The conservative blogosphere has been abuzz for a few days now over comments made by our own Tom Lantos to Dutch lawmakers over Guantanamo.  A delegation of Dutch legislators toured the prison facility and later met with Lantos in DC.  Delegation members debated the withdrawal of Dutch troops from Afghanistan and Dutch Green Party member Mariko Peters commented that “We have to close Guantanamo because it symbolizes for me everything that is wrong with this war on terror.”  Well, Rep. Lantos didn’t take too kindly to the sentiment, and angrily called out the group for being, well, soft on the Holocaust:

Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.

But nope, he wasn’t done.  World War Two, it seems, preempts any criticism from Europeans towards the United States, possibly forever.  Lantos went on to declare “You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany.”  No mention as to whether French aid during the Revolutionary War disqualifies American criticism of the French, but presumably that would create some sort of physically unstable vortex of disallowed indignation.  I can’t speak to the ages of the delegation members, but I would imagine that many were but a gleam in their father’s eye during the Holocaust.  Certainly I’m two generations removed.  I wonder whether I, having failed to react strongly to Auschwitz, am also disqualified from moral judgment.  It wouldn’t seem as though these comments leave any allowance for, or even aspiration for, an improving world.

So seriously…what the hell?

First of all, As a Holocaust survivor, Lantos clearly has a ton of emotion wrapped up in statements like these.  But I’m really not sure what he is trying to accomplish by comparing the United States to Nazi Germany.  It doesn’t seem like it’s an argument that is likely to get people to calm down.  But even beyond the rather grim and counter-productive premise, what exactly is the point he’s trying to make?  Surely he’s aware of the long list of horrific human rights abuses that the United States has overlooked or even supported over the years; does that preempt the right of the United States to object to future injustices?  I’m sure the country would be interested to know if that’s the case.  Or is this simply a “do as I say, not as I do” situation?  That’s a condescending claim to the unilateral right to behave and dictate behavior on a whim, which again isn’t likely to be particularly productive.  The idea that the United States is and has for decades been saving the rest of the world from itself is exactly the brand of arrogance that breeds such animosity all over the globe.

Lantos has not yet commented on the flap, but he may want to.  He’s a powerful voice on foreign policy in this government and comments like this matter in a big way.  There are a number of ways that the language can be parsed and a number of ways that intent could be guessed at, but without clarification, this plays as a serious smackdown to the international community and Europe in particular.  The air of unfounded righteous indignation is not productive, and particularly puzzling from a tactical perspective given his comments over the past several weeks regarding Armenian genocide.  Just three weeks ago, he spoke out on the moral and strategic issues involved, saying,

One of the problems we have diplomatically globally is that we have lost our moral authority which we used to have in great abundance…People around the globe who are familiar with these events will appreciate the fact that the United States is speaking out against a historic injustice. This would be like sweeping slavery under the rug and saying slavery never occurred.

I’m not interested in hyperbole comparing Guantanamo to slavery, Armenian genocide, the Holocaust or anything else.  But moral authority doesn’t come from condemning the historic injustices.  It comes from behaving morally.  I hope Mr. Lantos will take a step back, sort through all of this, and better organize these thoughts.

I think it’s also interesting to note, while we’re on the subject, that the right-wing blogosphere has been so excited to trumpet a member of the United States government comparing Guantanamo to a concentration camp.  They seem to have been blinded by the tough tone and “we’ll do whatever we want” attitude of the comments and didn’t bother (shockingly) to consider what was actually said.  So the one silver lining, perhaps, to be drawn from this is that the premise has shifted.