Durbin is Too Ignorant of History to Be Dems’ #2...But Don't Demonize Him Either
By Nathan Smith
Posted On June 23, 2005
Dick Durbin should resign from the Senate leadership for comparing Guantanamo to Hitler and Pol Pot. If the Democrats don't force him to, they'll lose support, and they'll deserve to. No apology he makes now has any meaning, because he's doing it to save his job and can't be believed. But I don’t mean that Durbin is bad or crazy or even unpatriotic.
Let's take a look at the remarks:
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.
Would "you" have believed that those actions were done by Nazis etc.? That depends on who "you" is.
If "you" are a not-too-thoughtful, naive suburban patriot, who associates the Flag and the Fourth of July and the good ol' USA with everything good and happy, and whose knowledge of the outside world and the past is limited and shadowy and consists mostly of ominous specters like Hitler, "you" just might listen to Durbin's description of prison abuse and think "That sounds like Hitler."
If "you" are older, more mature, and have thought seriously about history, ethics, and power, "you" would think:
That could be Hitler or Stalin, or it could be dozens of contemporary Third World regimes, or possibly even the LAPD on a bad day. You would know that democracies have done things like that before, many times, probably more times than we'll ever know. You would regret that, you would hope to change it, but at the same time you would never forget the vast moral gap between the Western democracies and your average run-of-the-mill Third World thugocracy, and the moral gap again between those thugocracies and the horrors of Hitler or Pol Pot.
We need the first kind of "you" out there in the heartland. We don't need them in the US Senate leadership.
How bad was the abuse Durbin describes, really—judging just from the statement? How would I, or you, feel if you were treated that way?
“Urinated the defecated on themselves” is the worst item in Durbin’s list. I’d be interested to know: Did this happen to your average prisoner once, twice, a few times, routinely, what? And “left alone for 18-24 hours.” What would drive me crazy is not knowing when anyone would come. I know a person can really suffer, in a desperate position and waiting. I got locked in my great-aunt’s basement once, not for more than half-an-hour, and it almost drove me crazy. If I were sitting in my own urine and feces… yeah, that would really suck. Was it an oversight on the guards’ part, or deliberate? Benign or malign neglect? Or was it an interrogation technique—in which case, it’s probably excessive, though it’s hard to decide; it doesn’t seem to inflict pain… But I think this one should not have happened.
“Barefooted detainee shaking with cold” and “temperature in unventilated room well over 100 degrees.” First, these don’t sound like deliberate abuse. More like neglect. Second, the cold sounds like scout camp, and the heat—well, let’s just say I could take it. I’m not too impressed with this item.
“Extremely loud rap music.” This, of course, was the line that made Durbin a laughing-stock. If you’re trying to shock people, you have to be careful not to ruin the mood with details like this. The rap music line also makes Durbin’s line about Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot risible. No, we wouldn’t have thought the description was of one of those regimes; when they were in business, rap didn’t exist!
“
Almost unconscious…
unbearably hot.” These kind of subjective words superficially strengthen the impression but also make it suspect, because they have no verifiable, testable meaning.
“Pulling his hair out.” Well, that’s his problem if he wants to engage in such self-destructive behavior. You could say “the conditions drove him to it.” Naw, I don’t buy that.
There’s cause for concern here, I think. Let’s not let that get drowned out in the uproar. Honestly I can’t decide whether stuff that happened at Guantanamo that we should be ashamed of or not. But to compare this to Pol Pot is to display too much ignorance of the history, degrees and variations of human suffering to be a reliable judge of anything in such matters.
A common theme among great contributors to ethical thought is the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Jesus). Act according to rules which you could consistently will would be universally practiced (Kant). We should judge ourselves as if through the eyes of an “impartial spectator” (Adam Smith). Imagine the kind of world that you would design if you were placed behind a “veil of ignorance” about what your place in that world would be; then strive to make the world so (Rawls). The Golden Rule is the opposite of hypocrisy. It is applying the same standard to oneself as one applies to others.
Durbin is trying to judge us by the standards by which we judge others. That’s good. The trouble is that he’s doing it incompetently. If an impartial spectator surveyed at all of 20th- and 21st-century and, in reaction to the abuses at Guantanamo, concluded that the best analogy was the regime of Pol Pot, that impartial spectator would be, not a moron perhaps, but intellectually on a par with a moderately bright 10th-grader. We don’t need a moderately bright 10th-grader in the Senate leadership of the opposition.
Of course, it was only one remark. The rest of Durbin’s statement may or may not be good policy advice, but it was not outrageous. It does seem a bit McCarthyite to fire a guy for one remark. But that’s politics. Soundbites kill. And Durbin really shouldn’t mind. He should probably welcome it. Durbin has splattered a lot of extremist paint all over the anti-torture cause and dealt it a serious setback. If Durbin loses his job for this, he can be a martyr. He might be more useful to the anti-torture cause in that role, and make up for a bit of the damage he’s done to them. And it will be good to get him out of a job for which he obviously lacks the maturity.
But hold the rancor. He was trying to be conscientious. Fire him by all means, but I respect the guy.
Nathan Smith blogs for Citizen Journal under the name, "Good Samaritan" and at "Towards a Good Samaritan World". He also self-publishes at Liberation Theology for Free-Market Economists.
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