MYTH: Senator Durbin was wrong to compare the conduct of the US military at Guantanamo to the actions of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.

 

Senator Durbin is refusing to apologize and instead says that the Bush administration should apologize for abandoning the Geneva Convention….Obviously, he doesn't know what the Geneva conventions are. Obviously, he's never read them. Obviously, he doesn't know they don't apply to enemy combatants. But we'll put that aside for just a minute. General Clark, these comments are insidious; they're repugnant. There's propaganda. This misinformation is outrageous. These comparisons are over the top, and they put our troops in harm's way. (Sean Hannity, “Gen Clark Reacts to Sen. Durbin on Gitmo,” Fox News, 6/17/05)

 

It's important that we don't let Dick Durbin off the hook too quickly. And, it's important that we not let his shills and enablers turn the tables by saying Republicans are merely attacking him to switch the subject from our alleged abuse of terrorist POWs. That's basically what Fox News' Juan Williams did when he grudgingly admitted that Durbin's likening of Gitmo to the genocidal Soviet, Cambodian and Nazi regimes was over the top. The decent, though persistently misguided Williams said that Durbin's crude comparison should not detract from his very important point: that America is abusing prisoners in Guantanamo. (David Limbaugh, “Time for Unanimous Outrage at Durbin,” Town Hall, 6/21/05)

 

Mr. Durbin's most grievous offense, of course, was his defamation of American troops who protect us from terrorist operatives, trainers, recruiters, bomb-makers and financiers confined at Guantanamo. He has not only derided their service. He has legitimated our enemies' efforts to wage war against us by suggesting the government whose orders they follow is literally -- as well as morally -- equivalent to the most repressive regimes the world has ever known. (Frank J. Gaffney, “Dustbin Durbin,” The Washington Times, 6/21/05)

 

If Terri Schiavo had been dehydrated to death at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Dick Durbin would be reading her autopsy report from the Senate floor. It would be an occasion for great moral anguish. How did the U.S. sink so low as to adopt such Nazi-like callousness toward disabled prisoners of war? One could imagine him saying. Instead, Democrats -- even as they spent part of the week crassly celebrating, with news of Schiavo's autopsy report in hand, the human rights abuse of euthanasia against the disabled -- are in a moral lather over the paucity of proper air conditioning terrorists receive at Guantanamo Bay. (George Neumayr, “Blind, Deaf, and Dumb,” The American Spectator, 6/17/05)

 

Reality

 

When is it acceptable to criticize the actions of our country -- on the floor of the Senate, where the policies are most often decided? Or is that beyond the pale -- have we turned into a government of yes-men who kow-tow to the will and desires of one wickedly irresponsible Administration?

 

Sen. Durbin (D-IL) entered the following description of what is actually happening to the inmates at  Camp X-Ray into the Congressional Record on Wed, June 15:

 

“Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and

foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, 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. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”

 

Durbin has been raked across the coals because of this statement. Why? Because he mentioned the Nazis. Read his statement again—does he at any point claim that the US military is turning into the Third Reich? Does he compare W to Hitler? Cheney to Pol Pot? No—he was invoking apt comparisons for a situation that few Americans could probably ever imagine the US military condoning, let alone orchestrating. He is making these comparisons so that Americans and his fellow senators could obtain a true grasp of the situation, because we should never be like those regimes we detest. The United States should strive to ensure that it does not at all resemble these regimes of horror. A good start would be to never employ the techniques being used at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo.

Torture is not a core value of our country. On the other hand, when an opposition senator takes note of our errors and works toward correcting our course, he is demonstrating one of the fundamental principles of American government: we're a system of checks and balances. The executive branch acts poorly and the legislative branch calls them on it. That exactly how the system is supposed to work. This is just what Senator Durbin was trying to accomplish last week on the Senate floor.

 

Is Camp X-Ray the model of how the American people want their military to behave and treat prisoners of war? (Of course the prisoners held at Camp X-Ray are not POWs, but enemy combatants -- at least according to this administration's legal minds. This allows the US to conduct its incarceration and interrogation of these prisoners outside the bounds of the Geneva Convention. POWs have rights; enemy combatants do not--apparently some members of the right are proud of the US abuse of this distinction). Your debunker has been to Phnom Penh and seen the remnants of Pol Pot’s torturous regime. Just viewing the empty interrogation rooms of Tuol Sleng, the high school turned torture camp, and imagining the horrors that took place in them was enough to feel that certain rules and regulations as they pertain to the treatment of prisoners should be upheld, especially by the United States. We do not equate the United States with the Khmer Rouge, Nazi Germany, or Stalin's Soviet Union. These brutal regimes tortured and killed their own citizens, and committed unimaginable atrocities. It is because we are not like them that we oppose the methods being used at Gitmo, and it is essential that voices raise those objections in a free society.

 

The litany of offenses committed by the US at Gitmo is seemingly never-ending. In addition to the torture cited above by Sen. Durbin, other well-known conduct breaches include the fact that many combatants have been held for years without having access to legal representation or even having been charged with a crime, and the possible existence of videos of torture perpetuated by US military forces that the US government fails to release. Think Abu Ghraib in real-time.

 

What it all comes down to is the question of the role the United States wants to play in the world. Obviously the current incarnation of the US wants to be the king of the world. The Bush administration wants to determine which treaties are worth adhering to, which countries have the right to remain sovereign, and which prisoners of war are worthy enough to be POWs and be treated according to the Geneva Convention (oops, I guess Abu Ghraib proved that even POWs do not get treated according to the Geneva Convention by the US military). But if we truly want to be leaders in this ever-increasing global society, we have to act like it. A good way to start this effort would be to transition the enemy combatants to POW status and treat them like people. Charge them, prosecute them if necessary, but give them the courtesy that the US expects our own soldiers to receive if captured during a time of war.

 

Burying our heads in the sand and pretending Camp X-Ray is the way modern warfare should be conducted is not the answer to anything. Calling the public’s attention to atrocities perpetrated in their names, like Senator Durbin did last week, is how the modern media should be used. Apparently the right isn’t all that modern….What a surprise!