It's public self-criticism for heretics now

I'm having a hard time assimilating what I've been seeing in the news the last few days. Like the Dick Durbin flap.

Here's a US Senator, who made a straightforward statement in the Senate last week, denouncing torture in American facilities abroad. Sick, sadistic criminal acts of torture, flat-out illegal under American law. In doing so, he used references to three familiar dictatorships to make the point that such acts were not only criminal, but should be alien to a democracy and to America.

Again, we're talking about acts illegal under American law.

Then the Mighty Wurlitzer that is the Republican slime machine went after him, as summarized well here: Durbin Apologizes for Remarks on Abuse by Shailagh Murray Washington Post 06/22/05. "Abuse," otherwise known as sick, sadistic torture, criminal acts under American law.

After his previous mild non-apology apology, the Reps just revved up the wailing, denouncing Durbin for daring to question the practice of torture in the Bush Gulag. So on Wednesday, he recanted, as Murray describes:

Durbin, the Democratic whip, acknowledged that "more than most people, a senator lives by his words" but that "occasionally words will fail us and occasionally we will fail words." Choking up, he said: "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them, I extend my heartfelt apologies."

He singled out the victims of the Holocaust, which Durbin called "the greatest moral tragedy of our time," as well as U.S. troops.

Has it really come to this? A Senator stands on the Senate floor and denounces Sick, sadistic criminal acts of brutal, sadistic torture, illegal acts under American law, many of which read like something straight out of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom.

And a few days later, he's blasted with such criticism from not only the Republicans, but many members of his own party. Attacked to the point he feels compelled to stand on the Senate floor again to tearfully apologize. To tearfully apologize for having denouncing criminal acts of torture.

This ain't good.

I realize the Anti-Defamation League joined in the criticism of Durbin's remark, and he made special mention of Holocaust victims Wednesday as he confessed his sin of having criticized acts of sick, sadistic torture.

But I would ask along with Bob Somerby (Daily Howler 06/22/05):

As Durbin frog-marched his way through his forced confession, he made the
following comment: "I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain
to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral
tragedy of our time.” Peculiar, isn’t it? Why would a Holocaust survivor be
offended when someone objects to that conduct?

Good question. Somerby also talks about the comment by today's Richard Daley. It reminded me of the time when his father, Richard Daley the Elder, was at the 1968 Democratic convention. His cops were beating the crap out of antiwar protesters in the streets of Chicago. When Senator Abraham Ribicoff said at the podium during his nominating speech for George McGovern - well, gosh darn, in objecting to the police misconduct outside, he said, "With George McGovern, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."

Gestapo tactics? Did he make a reference to the Nazis? The elder Mayor Daley was shown on TV shouting angrily at Ribicoff, saying what seemed to be, "[Cheney] you! [Cheney] you!"

I guess the apple didn't fall too far from the tree in this case. Mayor Daley the Younger said in rebuking Dick Durbin, "I think it's a disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that." Somerby makes the painfully obvious observation:

But Dick! Some “man or woman in the military” (or in some affiliated force) did act like that in the matters in question. To Daley, it isn’t disgraceful to act that way. It’s only disgraceful to discuss it.

And anyone who seriously thinks that criticizing such criminal acts is any way attacking all soldiers is seriously deranged. That doesn't stop the Republican noise machine from repeating it endlessly, though. Somerby might have added that Bush officials have been recently bragging about the number of servicepeople who have been prosecuted, convicted and (mildly) punished having been found guilty of such acts in military court proceedings. At Abu Ghuraib, some of them were famously photographed in the act.

Things like this make me nostalgic, just like Molly Ivins is, for an earlier time when we could feel that democracy and the rule of law were far more secure in America. A time when it was easier to be confident that good sense would prevail over any attempt to impose an authoritarian government on the United States. Times like, say, the worst days of the Nixon administration. Speaking with particular reference to the British memos from the prewar days, she wrote:

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense - although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now. (Molly Ivins, Dismissing Downing Street WorkingforChange.com 06/21/05)

And that seems to be the state to which we have come.

Tags: bob somerby, dick durbin, holocaust, molly ivins, torture