They Opine So I Don't Have To
After my recent post about John Kerry's statement on incompetence in the Bush Administration, alert reader Steve Anderson sent me the text of a recent statement of John McCain's. In his e-mail, Steve wrote:
I believe you tend towards more liberal criticisms of Bush administration policies, but I found Mr. McCain's statements to be very powerful. I have never been particularly bothered by the detentions and prisoner treatment surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, I would grant Geneva Convention status in an instant in exchange for a clear statement that we are at war that defines the enemy. Nonetheless, I think there comes a time where, like Mr. McCain, one says that we should do better simply because we can and should, not because we are required to.Steve having sent McCain's statement along was very convenient, as it expresses something about the war on terrorism that I have felt since its beginning, but not yet expressed concretely.
I couldn't find a direct web link to the text of the statement, but I discovered a very similiar piece ("McCain Statement on Detainee Amendments") on McCain's Senate site, an excerpt of a floor statement. McCain concludes it by saying:
We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation. We are not simply any other country. We stand for something more in the world — a moral mission, one of freedom and democracy and human rights at home and abroad. We are better than these terrorists, and we will we win. The enemy we fight has no respect for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy. But this isn't about who they are. This is about who we are.I agree in the strongest terms.
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