Posted on 09/19/2006 9:08:26 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
McCain’s Dubious High Ground
John McCain and his band of Republican rebels defying President Bush on the issue of interrogation have a strange attachment to confused argumentation.
By Rich Lowry
For people supposedly occupying the moral high ground, John McCain and his band of Republican rebels defying President Bush on the issue of interrogation have a strange attachment to confused argumentation.
They maintain that the United States can’t define more precisely its obligations for the treatment of unlawful combatants under the vague language of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to allow the tough interrogations of terrorists, as Bush proposes, lest our troops in turn be tortured upon capture. McCain warns that such a definitional exercise risks “the lives of those Americans who risk everything to defend our country.” What pleasant, alternate reality does the Arizona Republican inhabit?
Perhaps he missed the story a few months ago about the two American soldiers captured by al Qaeda in Iraq. Al Qaeda released a video of them, described by the British newspaper The Guardian: “One of them, partially naked, had been beheaded and his chest cut open. The other’s face was bruised, his jaw apparently broken, and his leg had long gashes. Fighters were shown turning the bodies over and lifting the head of the decapitated man.”
This is savagery immune to a domestic legal debate in the U.S. Maybe McCain and Co. think that the U.S. debate at least will influence our more reasonable adversaries. But since when have we fought a regime — Saddam’s Iraq, Milosevic’s Serbia, North Vietnam, North Korea, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany — that is not barbarously committed to repression and murder?
No one in the U.S. had broached clarifying Common Article 3 in 1967 when McCain was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese, who proceeded to beat him routinely and keep him in solitary confinement for years. The North Koreans were equally disgusting. As a U.S. Senate committee concluded: “American prisoners of war who were not deliberately murdered at the time of capture or shortly after capture, were beaten, wounded, starved and tortured.”
Ah, if only the North Koreans had known how committed we were to giving the widest possible Common Article 3 protections to terrorists, maybe they would have re-thought their detention policies. McCain and Co. have a case of treaty fetishism. That is the belief that a piece of paper will alter the behavior of thugs. But a government will abide by the Geneva Conventions only if it is civilized; and if it is civilized, it is unlikely we will be fighting it, which is why we don’t have to worry about defending ourselves from, say, the Danes.
McCain and his allies, however, apparently have trouble distinguishing between civilization and barbarity. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a widely circulated letter to McCain. “To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts.” So American troops fighting to establish decent governments halfway around the world can be confused morally with terrorists? What a slander, and how disgusting that a former secretary of state would give it any credence by repeating it.
The irony is that, for all his preening, McCain supports what he would call “torture” if the conditions are right. He has said of a ticking-time-bomb scenario — a terrorist has information of an imminent attack — “you do what you have to do. But you take responsibility for it” (i.e. get sued or prosecuted). In other words, McCain wants to make it legally problematic for interrogators to undertake the very interrogations that he supports.
In real life, the closest we get to a ticking-time-bomb scenario is the one that prompted the CIA interrogation program — the capture of high-level al Qaeda operatives with knowledge of ongoing plots. McCain can’t bring himself to say that he opposes the program outright, so he professes to support it, but refuses to give the program the legal cover necessary for it to continue. And this is the moral high ground?
— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
© 2006 by King Features Syndicate
Now you know why we let the Vietgong keep him for so many years.
I would vote for a Libertarian with a zero chance of winning the election, before I would vote for McCain.
Why doesn't he just officially cross over to the dark side? He's been there in spirit for a long time.
I frankly think he's through now. He is so far away from having any credibility with conservatives that his name might as well be Pat Buchanan. Like Pat, he'll always be in the lime light, but they've both lost the majority of the conservatives who vote.
I hope so because he ran away with it in 2004. It's time to permanently remove these traitorous Benedict Arnolds from the GOP.
Thanks for the tagline, Mr. Lowrey
Mt. Lowry, that is.
It is high ground if you call it high ground.
Definition is everything.
He who frames the issue, decides the course of the dialogue.
And the issues are framed by the person who has the biggest bullhorn. We knew that back in the 1960's.
McCain may be positioning himself for a run as an independent, but he is also trying to justify his own behavior as a prisoner of war. I can still visualize his picture in the paper after he broke and compromised with the enemy in exchange for special treatment as a POW.
May he rot. He damn sure is a rot in this Congress!
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You know I just realize how badly McCain has played this issue. Have you ever noticed how no one here ever comes to his defense? Not a single person will say, "Oh, John's okay." Now, we usually have one or two who will say Pat Buchanan is alright, and considering how he usually gets about 2% of the electoral vote, that makes sense. But no one defends McCain; he's in big trouble with conservatives and the fawning MSM is keeping him from realizing how badly he is becoming despised in his own party.
His past performance is beyond the pale. It is a wonder to me that anyone could defend or support him at all after CFR. But even if he had been a stainless icon of conservative virtue I don't think you would see much support for this stand on this issue. It is brain-dead and dangerous.
"..... Republican rebels defying President Bush on the issue of interrogation have a strange attachment to confused argumentation..... DUH, The fact all the arguments put forth by the President's critics concerning the war on terror and the Iraqi theater share the same confusion an lack of coherence. The reason liberals avoid like the plague debating these issues with Conservatives is that their is no hope of them winning those debates.
He may have been a hero one day, but now he is an elected lying crook who is only after what make him appear good, but still a crook.
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