Rectification of Names, aka Calling a Spade a Spade

Regarding Durbin's retreat from reality under fire, historian Chris Bray writes:

I am an American soldier, and I am headed to Iraq as an infantryman. If I act like a Gestapo agent while I'm there, I hope and expect that someone will call me a fucking Nazi.

Odds are pretty good, given the state of debate, that someone already has, at least in the abstract. That's unfortunate, just as unrealistic as the idea that torture, secret detentions and indiscriminate violence carried out by Americans under official policies and with the broad support of major public and political figures is somehow distinguishable from those atrocities carried out by any other regime. There's a damned middle ground in here somewhere, but it's starting to look, more and more, like No-Man's-Land.
[Thanks, Avedon]
Update: more here including a devastating short review of relevant US history.