New in the email box: Another of our occasional notes from Joe McCain, written in response to this story in the Washington Post, McCain’s Stand On Detainees May Pose Risk For 2008 Bid.
Sen. John McCain’s bid to position himself as the natural heir to President Bush as a wartime commander in chief and to court conservative leaders in advance of his likely 2008 presidential campaign has threatened to run aground in recent days, as the two men clash over how to detain and try terrorism suspects.
For months, McCain has been wooing Bush’s donors, hiring his former advisers and standing by him in the Iraq debate. But the fragile rapprochement between two men who were once bitter rivals for the presidency is facing a sharp new test over McCain’s rejection of Bush’s pleas to let the administration interpret the Geneva Conventions as it sees fit.
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Joe McCain: [Folks -- wrote this for the Post, won't be printed, too long, but perhaps you'll be interested]
Dear ‘Letters to the Editor’
The headline says “McCain’s Stand on Detainees May post Risk for 2008 Bid” [Sept 19, 2006]
What?! My party is angry with John McCain because he does not want the Geneva Convention to be re-interpreted by the Bush Administration? They don’t know that he has seen the Geneva Convention re-interpreted before? That as a Prisoner-of-War in Hanoi, his principal protection was that same agreement, which guaranteed a combatant was not to be treated as a pawn nor tortured for information? And that he and hundreds of other POWs–we don’t know how many, Hanoi would never say–were instead isolated, tortured, starved, beaten; that some had life itself beaten out of them? By a nation who also signed that very Convention?
Can even the most linear Republicans be so vetted by dogma of all thinking processes, all principles, all intellectual choice that they cannot see that of all bludgeons to use against John McCain, that this is most heinous and insulting? Are they so politically anesthetized they don’t know that for us to even alter the typeface on the Geneva Convention gives blank license for dark regimes to brutalize American captives, citing out own tip-toeing edits?
More, do they not know that it is a point of honor with John McCain, and not a political issue? That in the darkness and the terror, senior officers like Jim Stockdale and Bill Lawrence and Bud Day, themselves under terrible torture, told them that all they could keep in those brutal camps was their honor? And that that was okay, because their honor was the only thing that really mattered?
Do they not know—these party ideologues–that John McCain was one of the most injured of all POWs, and that he was offered freedom, because his father was a four-star admiral, and Hanoi wanted to score some badly needed public relations points? And that John McCain, in pain, one who hates confinement, refused, because a central principle of American POWs was to never abandon each other?
Into what mindless swamp has the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ike and Reagan wandered, that it gives no value to honor and courage and principle? More, that it seems to despise anyone who holds these tenets dear? How wooden and venal have they become, these people of Abramoff and Abu Ghraib?
Tis perhaps time to hose out the stables.
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Right Wing News has an opposite take on the Geneva Convention’s utility.
Exactly what protections are our troops being provided by the Geneva Convention? No enemy we’ve ever fought or are fighting has abided by it. So, in real world terms, the Geneva Convention provides no protection for our troops whatsoever. If we completely withdrew from the Geneva Convention tomorrow, it would have no impact at all on how our troops are treated.
Granted, the Geneva Convention could be of use in the unlikely event that we were to get into a war with Belgium, Italy, Spain or some other Western European nation. However, isn’t the argument we’re hearing from Europeans and American liberals that we should treat the terrorists we’ve captured by the rules of the Geneva Convention (as a matter of fact, better than the rules require) despite the fact that they haven’t signed onto the treaty? Since that’s the case, why wouldn’t the same rules apply to any signatories of the treaty that we fought with? Even if, theoretically, we were doing something as evil as kicking their captured soldiers into industrial paper shredders for fun, shouldn’t they give our soldiers every benefit the Geneva Convention requires?
What’s that, you say? If we don’t do it for their soldiers, why should we expect them to treat our troops with respect? Great! Now why doesn’t that apply to our troops and Al-Qaeda? If Al-Qaeda is torturing and murdering our troops, why should we treat their captured prisoners as well as, say, American soldiers that are thrown into the brig? Why should we treat some terrorist from Saudi Arabia who wants to kill American citizens like he’s a uniformed soldier who follows the rules of war or worse yet, like he has the same constitutional rights as an American citizen?
To be fair, Joe McCain and John Hawkins aren’t exactly arguing about the same thing, though it’s clear that Joe has a higher regard for the Conventions than does John.
Joe’s more concerned with the questioning of his brother’s motives, and makes the same argument against the re-interpretation of GCIII as those who can be counted on to oppose a Constitutional convention whenever that idea resurfaces. Essentially, it’s “Once you open up the Constitution for general amendment, god only knows what idiotic crap will be added to it.” John questions the usefulness of the Conventions themselves, making the valid point that rarely if ever is the letter or even the spirit of the Conventions ever followed by those making war on America.
The problem arises because the Geneva Conventions aren’t very clear on dealing with those who don’t qualify as legitimate prisoners of war.
The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
What, exactly, is a competent tribunal? And what happens to those who are found not to enjoy the protections of the GC by said tribunal? Answer those two questions, and the controversy goes away.
As for myself, I agree with John that the Geneva Conventions are useless when it comes to protecting captured American soldiers, usually because those who go to war against us have so thoroughly demonized the U.S. that all of us, citizens and soldiers alike, are dehumanized in their eyes. Even if our enemies were apt to be concerned with the protocols of the Conventions–an unlikely scenario– to them Americans (and Jews) do not possess the necessary degree of humanity to qualify.
But that doesn’t mean that Conventions are useless in the wider sphere of the war. To a degree larger than ever before, the current struggle between the West and fundamentalist Islam is fought in the media, and to be seen as adhering to the Conventions while Islamists saw the heads off captive after captive would make our fight in that arena somewhat easier.
