Jdn, re: "A house divided unto itself must fall. I fear that if we can allow Senators like Dicky Durbin to espouse ANTIAMERICAN statements, with no fear of punishment, we are going to lose this war in Iraq and against Terrorism in general. If the media and the powers that be dont soon TOUGHEN up and start repecting America and what it stands for, we all are going to lose that which we cherish most, freedom."
Maybe, just maybe, that's a little bit of an overstatement?
Let's look at the other side. If the actions Durbin was referring to were done by American soldiers, what is the price of silence? What message would silence in the face of such actions send to the world?
The fact is that wrong is wrong, no matter who does it. Some of our men and women are just as capable of committing atrocities as are the men who murdered women and children at My Lai and elsewhere while "serving" in our armed forces. It's the job of the press in a free society to expose such atrocities and it's the job of the Congress to condemn them. That's how we keep our moral compass.
Yes, the exposure of the activities Durbin condemned does incite more people to terrorism. The fact that he condemned them as the kind of actions that Nazis might have done and that Americans should never do will not, however, incite more terrorism. If you want to find actions on the part of Americans in power that might incite more terrorism, try the following list:
Approving or "not noticing" methods of interrogation that subject both guilty and innocent to humiliation, torture and indeterminate incarceration,
Making inflammatory statements like, "Bring it on" to potential terrorists,
Breaking down doors in the middle of the night and hauling off Iraqis. Then compound that by releasing little or no information on their fate, by holding them without hearings, and by penning the innocent up with the guilty so that the disease spreads,
Snatching and transporting uncharged men and women to nations that WILL torture them brutally,
Creating and maintaining a "detention facility" at Gitmo where men are held without charge, without hearing and without any just opportunity to contest the charges against them. For good measure, make the period of incarceration indeterminate and make sure all of the incarcerated are Muslim. To really ice the cake, viciously fight any measures designed to provide some form of hearings for them.
I think there are more items that could be added to the list but these are some of the things that would incite me if I were looking in from the outside. And they'd incite me a lot more than some goofball senator who made it clear that he disapproved of such acts. But that's just me.
My bottom line is that while you write; "If the media and the powers that be dont soon TOUGHEN up and start repecting America and what it stands for, we all are going to lose that which we cherish most, freedom," what you really should write is;
" If America doesn't continue to stand for essential values that earn respect, we'll lose that which we cherish most, freedom." Ed |
