Durbin was both stupid and wrong to compare the torture allegations to what we might hear out of Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge or the Soviet Gulags. He’s correct in a strict analogy that is where we expect to hear such horror stories, but the simple expanse of horrors under those regimes makes it a bad comparison. Since the US isn’t doing this systematically to entire populations it distracts attention and trivializes the victims. The ADL points this out well.
Zorn also points out Wes Clark’s point that pretty much raising Hitler in any political discussion means you lose–unless you are talking about Matt Hale, but that dipnuts is going to be in prison long enough that shouldn’t be a problem for a while.
The next part is what I posted over at Rich’s yesterday:
Nothing Dick Durbin did is going to help recruit young Islamic men to Al Qaeda. However, ignoring due process and engaging in prisoner treatment that is torture will only make the case against America stronger in the Middle East.
Due process in the modern world is largely a construct of Anglo-American political history–ignoring that proud tradition helps our enemies, not pointing out how we are ignoring it.
The prohibition against torture was enshrined in our own Constitution. If we can’t live up to our own social contract it’s a bit hard to sell our system as the better one–and it is.
Calling on The United States to live up to it’s social contract isn’t helping our enemies, it’s standing up for the ideals our Founders layed out in the Declaration of Independence.
There’s a lot of crap on this subject that’s obscuring the basic point–the United States of America is denying individuals access to due process and engaging in torture whether by our hands or by the hands of our allies.
There is no excuse for either of the above. We are better than that and we should thank those who point that out. Confusing the point with genocide is stupid and Durbin allowed this to get off target by choosing cases that involved genocide. Why did he do that? Anger? Probably. Would Uzbekistan be better? Hard to say. We don’t shoot people for mass protests, but we do engage in torture. What’s most bothersome is that people feel the need to distinguish The United States from these horrible governments by saying we aren’t that bad.
The defense of the United States shouldn’t rest upon being not as bad as despots and genocidal lunatics, it should rest in our unfailing commitment to the rule of law–something we aren’t living up to now.
The odd thing is that the press would have yet again ignored the problem if he hadn’t used those examples.
As I’ve said on conservative blogs, those who think Durbin was comparing soldiers to Nazis, or that he needs to apologize, are the true America-haters. They’re illiterate as well.
It’s because they no longer teach students how to diagram a sentence. As a result they apparently can’t tell how to identify pronoun antecedents or parts of speech.