The Presidential Arabian Menagerie

As someone who visited the naval base at Guantanamo about 55 years ago, I can comment on the new Presidential Menagerie being constructed there (my sources include Wickipedia and Jon Stewart).

Menageries have been with us for some time. The oldest known zoological collection was found during excavations at Hierakonpolis, Egypt, in 2009, of a 3500 B.C. menagerie. The exotic animals included hippos, hartebeest, elephants, baboons and wildcats. Other well-known collectors of animals included King Solomon of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, Kings Semirami and Ashurbanipal of Assyria, and King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylonia.

The new Arabian Menagerie will follow what has become a standard practice of approximating a natural environment--Gitmo is surrounded by a desert. Following the tenets of the American Zoo Association, the Presidential Menagerie has stopped the practice of having Arabs perform tricks for visitors.

Some may object to the idea of Arabs displayed in cages, but that is not an innovation. In September 1906, William Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo in New York—with the agreement of Madison Grant, head of the New York Zoological Society—had Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy, displayed in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong and a parrot. The exhibit was intended as an example of the "missing link" between the orangutan and white man. The public reportedly rushed to see it.

Persons were also displayed in cages during the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, and as late as 1958 in a "Congolese village" display at Expo '58 in Brussels.

Some Arab rights people have objected on the grounds that Arabs should be afforded the same consideration as human beings (see the Magna Carta). Gary Francione has argued that Arabs need only one right: the right not to be property. Despite the different approaches, advocates broadly agree that Arabs should be viewed as non-human persons and members of the moral community and should not be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment.

Critics of the rights movement argue that Arabs are unable to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and for that reason cannot be regarded as possessors of rights. A parallel argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using Arabs as resources so long there is no unnecessary suffering, a view advocated by the Arab welfare organizations.