Senator Dick Durbin calls American Troops “Nazis”
Folks, I’m not making this stuff up. If I had tried to imagine the most offensive, inappropriate, false and slanderous thing a United States Senator could say, I could not have come up with something as offensive, inappropriate, false and slanderous as what Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said on the floor of the Senate this past Tuesday.
[D]escribing 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.
What was he complaining about? Among other things, this report:
Dripping Water or Playing Christina Aguilera Music: After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.
So let’s get this straight:
- Hitler’s Nazis killed 9-10 million civilians, including 6 million Jews killed for no other reason than they were Jewish, between 1939 and 1945 (not including those killed on the battlefield, or in air bombardment of cities).
- The “Soviets in the gulags” killed an estimated 50 million people between 1930 and 1940, usually for their political opinions or religious beliefs, or for having “capitalist ancestry.”
- Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killed an estimated 1.5-2.0 million people — about 1 in 5 Cambodians — for “crimes” like opposing communism, having too much education, living in a city, or merely wearing glasses (which meant your were an “intellectual” and thus insufficiently proletarian)
And Dick Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, thinks these are equivalent to:
- American soldiers forcing captured terrorists to listen to Christina Aguilera music and waking them up by dripping water on their heads.
This is not just a lack of perspective. This is a total lack of moral clarity of any kind. If Dick Durbin can’t tell the difference between murdering millions of perfectly innocent people, and playing loud music to try to get a terrorist captured in battle or in a known Al-Qaeda hideout to tell us where the other terrorists are, then Dick Durbin has no moral sense whatever.
As if to prove my point, when Dick Durbin was called on the carpet about this, he steadfastly refused to apologize, and instead continued to lie:
CHICAGO (AP) - Sen. Dick Durbin refused to apologize Wednesday for comments he made on the Senate floor comparing the actions of American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and a “mad regime” like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s in Cambodia.
Durbin’s comments created a buzz on the Internet Wednesday, fueled by sound bites of his speech on radio talk shows. By Wednesday afternoon, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna asked Durbin to apologize.
“Senator Durbin’s comments come as a great disservice to our military personnel in Guantanamo,” McKenna said in a statement. “They are also a great disservice to all U.S. soldiers and veterans who have fought, and continue to fight, to overcome evil regimes and spread democracy around the world.”
Durbin did not plan to apologize for the comments, spokesman Joe Shoemaker said.
“This administration should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions and authorizing torture techniques that put our troops at risk and make Americans less secure,” Durbin said in a statement Wednesday evening.
This last part is a complete lie. I should not have to state what should be well-known to everyone who follows the news, not least a U.S. Senator, but obviously it needs to be stated:
- The administration has not “abandon[ed] the Geneva Conventions” — the Geneva Conventions explicitly apply only to uniformed combatants. They do not apply to terrorists or other “unlawful combatants” — but the adminstration decided to give the terrorists the same protections anyway.
- The administration has not “authoriz[ed] torture techniques” — on the contrary, the administration has specifically forbidden torture techniques, and even prohobited some aggressive interrogation techniques that fall far short of “torture.” See these Department of Defense memos here and here.
- Interrogating terrorists does not “put our troops at risk” — in fact, it does the opposite. Numerous terrorists have been caputred on the basis of information provided by captured terrorists under interrogation at Guantánamo and elsewhere.
- Interrogating terrorists does not “make Americans less secure” — in fact, it does the opposite. The fact that there has not been a single major terrorist attack on American soil — or even on any American target outside of Iraq — since 9/11/2001 gives lie to Durban’s statement. If “less secure” means “no terrorist attacks” then by all means, let’s have “less secure.” More likely, of course, by “less secure” Durbin means “Bush in office” — and “more secure” will mean more terrorist attacks so that Democrats like Durbin benefit politically.
Dick Durbin has slandered American troops, insulted the memory of tens of millions of victims of Nazis and Communists, and shown more sympathy for murderous terrorists than innocent victims. He is an embarrassment to the United States Senate and the people of Illinois. He should resign immediately.
And if the people of Illinois re-elect this poor excuse for a human being, they should secede and invite the terrorists to live there. Let’s see how long the Sears Tower remains standing if Dick Durbin ever gets his way.
June 17th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
not to get all blue-state on you here, DR, but don’t you see a certain irony in this backlash against durbin, who is however awkwardly speaking out against the mistreatment of detained suspects? after all, just a couple months ago your own readers (and one of your own posts, if memory serves) were comparing michael schiavo to the nazis. how are those statements NOT guilty of “insult[ing] the memory of tens of millions of victims of Nazis and Communists”?
June 19th, 2005 at 5:24 am
Interesting question. Actually, I wish there were a backlash against Durbin — from where I sit, nobody seems to really care except a few bloggers and maybe some talk radio folks. Having said that, do you mean to accuse me of irony — or hypocrisy? I’m going to assume you mean the latter but were trying to be polite. And no, I don’t think it’s hypocritical at all, for one simple reason:
The “similarity” Durbin alleges between American troops and Nazis/Communists is that they both operate prisons. However, the difference is that in one case those kept in the prisons are terrorists who seek to murder innocent victims or have actually done so, and in the other cases those kept in prisons were innocent victims themselves, whose only “crimes” were having the “wrong” ancestry, religion, or political views. This makes the two sets of acts moral opposites, notwithstanding any superficial similarities. It’s akin to the case of a kidnapper who is put in jail — would any one accuse the police of hypocrisy for imprisoning a kidnapper for the crime of imprisoning an innocent person? One the contrary, the police would properly be viewed as heros and the kidnaper would properly be viewed as villain who belongs in jail. Futhermore, the crimes of the Nazis and Communists can be measures in the numbers of people they murdered, even leaving aside the numbers were were in prison but survivied. The American troops running the prison at Guantánamo haven’t killed any of the inmates, and have in fact released prisoners they thought to be innocent. (In some cases mistakenly — at least one person was released, then later captured in the act of committing a terrorist attack in Afghanistan.)
On the other hand, the comparison between Michael Schiavo and the Nazis is ideological. Although the antisemitic component of the Nazis’ ideology of race is better known, another part of their ideology stressed the “importance” of “purifying” their “race” by eliminating what they termed “life unworthy of life” (Lebensunwertes Leben), also called “useless mouths” — that is, killing disabled and deformed people. This was, of course, done by doctors, under color of law. Michael Schiavo was attempting to do the same thing, just on a much smaller scale. He aimed to kill the one disabled person affecting his life, not the hundreds of thousands in an entire country. Nevertheless, the difference between Michael Schiavo’s euthenasia and that of the actual Nazis is one of degree, not kind. This is notwithstanding the fact that, as far as I know, Schiavo was imitating not the racial aspect of Nazi ideology, but “only” the euthenasia aspect.
In short, Michael Schiavo is to the Nazis what a single locust is to a swarm of millions of locusts. But American troops are to Nazis what the police are to the kidnappers.
June 19th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
Actually, you didn’t quote all of what Senator Durbin said. Here is a link to the full
text: http://durbin.senate.gov/gitmo.cfm
What happened to the detainees (according to the FBI agent that Durbin was quoting) is
described as follows: “On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee 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….On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
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.”
Had we read of our prisioners getting treated in this way (e. g., our POW’s in Vietnam) we
would have been outraged.
June 21st, 2005 at 5:08 pm
A Senator Responds to Dick Durbin
As noted previously, last week the number-two Democrat in the Senator Dick Durbin compared American soldiers to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, … Pol Pot.” And there has been an uproar in the blogosphere (and probably talk radio, but I haven’t h…
June 21st, 2005 at 6:50 pm
ollie: Right, I didn’t include the entire quote. I just linked to it, so you (or anyone else) could read the whole think. Thanks for providing a different link to the same statement.
As for your statement, “Had we read of our prisioners getting treated in this way (e. g., our POW’s in Vietnam) we would have been outraged.”:
The fact is, if our POW’s in Vietnam had been treated like the terrorists in Gitmo, it would have been far better than how our POW’s in Vietnam wer actually treated. There is no comparison. Here is a description of the treatment of then-future Senator Jeremiah Denton, when he was a POW in Hanoi, 1966-1973:
Further descriptions of Vietnamese torture:
This is a far cry from the worst treatment at Gitmo, which seems to consist of dripping water, variable air conditioning, and loud pop music.
Of 704 American POWs, 113 died in captivity. No prisoners have died at Gitmo.
Instead, they learn to read
Meanwhile, the Red Cross failed — or refused — to deliver his mail:
His father’s reaction:
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Durbin Apologizes?
Ah, the saga of Senator Durbin — the number-two Democat in the Senate leadership — continues, and has broken into the mainstream media. And this, Durbin acknowledges, warrants some sort of response. The day after comparing American troops to “Naz…
July 5th, 2005 at 3:17 am
Dick Durbin, Guantánamo, and Vietnam (2)
Responding to my initial post on the Dick Durbin scandal, Ollie (who has his own political blog here, and a very cool math blog here — this describes one of my favorite math mind-benders) commented:
Had we read of our prisioners getting treated i…