It's moral idiocy to equate the United States and Iran jailing journalists. It's moral idiocy to show in excruciating detail the ways the United States continues to jail journalists, without trial, without charges for years on end even as the entire journalistic establishment wails and gnashes their teeth over a three week imprisonment for an American journalist in Iran.
That is American exceptionalism in action, ladies and gentlemen.
Another example, you say? You mean, there's more?
Why, sure.
Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term? Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse: everything is different, and better, when we do it. In fact, it is that exact mentality that was and continues to be the primary justification for our torture regime and so much else that we do.
Andrew Sullivan says much the same thing:
You will notice how the NYT defines torture when it comes to foreign governments - isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Much milder than anything the US did to one of its own citizens, Jose Padilla. But the parallel is almost perfect: these are, after all, the exact Chinese Communist techniques that were reverse engineered from the SERE program. So you have a perfect demonstration of the NYT's double-standard. If Chinese do it to Americans, it's torture; if Americans do it to an American, it's "harsh interrogation."
I will challenge Eli Lake and say that, in fact, the US and Iran are not equivalent.
Apparently, Iran is a far better country than we are.
