Stupid Comparisons

I've been hearing quite often from Democrats and liberals about how we're running a gulag and comparing our troops to the Nazis. Recently Dick Durbin made comments along these lines. In describing the treatment of prisoners witnessed by an FBI agent he stated

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...

These comparisons are inappropriate and way off base. The Nazis, Soviets and people like Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein systematically killed thousands, even millions of people. They had a policy which had the explicit goal of killing a certain group of people in mass amounts. At the worst a few isolated incidents of American troops killing individuals have been discovered. There is no systematic policy where thousands of people are lined up and killed. Even though he was trying to point out the inappropriate handling of prisoners by using this comparison the images that most people will think of are the mass killings of those regimes, not how they treated prisoners.

I have no problem with disagreeing with how the military is handling interrogations or incarcerations. I don't agree with much of what they're doing. But to compare the actions of American troops to the mass murdering regimes of the past serves no useful purpose and is grossly out of line. Are liberals so devoid of debating skills that they have to resort to this kind of idiocy? No wonder they lost control of the legislative and executive branches of government. If they keep this crap up they're only going to dig themselves a bigger hole and cede even more power to the Republicans.