My strongest memory of Dick Durbin is from 20 years ago. After the revelations about the criminal torture US soldiers had carried out at the Cheney-Bush Administration’s Guantanamo Bay gulag – crimes that should have been prosecuted immediately once they become public – Durbin at least denounced them in the Senate.
Then he did this:
Ending a week of negative publicity and partisan furor, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) took to the Senate floor Tuesday evening and formally apologized for comparing U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Nazi Germany, Soviet gulags and the Cambodian genocide carried out on the orders of Pol Pot.It amazed me then and still does to this day that anyone, much less a US Senator, would think he needed to apologize to Holocaust survivors for criticizing torture. I’m sorry, there is just something wrong with anyone who does that. It’s genuinely disgusting.
“I’m sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing, should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy,” said a choked-up Durbin. “I’m also sorry if anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military.”
Immediately following Durbin’s short floor speech, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime prisoner of war in Vietnam, praised Durbin for his “heartfelt statement.”
“All of us, I believe, who have had the opportunity to serve in public life from time to time have said things that we deeply regret,” McCain said. “He did the right thing, the courageous thing, and I believe we can put this to rest.” (2)
John McCain was at that time the mainstream media’s favorite Republican, and he was known for having been tortured, also criminally and unjustly, by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war. But McCain gave his blessing to Durbin’s apology. Praised him for cowardly and pathetically backing off of his criticism of torture being conducted by the US government.
Durbin’s bizarre and morally indefensible retreat from his condemnation of officially sanctioned torture at Guantanamo was one of the most pathetic but unfortunately all-too-symptomatic of the practice of elite immunity for even the ugliest crimes. And his fellow Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, when he became President, also declined to even seriously criminally investigate those crimes. Although he did state publicly, “We tortured some folks.”
But he and his Administration were not willing to hold the actual torturers and those who directed their actions legally accountable for those crimes. And he also even in stating that adopted a compulsively middle-of-the-road position between criticizing torture and defending it:
“The character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard,” Obama said.The late Michael Brooks reported on that comment at the time. (4)
Although the president’s moral verdict on the Bush-era interrogation tactics was unmistakable, he did express some sympathy for the officials who ordered them in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
”In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong — we did a whole lot of things that were right, but we did some things that were contrary to our values,” Obama said. “I understand why it happened. It’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were.”
“People did not know whether more attacks were imminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots,” the president said.
“People did not know whether more attacks were imminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots,” the president said.
“But, having said all that, we did some things that were wrong ..., Obama added. (3)
Note that in that report. Liz Cheney, with whom Kamala Harris prominently campaigned in 2024, bitterly criticized Obama for even verbal condemnation of torture.
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2022 on the torture program initiated and authorized by the Cheney-Bush Administration, which Sen. Dick Durbin tearfully apologized for even criticizing when it was going on.
To give Durbin credit for a more recent position, he did vote in November of last year to suspend some arms sales to Israel over their war on the civilians of Gaza:
“I voted today to suspend three specific arms sales to Israel. My reason is very straightforward. It is reported that more than 43,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict in Gaza—60 percent of them have been women, children, and elderly. The denial of humanitarian aid to Gaza threatens the lives of so many more—particularly children facing starvation.The essentially unconditional support by the Biden and Trump Administrations for Israel’s explicitly genocidal actions against the Palestinians since 2023 will be one of the worst blots on American history. Yes, foreign policy is complicated and often amoral, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been one of the most confounding and difficult problems for American foreign policy. But, even far more so than the clear criminality and immorality of the Cheney-Bush torture policy, knowing support of a systematic genocide that was known by the whole world to be happening in real time was and is indefensible.
“This war must end. Israel’s strategy of deadly attacks on and near civilian populations must end as well. The United States should not be sending arms and ammunition that continue to take the lives of innocent people. It is time for real humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinian people. I will stand by Israel, but I will not support the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians.” (6)
And now we have the Trump 2.0 regime using criticism of that genocide to blackmail universities into directly suppressing dissent over it and over US policy supporting it. And even using it as an excuse for illegal kidnappings and acts of state terror by ICE against innocent people in the US.
Democratic politicians need to be better than this. So do Republicans. But at this juncture it seems silly to even suggest that Trump-loyal Republicans want to be anything other than supporters of all that.
Notes:
(1) Carnex, Jordain et al (2025): Retiring ‘with dignity’: Younger Democrats heap praise on Durbin for stepping aside. Politico 04/23/2025. <https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/23/dick-durbin-retirement-age-generational-change-00306671> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(2) Pierce, Emily (2005): Durbin Issues Tearful Apology. Roll Call 06/21/2005. <https://rollcall.com/2005/06/21/durbin-issues-tearful-apology/> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(3) Gerstein, Josh (2014): Obama: ‘We tortured some folks’. Politico 08/01/2014. <https://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/john-brennan-torture-cia-109654> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(4) Obama: We Tortured Some Folks. The Majority Report YouTube channel 08/05/2014. <https://youtu.be/7A8BTFq3I9I?si=jUFVF6RU2-1Juxhr> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(5) Taylor, Ketta & Epstein, Elisa (2022): Legacy of the “Dark Side”: The Costs of Unlawful U.S. Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11. Human Rights Watch 01/09/2022.<https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2022/Costs%20of%20War%20-%20Legacy%20of%20the%20%27Dark%20Side%27%20-%20Tayler%20and%20Epstein%20-%20FINAL%20Jan%209%202022.pdf> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(6) Durbin Statement On Vote To Suspend The Sale Of Some U.S-Made Weapons To Israel. Dick Durbin Senate website 11/20/2024. <https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-statement-on-vote-to-suspend-the-sale-of-some-us-made-weapons-to-israel> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
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