With the debate about Durbin, we’ve clearly reached a moment of some clarity. I’m not adding anything to what I’ve already said. But here are a few of your responses:
I’m surprised at your defense of Sen. Durbin. But maybe you’re on to something – I don’t know. We’ll see at the next election. We’ll have some races between those who defend Sen. Durbin’s comments, and those who think his insults were vile and unjustified. And we’ll see who wins. I predict the support-the-troops side will make headway. The left will sink further into oblivion the more they identify with Sen. Durbin and his supporters.
Point taken. I think this is a net political gain for the president and Republicans, if they really want to use it. I’m expected to be shocked by what Karl Rove will use in political warfare? What’s relevant is our deployment of cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees, against the law of the land and the most basic principles of Western justice. My email bag has been evenly divided between those appalled by Durbin and others appalled by my defense. Here’s one from a Christian theologian:
I myself am in the midst of a scholarly writing project on torture. As a fellow Christian, I am grieved and appalled at what is going on. It is an ambomination, a desecration of the image of God which no child of God should allow to be undertaken in the name of their self-defense. I am also deeply disturbed at the rhetoric of those who would defend the administration’s ‘dirty hands’ policy. And at the way that, increasingly, criticizing the Administration is equated with anti-Americanism, immoralism and the like. Thank you for refusing to be cowed by these tactics.
Frankly, I’ve been amazed that the Christian right hasn’t been more vocal. But, hey, once faith has been transformed into partisan politics, you end up justifying any number of things. Here’s another point aginst my argument:
“A soldier sat in his barracks, shining his shoes. So go ahead: answer his implied question. If you had been told that soldiers had been found in this state in one of Saddam’s or Stalin’s barracks, would you have believed it? Of course, you would.” This is the fundamental problem with Durbin’s analogy. The are many things that are “encompassed” in the behavior of those regimes. However, we remember those regimes for the worst of their behavior not the behavior slightly below the median. You know this, dude. Don’t play dumb.
I’m not playing dumb. Shining shoes is not the same thing as treating prisoners as animals. It’s not the same thing as smearing them with fake menstrual blood, or tying someone to the ceiling (as in Afghanistan) and beating their legs to a pulp while they scream for mercy until they die. It’s not the same thing as an emailed memo from a military intelligence officer in 2003, saying: “The gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees, Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want these individuals broken.” According to the Red Cross, an organization that the U.S. still allows in its facilities, one prisoner in Iraq (where the Geneva Conventions are supposed to be applied)
“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.”
Club Gitmo? Give me a break.
The Dish 