We had it worse than anyone else!

I admire the Anti-Defamation League as much as the next person, but this is just silly:

Dear Senator Durbin: 
 
We write to object to your reference to Nazis in the context of the debate on detainees at Guantanamo Bay on the Senate floor earlier this week.
 
Whatever your views on the treatment of detainees and alleged excesses at the Guantanamo Bay facility, it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners.  Suggesting some kind of equivalence between their interrogation tactics demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his regime actually perpetrated.
 
We urge you to repudiate your remarks and apologize to the American people for distorting an important issue with an inappropriate comparison to Nazi tactics.  However heated the debate over issues of the day, we would urge you to refrain from using Holocaust imagery in the future.

There is no dispute that the Nazis committed atrocities on a monumental scale (I am purposely ignoring the revisionist loons). But does the ADL really want to take the position that American troops could never commit acts of a comparable nature? That appears to be their position. How else to explain their knee jerk reaction to the mere suggestion? Were the horrors of Nazi Germany so unique and is the character of the American soldier so exceptional that it could never happen?

Of of the ADL's goals is preventing another holocaust. This attitude of â??our nightmare of torture is bigger than your nightmare of torture â?? is precisely the wrong way to achieve that goal.