Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly blog quotes Matthew Yglesias at the TAPPED blog, who says, "...Durbin said nothing objectionable..."
So there you have it folks, the divide is clear. There's not any grey area in a statement like Durbin made. Some of us think it is detestable moral idiocy to compare Americans to Nazis, gulags, and Pol Pot, and some think it's a good analogy. We think Durbin's statement was a despicable slander of his country, but Yglesias and Drum think there was "nothing objectionable" about the statment. Nothing. It wasn't even a little off the mark.
Some choose to defend America, some choose to aid our enemies. Some think America is the last best hope for the world; the hope of some lies with the U.N., Amnesty International, French opinion, etc. Durbin can be thanked for at least providing a very clarifying moral litmus test for us. But nobody dare question their patriotism.
Durbin quoted an FBI report and then pointed out that if you hadn't heard of this before, you would assume that this was being done by a barbarous dictatorship, and he was correct to do so. Thank God there are Democrats who are still willing to hold the United States to a higher standard than Hitler. You and the Republican party should be ashamed for lowering our country to the level of torturers.
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 9:46 am June 20, 2005
(1) Durbin compared specific acts - not all servicemen - to some of the acts of
hideous regimes.
(2) Drum has never endorsed the specific language used by Durbin.
(3) By your logic - and those of Bill Kristol - you fellows are basically saying
these specific acts are AOK.
Pathetic!
Comment by pgl — June 20, 2005 @ 10:00 am June 20, 2005
I thought of a kind of scavenger hunt game. First you need a chain of evil, say, starting down with America at the bottom, and moving up on the scale of barbarous inhumanity until you get to the Stalinist USSR at the top. Then you compete to find quotes from each regime saying that they're not quite as bad as the one right above them. So the person who found a quote from a U.S. spokesperson saying we're not as bad as Cuba would get a point. Then you could find a Cuban spokesman saying they're not as bad as the Pinochet dictatorship, and then a Chilean who said they weren't as bad as 1970s Argentina. Then you could find an Argentine gneral who in turn would say they're not as bad as Papa Doc's Haiti, who would say they're not as bad as the Khmer Rouge, who would then say Mao was worse. Mao would say that his regime was not as bad as Stalin, who would say they're not as bad as Hitler. We could call it 6 degrees of barbarism. Of course, a Republicans would win the game because they devote more time to defending torture on these grounds instead of actually stopping their country from doing it in the first place.
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 1:13 pm June 20, 2005
We don't know of any Republicans who have defended torture, Tom. We do know that repeating the seditious slander comparing Americans to Nazis does nothing to lessen the abject moral idiocy of it.
Thank you for visiting and commenting.
Comment by The Editors — June 20, 2005 @ 2:27 pm June 20, 2005
And I don't know anyone who compared Americans to Nazis. He was comparing acts to acts, not people to people. Did you actually read his statement?
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 2:36 pm June 20, 2005
I don't know of any people who've compared Americans to Nazis either, Editors. I *have* heard Sen. Durbin compare *acts* of torture to other *acts* of torture. Did you actually read his statement, or were you too busy thinking about how doing things like this would make the jailers of Andersonville proud?
"detainee [was] chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold"
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 3:19 pm June 20, 2005
Hey, did you see that Andrew Sullivan agrees with Drum and Yglesias? Do you think it's because he gives too much credence to French opinion?
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 3:21 pm June 20, 2005
"And I don’t know anyone who compared Americans to Nazis. He was comparing acts to acts, not people to people."
How silly. That has to be one of the dumbest comments we have ever read. Durbin compared the acts of Americans to the acts of Nazis. That is despicable slander, and remains so as often as you choose to repeat it or engage in asinine hair-splitting.
We have no particular interest what Andrew Sullivan thinks about anything.
Thanks again for visiting and commenting.
Comment by The Editors — June 20, 2005 @ 4:12 pm June 20, 2005
If you want asinine hair splitting, look no farther than your tolerance of torture. You can call me asinine, dumb, and treasonous all you like, but from that description of prisoner treatment it is not at all clear that it was carried out by the land of the free; it could easily been done by Milosevic's Serbia, or Pinochet's Chile. Durbin was right to call out the torturers. But all you care about is power, so you attack the messenger instead of the torturer. Conservatives used to stand for limited government and decency, but now you've cast your ideals away to support power, and applaud our flag being dragged through the mud at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. You are neither a patriot nor a conservative. You are a partisan, and nothing more.
Comment by Tom — June 20, 2005 @ 8:52 pm June 20, 2005
"Durbin compared the acts of Americans to the acts of Nazis. That is despicable slander, and remains so as often as you choose to repeat it or engage in asinine hair-splitting."
So no comparisons between the acts of Americans and the acts of Nazis should ever be made? Not even positive ones, such as "US occupation policies were far gentler than those of the Nazis?"
Durbin (and Drum, and Tom, and Sullivan) have a substantive point: the described treatment of prisoners at Gitmo is not in line with what people expect of the United States. It is _not_ as bad as what the Nazis did, but Durbin never stated that it was - just that it was closer to their end of the spectrum than he was comfortable with.
And I don't consider that asinine hair-splitting, Editors - just a fair and honest parsing of what a United States Senator said. You can certainly continue to say that it's despicable slander, seditious slander, or whatever you like, but unless you provide an argument that actually engages with and refutes what other people have said, you're just spouting dogma.
Comment by Chris — June 20, 2005 @ 10:57 pm June 20, 2005
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
Please, since I'm so "dumb," please show me where Durbin calls Americans Nazis. Again, he compares their acts. And he is right to. And you have done nothing to show that this analysis is incorrect; you have only called me asinine.
Comment by Tom — June 21, 2005 @ 7:21 am June 21, 2005
Tom,
Reasonable people do not consider the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to be torture. Therefore, no one is defending or tolerating torture.
"Again, he compares their acts."
Again, it is a disgusting, anti-American, morally idiotic comparison. How many times do you wish to run around the same circle?
Comment by The Editors — June 21, 2005 @ 10:10 am June 21, 2005
Defining torture down. Unlimited government powers to detain American citizens. This is what conservatism stands for these days: no principles other than "the president can do no wrong." No doubt Barry Goldwater is proud.
Comment by Tom — June 21, 2005 @ 10:17 am June 21, 2005
Editors: you have done a great job of asserting that the comparison is asinine, idiotic, despicable and dumb. But you have not shown it to be incorrect. Will you ever?
Comment by Tom — June 21, 2005 @ 10:18 am June 21, 2005
"Defining torture down."
No, defining non-torture reasonably. You're defining torture up, because you're on the side that doesn't want America to fight against the terrorists.
"Unlimited government powers to detain American citizens."
A complete fabrication.
This is what liberalism stands for these days: no principles other than “the president can do no right.”
As for showing that the comparison of Americans to Nazis and gulags is incorrect, the facts have been presented at length. That you and your ilk are incapable of seeing the difference between murdering 6 million innocent Jews and turning down the air conditioning in a terrorist's cell is entirely your problem.
Comment by The Editors — June 21, 2005 @ 1:20 pm June 21, 2005
Also not torture, says you: ""alleged that he had been hooded and cuffed with flexicuffs, threatened to be tortured and killed, urinated on, kicked in the head, lower back and groin, force-fed a baseball which was tied into the mouth using a scarf and deprived of sleep for four consecutive days. Interrogators would allegedly take turns ill-treating him. When he said he would complain to the I.C.R.C. he was allegedly beaten more. An I.C.R.C. medical examination revealed hematoma in the lower back, blood in urine, sensory loss in the right hand due to tight handcuffing with flexicuffs, and a broken rib."
Oh wait, the Red Cross said it, so it's automatically French propaganda, right?
Comment by Tom — June 21, 2005 @ 1:20 pm June 21, 2005
"allegedly..." Right, because al Qaeda members never lie, in your mind, do they Tom?
Comment by The Editors — June 21, 2005 @ 1:26 pm June 21, 2005
Sure they do. But your position is that anyone who takes the Red Cross and the FBI seriously is somehow an al-Qaeda sympathizer, which really says it all about off the deep end you are.
Comment by Tom — June 21, 2005 @ 1:59 pm June 21, 2005
The Red Cross and the FBI didn't witness any torture at Gitmo.
Comment by The Editors — June 21, 2005 @ 3:46 pm June 21, 2005