Ramesh is so right, and this is a
crucial point. I understand how frustrated everyone is today, and
especially after the Berg atrocity, we want and need to strike out. But
we are always quick to criticize moral equivalence arguments when the
Left so frequently makes them — like the idiocy of comparing the
Patriot Act to the Japanese internment. It has been dismaying today to
listen to the flip side of moral equivalence: the high-minded
comparisons of the U.S. stewardship of Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s murderous
atrocities. What makes America great is America’s standards, not
Saddam’s comparative standards. What makes Abu Ghraib monstrous is how
much of an aberration it is from American standards; the conduct does
not become less ghastly because it is better than what Saddam used to
do. If, for example, the Supreme Court doesn’t think we get that very
basic distinction, why would it conceivably side with the government in
the combatants cases?