Uh-huh, you rate it so high that you ascribe the same amount of dignity to a villain like Osama bin Laden as to a hero like, say, President Reagan. If this is the lesson you have learned from the Nazi era ... well, I better pack and leave Europe as soon as possible.
Osama is evil ; President Reagan is good. If you fail to distinguish the two--if you see the same amount of dignity in them--there is nothing to stop you from acting just like Osama. Or like those SS officers who treated people like animals and made animals out of themselves.
I didn't see where he said they had the same amount. Usually when talking about human dignity we are talking about baseline standards beneath which we will not go. For example, even our most heinous criminals still get treated with basic human dignities in prison.
Osama is evil ; President Reagan is good.
Do you honestly think the poster cannot distinguish between the two? Without even knowing him I would wager a large sum of money on his being able to distinguish between Reagan (whom democrats believe was evil btw) and bin Laden.
"Uh-huh, you rate it so high that you ascribe the same amount of dignity to a villain like Osama bin Laden as to a hero like, say, President Reagan. If this is the lesson you have learned from the Nazi era ... well, I better pack and leave Europe as soon as possible."
We have another article in our constitution. It reads "All people are equal before the law" [Article 3(1)] (hm, at least I think it does, my translation may be a bit rough here).
" Osama is evil ; President Reagan is good."
Aren't you being a little bit simplistic here? We're talking about the Ronald Reagan who financed the Taliban, financed Saddam Hussein against the Iran (ironically, it was Donald Rumsfeld who shook hands with him - do you recognize the two ol' friends?)
Or this little tidbit about his foreign policy:
"Washington spent more than $4 billion on El Salvador in the 80s, backing wildly brutal regimes and their death squads against a leftist insurgency. The 12-year civil war left 75,000 Salvadorans dead--overwhelmingly civilians killed by U.S.-supported forces."
http://www.fair.org/extra/0109/iran-contra.html
75,000 people dead. How can someone who is responsible for so many dead people be "good"?
"If a person utterly fails to respect all human dignity--including his own dignity--doesn't that make him a criminal of the greatest degree according to the first article of your constitution?"
You missed the point. It doesn't state that you loose your dignity if you violate that of someone other. It states that, regardless what happens, your dignity may not be violated.
Which probably is the most important thing our history has taught us.
Polybius:
"Guantanamo is a military prison camp that imprisons illegal combatants as that term is defined by the Rules of War. Although illegal combatants can be executed under the Rules of War, not a single Guatanamo inmate had died there."
"executed unter the Rules of War"? Which "Rules of War" would that be? Certainly you're not talking about the Geneva Convention...
U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson has stated she believes the Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners are entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Convention. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) agrees, and has demanded access to the prisoners. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said the prisoners' treatment fails to meet international norms.
http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/schey_taliban_pow.htm
"According to Webster's Dictionary, a "concentration camp" is : "A camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners or refugees) are detained or confined"."
Well, yes. Now, I think it was you who was making the Jump to Auschwitz; I never wrote anything about Guantanamo Bay being the same as Dachau or Ausschwitz and I never would. But as you said, there are some similarities.
So, let's come to specifics.
"Does it have civilian women and children in it as Auschwitz did? No."
No? There are children imprisoned in Camp Delta, between ages 13 and 15.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3172617.stm
"Has the U.S. rounded up innocent civilians[...]?"
Which has to be determined. They have no legal counsel, they're not being tried - well, it's easy to say that they're guilty if they aren't able to prove otherwise, isn't it?
"Has a single individual been executed in Guantamamo as compared to the one million executions at Auschwitz alone?"
Guantanamo Bay has the highest rate of suicides and suicid attempts in the world, while probably being one of the best guarded, so prisoners probably have very few possibilites to even try to commit suicide.
Oh, and a few days ago, the US has killed another 9 children in Afghanistan. Just by the way.