Sen. Durbin's comments were brought to mind as I read this article by Kenneth Anderson in last week's Weekly Standard. It's about Amnesty International's comparing Gitmo to the gulags, which is of course where Durbin got the idea. I don't have much respect for AI, so didn't pay much attention at the time (Another over-the-top accusation? Snore.).
However: Did you know that all the nasty things the AI peeps said about us were not in their report! They had nothing whatsoever to accuse us of, they just wanted to make headlines. You really must read the whole thing for the factual analysis, but Anderson makes the important point that Amnesty International does not believe what it says. His evidence? Their behavior. If they really believed Gitmo was a Gulag and the US was in the business of "disappearing" people (as they also claimed in their press conference), then they ought be calling for sanctions against the U.S., our ouster from Nato, the UN, etc.
But that's not what AI and other human rights groups do; au contraire, they have a whole agenda they expect to be enacted with the US as their knight in shining armor. Their position is, please report to the Hague, but only after you've cleaned the whole world up for us, please. Very reasonably, Anderson concludes:
these human rights organizations, whether Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, simply indulge themselves in rhetorical overkill. They do not mean what they say. Amnesty instinctively recognized this by putting its nonsensical charges in its press releases and not in its report. Human Rights Watch announces this horrific moral equivalence--then it calls merely for a special counsel to investigate further. Neither group means what it said, even though, like clockwork, letters to the editor will be received next week insisting that they really, really did. We, for our part, instinctively know better.
We also know that it is suicidally irresponsible for groups that depend on the moral force of their pronouncements to habitually say things they don't actually mean. Rhetorical inflation is a dangerous indulgence for the human rights movement. And it is a bad thing for the cause of human rights.
We also know that it is suicidally irresponsible for groups that depend on the moral force of their pronouncements to habitually say things they don't actually mean. Rhetorical inflation is a dangerous indulgence for the human rights movement. And it is a bad thing for the cause of human rights.
(this gets back to what I said a few posts ago about the argument ad Hitleram raising Hitler, not lowering Bush).
Ok. So now Durbin is sticking to his story (though slightly backtracking by issuing the requisite non-apology apology), and I'm thinking, this guy obviously does not mean what he says. If he did, he'd be calling for Bush and others to be impeached, etc. Which means that --like AI-- he engaged in sweeping rhetorical excess. Hmm. A Senator indulging in sweeping rhetorical excess that results in real damage to others. Where have I read about this in history?
Everything these days is called McCarthyism, but Durbin's comments actually are. The proper response is not his resignation, but a Senate censure (a la McCarthy). That way he not only pays the political price (probably his seat) for so irresponsibly running his mouth, but we force his Democratic colleagues to distance themselves from his remarks (or not, but at least they would be on record in an up or down vote for America to see who agrees with Durbin).
This would be a dynamite issue for Frist if he really wants to be President. Sigh. Where oh where are the Republicans who now how to fight politically?
(Here's a little Senate history; scroll past expulsion stuff to censure. I am off to send this idea to more influential bloggers to see if we can start a bandwagon.)
