Shoot the Messenger, Ignore the Message

Today’s “Our Opinion” column in the Sioux City Journal (A8) was a real doozy! One wonders if, having so successfully shot the messenger (Senator Durbin of Illinois), our right-wing editor has any moral outrage left to expend on the actual message! Some comparisons are meant to be read in context and are nuanced, and Senator Durbin was obviously not seeking to make a one-on-one comparison between the U.S. and the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. However, one can imagine his frustration at reading an FBI agent’s report of torture being applied at our prison at Guantanamo (following on the earlier reports by Amnesty International, the Red Cross, etc.). One can also imagine his frustration that Americans have largely treated the repeated instances of torture that have come to light in such a blasé fashion. After all, where’s the “healthy debate” that the Journal so piously lauds in today’s column? Certainly nowhere to be found in the Journal itself. I believe Senator Durbin, in part, sought to shake Americans out of their moral complacency, not realizing that our moral strictures these days too often seem to stop at our own shores. Sadly, the message – of torture, secret prisons, detention without charge or trial – amounts to little more than the proverbial ‘cry in the wilderness.’

Peace!
Historian