Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin yesterday compared the US military to the Nazis, the Soviets running gulags and Pol Pot. I'm not defending torture --real torture-- in instances where it occurs, but spare me. Detainees at Gitmo average a 13-lb. weight gain during confinement.
Couldn't find a link to it, but the front page of the print version W. Times has a little box that says it all (numbers being from death camps only, not other mass killings).
Hitler. . . . . . . . . . .9 million dead
Soviet Gulags. . . .2.7 million dead
Pol Pot. . . . . . . . . .1.7 million dead
Gitmo . . . . . . . . . . .0 dead
Koran abuses at Gitmo: 20 (15 of which perpetrated by prisoners themselves)
The argumentem ad Hitleram is a shameful way to express your disagreement with a political opponent, but this abuse of language is more than a colossal breech of etiquette and fair play. The eventual effect of this use of Hitler's name in vain is not --as the proponents would like-- the demonization of their political enemies. Instead, it lessens the sense of evil we associate with Hitler's actions. In other words, I think Bush=Hitler has the long-term effect of raising Hitler by obscuring the extent of his evil. Maybe he was only as bad as Bush. . . . See Josef Pieper's essay "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power."
UPDATE: Powerline points out Al-Jazeera is having a field day w/ Sen. Durbin's comments, Paul Mirengoff at The Weekly Standard has a good thought piece on "Argument by Metaphor," and two follow-up posts here and here.
