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John Cole: Censure?! Thank Goodness the Adults Are In Charge...
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Race
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jun 20, 2005 08:58pm |
| Category | Opinion |
| News Date | Jun 20, 2005 08:55pm |
| Description | Senator Dick Durbin made a comment in a long and thoughtful (for Durbin) speech that politically was profoundly stupid, but it is the height of absurdity and partisan foolishness to call for his censure and to allow ourselves to be distracted from the larger issue. Yes, he is a Democrat. Yes, he probably shouldn't have included a reference to Nazis. But that doesn't give us license to distort his remarks and launch an immature witch-hunt.
Are Durbin's remarks really that offensive? Do you honestly hear descriptions like that and think to yourself- "Gee, American troops do that all the time."
Of course you don't, and I don't either. I think of some third world dictator, some tin-pot despot who brutalizes not only his enemy but his own people. Someone like, for example, Saddam Hussein. Or Pol Pot. And that was Durbin's point- not that we are Nazis, but that we are better than Nazis by an order of magnitude, and that such acts of abuse, while rare, are beneath us.
What should offend you is not what Durbin said, but the possibility that what Durbin said regarding the abuse may be accurate -even if it happened only once. And spare me the false bravado and the tough-guy attitudes about how this doesn't sound so tough, and they deserve what they get. I am all in favor of stern measures and tough interrogation practices, but there are lines that should not be crossed.
When Bush won the election in 2000, a popular refrain in the base was "Thank God the adults are in charge." Is it really asking too much that we behave like adults? |
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