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June 22, 2005

Defining Deviancy Up

Ryan Sager hits the ball out of the park with his essay regarding the hyperbolic commentary of the Democrats and their allies regarding the war. I've noted before that the use of overly strong comparisons tends to undermine the case for those of us who want to focus more attention on the actions of our government in the pursuit of the war on terror. Sager sums this point up brilliantly with this paragraph: "Which is the point. It is just as much the fault of the Amnesty Internationals of the world as it is of the Scott McClellans that, so long as we're not beheading hostages or fitting them up with electric wires, Bush administration apologists can declare victory."

As I've already noted, Senator Durbin could have chosen better comparisons in describing alleged acts at Guantanamo Bay. But the fact he chose unwisely doesn't wipe out the issue of what to do about the allegations. No, our Soldiers aren't Nazis or Communists or even close to it. But I believe we can all agree that we're striving for a significantly higher standard of behavior than just being better than our enemy, and I believe that we do, in fact, generally hold ourselves up to a markedly better standard. There remain some questions on the margin that I think we need to do a better job of answering. And those are the kinds of questions Congress gets paid to answer.

Unfortunately, we seem to have few in Congress actually interested in that sort of thing. The Republicans don't want to address the question at all because it might hurt their party, and the Democrats seem to be more interested in finding a club they can use against the President than in eliminating bad practices. Which leaves us where we are now, with one side of Congress telling us that everything is fine and the other half warning us that America in 2005 is Germany circa 1930 and whatever is happening at Guantanamo lost in the hyperbole.

I don't know where the line should be drawn for interrogation. I think that playing Christina Aguilera is well on the safe side of the line and that letting people sit in their own wastes is on the wrong side of the line, but that still leaves plenty of gray area. We pay Congress to serve as our representatives in this type of argument; it is incumbent on them to sit down and actually start asking the hard question: how far are we prepared to go to get information out of captured enemy combatants? The discussion probably should take place behind closed doors, since it's unwise to tell the enemy precisely where the line is, but the line does need to be drawn and enforced. And if the people we have in Congress now are incapable of acting like adults and holding such a discussion, then it's time we tossed them out on their ear and try again.