Shooting the Messenger
The attacks on Senator Richard Durbin qualify as a clear and
defining a case of shoot-the-messenger as any dictionary compiler could
hope to find. It is a dangerous, unpleasant and notably unwanted
message he made; However, Durbin had a particular point to make and he
made it carefully. Durbin cited an FBI report describing Guantanamo Bay prisoners
chained to the floor in the fetal position without food or water and
sometimes in extreme temperatures. "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," he said, "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."Durbin Defends Guantanamo Comments
Others have chosen not to look or listen to this point, to the
words he said in order to attack the straw man of their own choosing.
The Soviet Gulag was more extensive and in its extensivity piled up
more instances of cruelty by several orders of magnitude, that is its
context. Nothing we have done compares to that. This point was made
very eloquently in a opinion editorial in the Washington Post Saturday. No American 'Gulag'. That context in the Gulags was made up of individuals and individual stories of imprisonment.
Durbins point; though, is that presented in clinical blind
analysis, examined in macro, what might our policies and actions seem
to be part of - and not just at Guantanamo bay but at Abu Ghraib, and
the other internment camps.
The question Sen. Warner and all the others need to ask themselves
rather than trumpet vacantly in calculated evasion, is that if here we say we are
not doing anything untoward, in a war that has no projected end date,
no state (or unclear points of repatriation) for those we have
imprisoned. If we let all that has occurred form our acceptable
baseline and let our facts accumulated along it. That line points down,
for once you have made peace with accommodation that is the only
direction it will ever point. The question is : what are we becoming? _____
Addendum: I see that Sen. Durbin has been forced to apologize for his remarks:
Sen. Durbin Apologizes for Gitmo Remarks (AP).
At least he directed his apology to American service men and women who
may have felt the weight of his remarks fell unfairly on them. They do
not appear to have been the central problem, and to the extent they
have been involved the DoD has not hesitated to burn them itself. While I'm in addendum mode here - let me note that columinst Dan Fromkin of the Post would direct your attention to a piece by Carol Rosenberg
of the Miami Herald where she writes that as part of of a new $500
million contract, Halliburton will build a new $30 million cell block
at the Navy base in Gauntamano Bay Cuba.
11:47:53 PM  ;;
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