Odious comparisons by the left have been so pervasive, I long ago stopped caring. And all of us can be impulsive or vulgar or, well, over the top.
Of course, Durbin’s speech was offensive. The comparison of Gitmo’s methods with the Gulags and the Holocaust might have been expected. As Mark Steyn noted dryly,
But give Durbin credit. Every third-rate hack on every European newspaper can do the Americans-are-Nazis schtick. Amnesty International has already declared Guantanamo the “gulag of our times.” But I do believe the senator is the first to compare the U.S. armed forces with the blood-drenched thugs of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.
The appropriate response would seem censure, but time will censure in its own way (perhaps). So today, he apologized. McCain praised the apology; certainly such praise comes from a man who understands courage and surely other senators understand better than I what it is like to humble yourself (and metrosexually cry) on the Senate floor. But that apology prompts this post, because it reinforced the sense that Durbin was, well, not exactly on “our” side. (Indeed, that Steyn was right.)
He addressed the affronted families of Holocaust survivors, not we might note survivors of the Gulags or the Khmer Rouge, soldiers at Gitmo or their friends & families; indeed, not anyone with some sense who found this inappropriate from the mouth of a senator. Nor does he seem to understand that to whomever he apologizes, it is not the “words” but the ideas that are offensive. (I’ve about had it with this trope of “misunderstood words.”) He says he has met our brave soldiers. Well, that’s nice. But we are appalled that he could actually read that description (ugly as it seemed) and in any way compare Gitmo, where prisoners gain 13 pounds, with societies in which a third of the inhabitants were slaughtered. What’s wrong isn’t words.
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