John L. Perry
Wednesday, June 22, 2005

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  That's the flimsy, sneaky way Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin acted under pressure from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who runs the Democratic machine in Illinois, to save his position as minority whip, his party's No. 2 post in the United States Senate.

Durbin's comments June 14 on the Senate floor compared the treatment of terrorists in the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to what happened to 11 million murdered innocents, most of them Jews, in Adolf Hitler's death camps and crematoriums. This landed the Democratic senator in such Dutch that his fellow party pols, who wouldn't say so publicly, were having a well-deserved fit.

Here He Comes Again

So, on June 21, a full week later, back to the Senate floor Durbin was sent, script in hand. His crucial words were as follows:

"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.

"I'm also sorry if anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military. …

"I offer my apology for those offended by my words."

And Durbin's official Web site has the nerve to billboard that dishwater as "Durbin Apologizes on Senate Floor for Guantanamo Bay Analogies." Some apology!

Wrong Is Wrong

It doesn't really matter whether anyone was offended, pained or cast in a negative light. What Durbin said was wrong, just plain wrong, even if he were the last human standing on Earth to hear his words.

Durbin's sorry, all right. Sorry he got a tender portion of his political anatomy caught in the wringer. Not sorry because he thought the unthinkable, spoke the unspeakable.

Now comes his semantic two-step, his not-so-clever transposition of the meaning of the word if for that.

He's sorry if – not that – he said anything that's offensive, anything that's reprehensible.

If? There's No If

If Joe runs over Fred in his car, breaking a bunch of bones, and if Joe wants to be apologize, does he apologize if Fred feels he has been injured?

What does Joe mean if he injured Fred? He injured Fred, no ifs, ands or buts about it. If Joe doesn't know he has injured Fred, then what has he to apologize about?

Joe knows damn good and well that he has injured Fred, not if he has injured him.

This is the sleazy way politicians have of issuing non-apology apologies. And Dick Durbin is as sleazy as they get. Whenever parents in Illinois – or anywhere across this blessed land – wish to hold a public official up as a role model for a child, Durbin's not their man.

Where Not to Look for Leaders

Durbin's fellow members of the Senate should have the moral rectitude and just plain guts not to let him get off with his non-apology apology.

But they will let him get off, because they, themselves, want to be free to seek the same, cheap way out of standing up like a man when they say what they actually mean – as Durbin did in the first place – and then later wish they had not committed a – gasp! – unpopularity.

The American armed forces and the victims and survivors of the Holocaust will just have to get along as best they can with nothing better from the United States Senate.

But, then, they've had to face worse.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

Read John Perry's columns here.

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