Defending Durbin
I've been mostly out of the news loop of late, so I don't know how big the Durbin/Guantanamo story has been...in fact, I just found out about it. Speaking of detainees being chained to the floor until they had to urinate and defecate on themselves, Durbin 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.”
Hastert and several other Republicans described this like so:
"While speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Durbin chose to question the reputation of the thousands of brave men and women who are serving in our armed forces."
This just goes to show how far gone the Republican leadership is. Let's take the points in order:
[1]
Suppose that--before the GWOT--you had heard the accounts in question. Would you think that they could be accounts from Nazi Germany, the gulags, or from Pol Pot's Cambodia? Yes.
[2]
Suppose that--before the GWOT--you had heard the accounts in question. Would you think that they could be accounts about how the United States treated enemy combatants? No.
Conclusion: Durbin was right.
In fact, Durbin was EXACTLY right.
In fact, it seems that anyone who disagrees with Durbin here either has to have a particularly low opinion of the U.S. or a particularly high opinion of Nazi Germany, the gulags, or Pol Pot.
[3]
Re: the Republican response. O.k., look, next time I'm in one of my let's all just get along or my sure, the Republicans suck, but look how bad the Democrats suck too moods, remind me of this, o.k.? These guys have gone over the edge. Their comments suggest that they think that it is worse to report that American forces have acted immorally than it was for those forces to have acted immorally in the first place. When are you sensible Republicans out there going to start speaking out against the people who have hijacked your party? How can you allow the part of Lincoln to be dragged down into the mud like this? Would their response to reports of the My Lai massacre have been "These reporters chose to question the reputation of the brave men and women serving in our armed forces"? I especially liked their reference to "thousands" of men and women, making their claim subtly ambiguous, open to the interpretation that Durbin was criticizing everyone in the armed forces. 'Thousands' can mean tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands... And how did questioning a few interrogators at Guantanamo Bay become questioning thousands of people, anyway?
This is so sick and disgusting that I have to sign off now before I write something I might regret later. What the hell is happening to my country?
I've been mostly out of the news loop of late, so I don't know how big the Durbin/Guantanamo story has been...in fact, I just found out about it. Speaking of detainees being chained to the floor until they had to urinate and defecate on themselves, Durbin 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.”
Hastert and several other Republicans described this like so:
"While speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Durbin chose to question the reputation of the thousands of brave men and women who are serving in our armed forces."
This just goes to show how far gone the Republican leadership is. Let's take the points in order:
[1]
Suppose that--before the GWOT--you had heard the accounts in question. Would you think that they could be accounts from Nazi Germany, the gulags, or from Pol Pot's Cambodia? Yes.
[2]
Suppose that--before the GWOT--you had heard the accounts in question. Would you think that they could be accounts about how the United States treated enemy combatants? No.
Conclusion: Durbin was right.
In fact, Durbin was EXACTLY right.
In fact, it seems that anyone who disagrees with Durbin here either has to have a particularly low opinion of the U.S. or a particularly high opinion of Nazi Germany, the gulags, or Pol Pot.
[3]
Re: the Republican response. O.k., look, next time I'm in one of my let's all just get along or my sure, the Republicans suck, but look how bad the Democrats suck too moods, remind me of this, o.k.? These guys have gone over the edge. Their comments suggest that they think that it is worse to report that American forces have acted immorally than it was for those forces to have acted immorally in the first place. When are you sensible Republicans out there going to start speaking out against the people who have hijacked your party? How can you allow the part of Lincoln to be dragged down into the mud like this? Would their response to reports of the My Lai massacre have been "These reporters chose to question the reputation of the brave men and women serving in our armed forces"? I especially liked their reference to "thousands" of men and women, making their claim subtly ambiguous, open to the interpretation that Durbin was criticizing everyone in the armed forces. 'Thousands' can mean tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands... And how did questioning a few interrogators at Guantanamo Bay become questioning thousands of people, anyway?
This is so sick and disgusting that I have to sign off now before I write something I might regret later. What the hell is happening to my country?
posted by Winston Smith at
8:13 AM
12 Comments:
Isn't it lovely? Just think how cool it's going to be after another 3 years of this.
"Differences of degree matter, and great differences of degree matter greatly. Nobody's perfect, but that doesn't mean that everybody's equal."
Who could disagree with this sage Raptorism from the last post? Durbin's exaggeration is on par with the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels, the inventor of the Big Lie, which led to Hitler killing 6 million Jews, gypsies and gays.
I'm not lumping Durbin in with all Democratic senators, of course, just the ones who lie the same as Goebbels.
Seriously, argumentum ad Nazium is out of bounds and cannot be defended on any grounds. Durbin deserves what he gets.
That said, there is some very bad stuff still out there like the second batch of Abu Ghraib photos. This high-horse opportunism by the Republicans may come back to bite them big time.
Jeez, tvd, you're just wrong.
Durbin didn't say that we were like the Nazis in any way other than this particular one. And, again, he's right. Dunno what I can add to the above: hear a description of the case and it's hard to believe that it's the Americans and not the Nazis perpetrating it.
If you disagree with that is it b/c you think that it's unsuprising that we're doing such things? Or do you think that the Nazis wouldn't do them? Inquiring minds want to know.
The right response by conservatives here isn't this lame one--it's rather that (as I just heard somewhere), the guy we did it to is known to be the 20th hijacker.
The best and most plausible response by the other side here is this one:
Look, we KNOW he's one of the top bad guys, and we'd never do this to anyone we didn't KNOW to be such a guy. We don't like it, but rest assured we would only do this sort of thing in a very, very, very exceptional case. The Nazis did it recreationally. that's the difference.
See, now, that's an intellectually respectable response.
What can I say? I'm not addressing the particulars of the case, or defending the Republicans' opportunistic counterattack.
But until somebody breaks out the Zyklon B, ya can't play the Hitler Card. Period.
Not true.
If x resembles Hitler in respect R, then it's perfectly respectable to say so.
E.g. if some politician were to employ the "Big Lie" strategy, then it would be perfectly reasonable to point this out even if he resembled Hitler in no other respect.
One problem here is strategic overreaction. You catch me doing something Hitlerian (the Big Lie strategy's a good example here) and point this out, and then I say (imagine self-righteous tone) "Oh, so now I'm as bad as Hitler, am I? Well, sir, I did not start the Second World War, nor mastermind the Holocaust!"
The Republican reaction here is way out of line, even though I now think they might have a different--and reasonable--response (described above).
Actually, what we need to do here--as with many other argumentative questions of contemporary American politics--is figure out what's reasonable ahead of time.
E.g., when are Hitler analogies reasonable?
What about the (evil) "Oh, so you're saying that our troops have died in vain" ploy?
Under what conditions, if any, is it reasonable to insist that we support the president?
etc.
Many or most logical errors are committed b/c emotions are running too high or self- (or party-) interest is in play. If we thought about those questions independently of particular disputes, then we'd make more headway on them.
That's a very calm, nuanced script you wrote for the Administration, WS, but I think it would be drowned in the DefCon 4 of the Hitler Card.
I mean, we might be able to slip Hitler and Pol Pot in now and then during our customary calm and nuanced discussions around here, but you don't do it when it'll be on al-Jazeera in 45 minutes, for Pete's sake.
Hitler is more than a historical figure, he's an eponym for genocide, as is Pol Pot, an absolute for comprehensive extermination, just the perception we're fighting in the Islamic world. He may be, relatively speaking, correct, but what was the man thinking?
And I would never under any circumstances compare you to Hitler in any way, shape, matter or form, WS. I'd prefer if nobody do it to me, either, but I guess all we crypto-Nazis feel that way.
Oh, well.
Who would tvd think of when hearing objective descriptions of what our people have done in our name? Skull and Bones?
Apparently, fearing the repetition of truthful words on al-Jazeera, he would deny thinking of the Nazis and make the dishonest leap to accuse Dick Durbin of calling Gitmo a death camp (see, that's how the Republican logic works). This denial of Durbin's right to tell the truth is the heart of the conservative lock-step on the war that is so dear to tvd's wish for a monolithic U.S.
So, I conclude that, however intellectually gifted tvd admittedly is, which certainly sets him apart from the common run of trolls, he is in fact a troll, and there's no point in arguing with him. He comes here for an argument.
Apparently, Mr. Voltaire has left the building.
From Wiki:
"As a pejorative, the term "troll" may also be a slander of opponents in heated debates, a tactic often used by trolls and non-trolls. Many times a person will post a sincere message that they are emotionally sensitive about and trolls know that the easiest way to upset them is to falsely claim that they are a troll. On other occasions a person may not instantly understand or fit into the social norms of a forum where most people are the same - and so acting just slightly out of social norms, often unintentionally, for legitimate reasons gets the poster falsely called a troll. Sometimes when a person just wants to be funny, they are accused of trolling, when that is not their intent. Many trolls now find that the traditional trolling tactics are so overused and commonplace that they have to disguise their trolling to make it effective - although, quite often, the disguising merely involves falsely accusing others of being trolls themselves."
Hmmm. Well, thanks for not calling me a Nazi, anyway, LL.
tvd, you're welcome.
Funny quote you've got there - obviously written by someone who has been regularly accused of being a troll. The writer is smarting from being accused openly, rather than slyly, as you have done, but no hard feelings. You merely returned my insult with tu quoque, however quietly.
The passage you quoted is quite a laundry list of rationalizations for trolls and nontrolls alike. Some cooperative wiki-writes should turn it into a definitive taxonomy of troll defenses. Then we'd have something. But, what, exactly?
tvd opines "But until somebody breaks out the Zyklon B, ya can't play the Hitler Card. Period."
Wonder if he has seen this list of God's Own Party's playing the card? I musta missed the Zyklon B.
so sez The Duke of Prunes
The article I liked to had GOP Sen. Rick Santorum front and center.
It is wrong, and it is specious. Period.
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