Senator McCain is heroic, awe-inspiring, and wrong.
More from the article:
"I spent a number of years in the eye of the counterterror storm: prosecuting jihadists, putting my family through the attendant anxieties, and watching the criminal-justice system writhe through what the Clinton administration called its 'war' on terror — a curious battle plan in which the enemy kills you and is then presumed innocent. I came away thinking the whole prosecution paradigm was a national-security debacle. Now, do I get to end all discussion? Do I have the 'moral authority' to render that judgment simply because I was there and you weren't? I suppose...except there were other people there, too. They were doing the same thing I was doing, experiencing the same personal and professional tensions. And they will tell you that prosecuting terrorists in the full flower of due process was America's finest hour — and one we should return to, posthaste."
So whose moral authority do you believe? In the end, no one's. What matters is not the personal character of the speaker. This is not to say his unique perspective is unworthy of our respectful attention. Of course it is. But it can't, of its own force, carry the day. Gravitas notwithstanding, what matters is whether the speaker's arguments are compelling. Whether they make logical sense and match up factually with what we know empirically. This dichotomy of character and substance burdens any effort to address coercive interrogation tactics in the teeth of opposition by Senator John McCain, a great patriot and an authentic American hero. Coercive interrogation, in our current climate, simply cannot be separated from the imagery and agitprop of torture. Senator McCain is our searing national conscience on that matter, having been subjected to years of sadistic abuse as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. When he speaks about torture, it is not just with MoDo-fied claptrap like 'moral authority.' McCain is the guy Aristotle had in mind. Singularly, in this debate, he brims over with bravery, insight, and awe-inspiring personal character. But he's still wrong.
And here is a key point:
"So what's McCain's answer to the ticking-bomb dilemma? It is: Let's make such 'extreme measures' illegal, but in the full expectation that the law would be broken with impunity. As he puts it: 'Should [an interrogator engage in coercion] and thereby save an American city or prevent another 9/11, authorities and the public would surely take this into account when judging his actions and recognize the extremely dire situation which he confronted.' They would opt, in other words, not to prosecute. This is the same rabbit Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh pulled out of his hat when he couldn't answer the ticking-bomb problem at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's confirmation hearings. (See here.) It is sleight-of-hand — ducking the hard question in a way that is sure to cause more, rather than less, torture."
Why bring up this bill? Because McCain and others, populists among them, have decided that the political fallout of all the news of Abu Ghraib and Club G'itmo, now these secret jails in the Eastern Bloc that the CIA's running, just feeds the notion that we're the bad guys, that we're the barbarians.
I agree with others. This debate is upside down. The concern ought to be on preventing the destruction of American cities and the mass murder of Americans by the millions, but that's not where the concern is. The concern is imposing restrictions on our military. The effort appears to put shackles on our ability to defeat these people. It's not humane to impose policies on our military and the CIA that hamstring our soldiers and spies from preventing these acts of terror. It's not humane to allow another 9/11 or worse by outlawing efforts that might protect us. This whole thing is not about torture, when you get right down to it. That's just the big rallying cry and rallying point. What this thing is really all about is national security and homeland security, and we've allowed this debate to be argued on terms that are inapplicable.
The article is a great read, if for nothing else than the great discussion and invoking of Aristotle done by McCarthy, not to mention, of course, the larger question on torture.
