Saturday, June 21, 2008
The error of his terror ways
Rosa Brooks takes a closer look at the stuff and nonsense coming from the Old Fart regarding terrorists.
The "terrorism is crime/terrorism is war" squabbling is as silly as the "great taste/less filling" fights depicted in the old Miller Lite ads. Most Americans know that "terrorism" takes many forms, and we need to be flexible in response. Prosecutions in federal courts make sense when we're talking about suspects far removed from battlefields; military force makes sense when U.S. troops are confronting fighters in Afghanistan or Iraq.I suppose he prefers being called McFlipper to being called the Old Fart, but he really is living up to his bumper sticker.
Here's the saddest thing about this week's dust-up. Not too long ago -- before he decided that becoming the Republican presidential nominee required him to cozy up to his party's most demagogic extremists and play politics with 9/11 -- McCain was the champion of a common-sense, values-based approach to terrorism.
It was McCain who refused to sanction torture. It was McCain who said Guantanamo detainees "have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely." It was McCain who advocated moving Guantanamo detainees to Kansas' Ft. Leavenworth, where they would come under the certain jurisdiction of federal courts. It was McCain who insisted that we respect the basic rights even of enemies who "don't deserve our sympathy" because "this isn't about who they are. This is about who we are."
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