Stones Cry Out

I'm disappointed that as a Christian you aren't less upset by Durbin's analogy than by the atrocities occuring in the name of spreading American freedom and democracy. Attacking Durbin is a distraction from the real issue: America should not condone torture. Prisoners were tortured at Abu Ghraib. Our government defended the use of torture. And so the practice is perpetuated at Guantanamo. We should all be ashamed.

Here is the supposedly objectionable quote from Durbin:
"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."

An emailer at Andrew Sullivan’s blog writes:
“As a fellow Christian, I am grieved and appalled at what is going on. It is an abomination, a desecration of the image of God which no child of God should allow to be undertaken in the name of their self-defense. I am also deeply disturbed at the rhetoric of those who would defend the administration's 'dirty hands' policy. And at the way that, increasingly, criticizing the Administration is equated with anti-Americanism, immoralism and the like.”

Sullivan himself writes:
“Frankly, I've been amazed that the Christian right hasn't been more vocal. But, hey, once faith has been transformed into partisan politics, you end up justifying any number of things… If you had been told that prisoners had been found in this state in one of Saddam's or Stalin's jails, would you have believed it? Of course, you would… Is this the kind of behavior more associated with despots than with democracies? Of course it is. When a country starts treating its prisoners like animals, it has lost its moral bearings...I supported this war in large part because I wanted to end torture, abuse and cruelty in Iraq. I did not support it in order, two and a half years later, to be finding specious rhetorical justifications for torture, abuse and cruelty by Americans. [Terrorists] are far, far worse, among the most despicable and evil enemies we have ever faced. Our treatment of their prisoners is indeed Club Med compared to their fathomless barbarism. But since when is our moral compass set by them ? The West is a civilization built on a very fragile web of law and humanity. We do not treat people in our custody as animals. We do not justify it. We do not change the subject. We do not accuse those highlighting it of aiding the enemy. We do not joke about it. We simply don't do it. This administration - by design, improvisation, desperation, arrogance, incompetence, and wilfull blindness - has enabled this to occur. They must be held accountable until this cancer is rooted out for good.”