Inflammatory words in wartime
Glynn Custred
June 26, 2005
In 1954 the Senate censured Republican Joseph
McCarthy for clearly stepping
across the line of propriety expected of a member of that body.
McCarthy's
wrong doing was not that he called attention to Communist subversion;
indeed
after the fall of the Soviet Union the Venona files revealed that the
Soviets were engaged in subversive activities with the aid of agents
embedded in American society. McCarthy's wrong doing lay in the way he
demagogued the threat with no evidence even against even those who were
working for the enemy; bullying and harming innocent people in the
process, unsettling institutions, frightening the population and
providing ammunition for those who really did want to hurt the country.
Last week, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, followed in
McCarthy'
s footsteps by crossing the line of propriety expected of a United
States
Senator. He crossed that line when he placed the United States, in its
defensive war against terrorism, in the same category with the most
heinous
regimes of the twentieth century; Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia
and
Pol Pot's Cambodia; regimes that swept up multitudes of innocent people
into
the maw of totalitarian dictatorship to perish by the millions in the
death
camps of those countries.
Durbin's words go beyond name calling, for what a United States Senator
says carries more weight than what others may say, both by virtue of the
public trust conferred on him by the voters he represents, and by the
position of responsibility he holds in the government. This weight gives
Durbin's name calling an aura of authority that our enemies desperately
need
in a war that cannot be won on the battle field alone, turning the
people of
the Middle East against us in the process, and thus delaying their
eventual
entry into the twentieth-first century. Such defamatory rhetoric is also
an
affront to our soldiers. Worse still, it prolongs the violence by
encouraging the enemy to believe that an increasingly shrill political
struggle in the United States will eventually win for them the military
struggle; a prolongation of combat that will cost more American lives.
This is certainly no way to "support our troops."
Senator Durbin has the right to question the policies of the executive
branch of the government. Indeed when he believes that the
administration is
engaged in wrong doing he has the duty to so, yet with the decorum
require
of a body like the United States Senate. That is why we have a balance
of
powers in our system of government. Yet Dick Durbin, especially because
he
is a United States Senator, has no right to give aid and comfort to the
enemy as he did in his inflammatory language. Senator Durbin's dangerous
demagoguery, therefore, calls for censure by his Senate colleagues like
the
censure dealt his predecessor Joseph McCarthy fifty-one years ago.
To do nothing makes it look as if senators either think Dick Durbin
might
have a point, or that they do not care about the propaganda damage such
reckless talk can do when the country is at war. A censure, on the other
hand, would show that such inadvertent support by a United States
Senator
for people trying to kill Americans will not be tolerated. It would also
serve to dampen the rhetoric of excess that is corrupting political
rhetoric.
For days Durbin toughed it out refusing to admit any wrong doing, while
Democrats kept silent. For example, when asked about Durbin's comments
Hillary Clinton pointedly refused to comment. Silence, however, left the
field uncontested, allowing conservatives to claim that Democrats were
raising the risk level to our troops and to the civilian population for
the
sake of petty partisan politics, and implying that Democrats are really
anti-American at heart. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, and the White
House, did indeed object, as did Tom Delay in the House and a few
others.
Senate Republicans in general, however, expressed only mild disapproval
or,
like their Democratic colleagues, kept quiet. It obviously wasn't all
that
big a deal with them.
Stonewalling usually works for Democrats. This time, however, pressure
from
the public was strong enough that Durbin had to deal with the problem in
some way. His response was an emotional apology for hurting the feelings
of
veterans, "I never, ever intended disrespect", and Jews, "I'm sorry if
anything I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter
memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time." The
political nature of this "apology", however, rings loudly in Durbin's
silence on the other tragedies of our time; Stalin's and Pol Pot's mass
exterminations that account for the loss of far more human lives than
Hitler
's. But then how many Russian and Cambodian voters are there in the
United
States?
The genuineness of Durbin's "apology" was also revealed when Durbin told
us
who was really at fault. "My critics on the Republican side have
carefully
orchestrated this", he said. "They have used all the resources at his
disposal: Fox, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh. They clearly want to
keep the spotlight on me and away from other issues". The message to
Al-Jezeera: "The American right wing muzzles US Senator on revelations
of
atrocities against Muslims". Although Durbin might not have intended
"disrespect" to our armed forces in harm's way, he has no intention of
minimizing the danger they face in protracted combat because of his
words.
Democrats were relieved by Durbin's tactical retreat. Harry Reid, Senate
Democratic minority leader, Diane Feinstein, D. from California, Joe
Liebermann, D. from Connecticut and Barack Obama, D. from Illinois, were
at
the back of the chamber shaking his hand as he left. Some Republicans
were
also glad to get this minor inconvenience out of the way. Senator Mike
De
Wine of Ohio was also one of the hand shakers, and Senator John McCain,
R.
from Arizona rushed forward on the Senate floor to praise Durbin for his
"heart felt statement", saying that he had done "the right thing, the
courageous thing, and I believe we can put this issue behind us".
There will, therefore, be no censure. The Senate will "move on"; the
state
of American political discourse will further decline and our enemies
will
continue to receive aid and comfort from the upper chamber of the United
States Congress thanks to both Democrats and their Republican enablers.
Glynn Custred
is co-author of Proposition 209 and is a professor at California State
University Hayward.
