The Vision Thing

I was in the waiting room of the Eye Clinic at the University of Minnesota. Turns out I have small optical nerves. But never mind that. It's not the size that matters anyway.

While I was sitting there (with my tiny optical nerves bravely trying to process the signals from my retina) a gentleman in the row of seats behind me began to talk to someone about Sen. Dick Durbin from Illinois. Durbin recently read a speech on the floor of the Senate in which he describes some of the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay. In the speech, after reading from FBI reports on what can only be classified as torture of inmates, Durbin said that if one didn't know better, one might expect such acts to have been done under regimes such as Hitler's, Pol Pot's, or Stalin’s.

This speech has caused a lot of controversy, and the guy in the clinic seemed eager to talk about it. "I normally vote on the Democratic side, but this Senator has gone too far," he said. "To say that about our troops? This guy just hates America."

Ah yes, the old "if you criticize anything Americans do, you hate America" school of thought.

I held my tongue. We were in a public place, and of course the conversation was none of my business.

But if I were the one he had addressed those comments to, I would have said this: "You've got to be kidding. Durbin is a United States Senator. He has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. Do you really believe he hates America?

"Did you actually listen to or read Durbin's speech? He didn't say the American troops were the same as the Third Reich, or that Guantanamo Bay's prison camps were the same as the Gulags of Stalin. He said that if you read the reports -- reports that were written by the FBI -- and you didn't know better, you might think the actions were something from one of those regimes. That's a very appropriate comment. There have been some pretty ugly things done in our country's name lately, and we shouldn't be defending them."

Durbin has since apologized for his comments, probably because the talk show hosts and conservative bloggers were all but storming his house with pitchforks. So be it. Like some of the things Howard Dean says from time to time, it could have been phrased better, perhaps, but I personally saw no reason for him to apologize.

Let’s face it. We live in an ugly time. Our leadership has failed our country badly, and they are increasingly on the defense and desperate to change the subject. They also have willing allies in the broadcast media, namely most of the radio bandwidth and Fox News on TV, to help them turn up the volume and drown out dissent.

Things got to a new low, if that’s possible, on June 22 when Karl Rove said that liberals wanted to "offer therapy and understanding to our attackers" after 9/11.

Some White House flacks have said since then that Rove was talking about the Michael Moore and the Moveon.com-types. But I don’t remember any of those people talking about offering therapy and understanding to those who attacked this country. Most of those on the left that I know fully supported Bush’s decision to go after Bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But that fact doesn’t seem to matter to the right. Talk about revisionist history.

By now, we know what to expect from this White House. They will never admit a mistake. They will never adjust their policies to fit the reality on the ground, unless the political rewards are right. They will criticize their opponents for being partisan, then turn around make the most outrageously partisan attacks imaginable. And they will lie profusely if it suits their purposes.

The picture that is emerging is that the White House saw an opening for distraction and division with the Durbin controversy. So Rove drove a truck through that opening.

The funny thing is, anyone who could step back and look at this objectively would say that it is Durbin, not Rove, who has the clearer vision.

Later that week, a news report said the U.S. government has admitted that some of its detainees in Guantanamo Bay were in fact tortured. Chalk one up for Mr. Durbin.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050624/pl_afp/unustortureguantanamo_050624132300

Do those of us who criticize the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay "hate America?" I guess I would say that I hate the idea of Americans torturing other people. But I certainly don’t hate America. And the fact that I would have to even make that reassurance is one of the astonishing things about political discourse today. Those on the right, seemingly, don’t want to talk about the real issue. They want to smear the opposition, to say that those who don’t agree with this administration are somehow un-American. And I expect we’ll hear more of this type of attack in the days ahead.

Would those who make the "hate America" charge really defend the use of torture? The killings of detainees? The sexual abuse we saw at Abu Ghraib? That is what they want to defend? There should be a line drawn when it comes to supporting our troops. I’m all for supporting the troops if they don’t pile people into naked human pyramids and make thumbs-up signs. I fully recognize that it was just a few troops that did this. But we have to be willing to say that wrong is wrong.

I don’t think it is unpatriotic to criticize Americans for resorting to torture. I don’t think it gives aid and comfort to our enemies. I think it could prevent us from becoming our enemies.

Melt the guns

There has been a lot of coverage of the mass shooting in Ohio, where a young man went on a rampage and killed 5 others and himself. But I found another story— one that will probably not receive a lot of coverage outside of Minnesota—to be completely heartbreaking.

A four-year old boy, at a family gathering where people were target shooting, somehow got behind one of the targets. He was shot and killed. "Can you print that he was perfect?" asked his grieving father when reporters interviewed him.

It was an accident. Like thousands of other shooting accidents each year, it will never show up in crime statistics. But it is a sad illustration of the high risk, and high cost, of gun owning.

Both stories are tragedies. Both show once again how unsafe this society is, because of its obsession with guns. Perhaps for some, it is easier to write off the random mass shooting because it seems someone has just gone over the edge. But this simple accident in Minnesota brings to mind a question that I have never heard a good answer to. How can it be worth it, considering the risk, to own a gun?

Certainly it’s true that our children face more risk from other things, for example automobiles. But if we weigh risk and benefit, where is the benefit of owning a gun?

I have been reading in political web sites recently that Democratic politicians have begun to drop gun regulation as an issue. Strategists have come to the conclusion that an anti-gun stance simply is political poison in this country. It is another reminder that I live in a society that at times I can only describe as insane.

Ohio:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5041894,00.html

Minnesota:
http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_151103328.html