatred of the United States so complete it has completely overwhelmed her ability to reason? Is she a danger to herself?
Lenin, Stalin and their successors killed millions in the Gulag Archipelago because they were not going to fit in the new Soviet order. Is that what she really thinks is happening in a place that holds less than 600 men, where abuse of prisoners is condemned and punished by the US government? Where even the slightest mishandling of the Koran by guards and interrogators is expressly forbidden?
Such is the lack of a grounding in reality, Khan mentions only the free part of Cuba and manages to ignore the Gulag next door that endures under Fidel Castro. Despite devoting six paragraphs to the sins of the United States nowhere in the 18 paragraphs of her foreward does she mention North Korea, Iran, Libya, Vietnam, Syria or Saudi Arabia. She mentions China only in relation to their oil interests in the Sudan.
In 1813 words couldn't Khan have found some way to express her gratitude to United States for freeing Afghanistan from the Taliban and Iraq from Saddam Hussein?
But then that might be admitting that President Bush is right to pursue the War on Terror. And the United States, especially under President Bush, can never be in the right.
