Not Near Enough

A Teary-eyes Dick Durbin put on an unconvincing dog-and-pony show Tuesday, delivering a careful non-apology that neither retracted his slander of American soldiers, nor admitted fault. Dick Durbin is trying to get away with apologizing for making a bad word choice, not for minimizing the Holocaust and the killing fields.

As Ace said:

A genuine apology would disavow the Nazi-Khmer Rouge-Soviet comparisons. A genuine apology would distinguish between those hellish regimes and our own. A genuine apology would actually confess true error, not just in clumsy phraseology (an error of happenstance). A genuine apology would confess that his words were intentionally grandstanding and slanderous, and that these words were deliberately chosen for effect, not blundered into by some sloppy draftsmanship.

Durbin didn't issue an apology, he offered a blame-shifting feint. Infuriatingly, Durbin sought to hide behind the words of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, were he alive, would likely have throttled Durbin on the spot, while restating:

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

Right you are, Mr. President. Right you are.