Easy Choice.
By sideways | Related entries in News
Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell came out in opposition today to White House-sponsored legislation to create special military commissions that would try terrorist suspects, saying he rejects efforts to “redefine” a key provision of the Geneva Conventions.
Powell, a retired Army general who formerly headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated his position in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of three Republican senators who are blocking President Bush’s plan for military tribunals. The three — who also include Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the committee — are advancing an alternative tribunal bill that contains more protections for defendants.
I can only pay attention to so many issues at once. I have a life. I have to pick and choose what to focus my little brain on. So I have not paid a lot of attention to the issue of miltary tribunals.
I don’t generally make up my mind on any issue depending on who supports and who opposes a particular approach. The idea ought to stand on its own.
But I occasionally make an exception. Like when on one side of the issue you have ten Nobel laureates, and on the other side you have Billy Bob the bait salesman from Gap-Toothed Joe’s Bar and Grill. Doesn’t mean I’ll always go with the “smart guys” or the academics or the experts, but sometimes the choice of who to trust is pretty clear.
In this case we have George W. Bush on one side, and John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey (looks like a goober, talks like a goober, and yet is not a goober) Graham and Colin Powell on the other side.
George W. Bush vs. McCain, Warner, Graham and Powell. That’s pretty easy.
Incidentally this plays hell with the Bush/Rove strategy of turning this against Democrats. Every Democrat House member facing a competetive race needs to have an ad loaded up and ready to go that says, “I voted with John McCain. My opponent is just another Bush rubber stamp.”
(Cross-posted from Sideways Mencken.)
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Well, it’s Bush plus most sensible Republicans versus those you name.
Personally, I think Islamic terrorists should be treated like dirt. Extract any useful information they have and shoot them. And send a cruise missile into the mosque where they were radicalized. And drop a daisy cutter on their home village. If that doesn’t work, nuke their homeland. Of course, that might be a bit tricky with terrorists growing up in in non-Muslim countries. Easy solution: expel any Muslim who does not PUBLICLY renounce Islam.
Sound extreme? Well, what I propose isn’t too different from what we did to win WW2. Sprechen sie Deutsch? I thought not. Not Japanese either.
September 15th, 2006 at 1:25 am
So let me get this straight. Genocide, nuclear holocaust, religious coercion, torture and summary execution are the new american values? God bless America.
September 15th, 2006 at 2:25 am
A nation that followed Pat’s ideas would be an evil nation: a great Satan, one could say. Way to go and prove the Muslim extremists right, Pat
September 15th, 2006 at 8:33 am
I’ve got a friend who was an Army Ranger during Moghadishu in 1993. He was unloading the bodies of his fellow rangers from the helicopters when just a few hours earlier he was wishing them well as they were getting on.
He told me that Colin powell is a douchebag who has no clue about the current threat we are facing. He said Colin Powell is a dinosaur with a vietnam-era worldview that the US military must be a lumbering conventional force that cannot engage in counter-insurgency; that giving terrorists geneva-convention rights simply legitimizes terrorism as a form of acceptable combat.
Easy choice for me.
September 15th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Well, Jimmy, I’ve got two friends just back from a year and half tours – one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan – and they both said the same thing about Bush and his pro-torture stance. They (and most of the soldiers they worked with) said it was a danger to them, it was immoral, it was un-American and Bush was a douchebag for continuing to spout this nonsense.
Furthermore a multitude of former intelligence and military guys have come out and said its not an effective means of gathering reliable information. To do that requires actual work and persistance, something this ADD afflicted administration is not real good at.
Furthermore, Bush supports it and based on his track record as President I think we all know how much we can trust his judgement on these issues.
Easy choice for me.
September 15th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I guess we need another debate about whether Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s music and a cold floor is torture. Or eating a prisoner’s peanut butter in front of them, or guards not wearing gloves when handling Korans, or a lap dance from an attractive, menstruating cadet; ect…
Man, wasn’t there a post here just a minute ago about refraining from attacking a cemetary full of Taliban because the U.S. doesn’t want to offend Muslim sensibilities?
We are handing victory over to the terrorists because we hate Bush more than we hate jihad.
September 15th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
I’m not disagreeing that many of the issues you raise aren’t silly – hey, I thought the strike on the funeral should have been taken. But when the vast majority of military and intelligence establishment are speaking against the President’s “definitions” I tend to think they know what they are talking about. And Bush never does. (For instance, just today he denied claiming a link between Zarqawi and Saddam. Even though he is on record doing just that several times in the past year or two. His either that incompetent or a pathological liar. Neither one is desireable in our national leader.)
BTW, there were more graphic and violent uses of “torture” than the silly examples you named. Prisoners chained to the floor in feces, several dozen cases of potential homicide, etc. We aren’t talking just about a few spotlight examples but our armed forces worldwide.
Finally, aren’t we the civilized side in this fight who are supposed to be standing for something other than barbaric depravity? You may argue that means we’re fighting with “one hand” tied behind our backs – so be it. At least we’re fighting for something worth defending. If you disagree, join the other side who think torture and inhumanity should be standard procedure. That’s why they’re called the Bad Guys and we’re the Good Guys. (Sure, Gandalf could have used the Ring to win but in the process it would have ultimately corrupted his soul and the battle would be lost. Notice a similarity, here?)
September 15th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
A red herring argument is the response from Bush supporters when we say that these measures will only endanger our own soldiers. The response is invariably along the lines of “al Qaeda doesn’t take prisoners, and the ones they do get beheaded.” Well a strong possibility exists that we could have troops on the ground in Iran in the next couple of years (like it or not.) I sincrely doubt that the Iranian military will behead any prisoners. This is the kind of shortsighted thinking that has allowed Bush to make such a hash of things.
September 17th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
[...] Easy Choice. [...]