What a strange month November could be
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
John McCain:
I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
John McCain delivered a speech on foreign policy in which he appeared to move back to his recently abandoned positions on torture, and delivered a weighty appraisal of the cost of war. His assessment of the cost of war makes he belief that we can “win” the war on terror, as it’s embodied in our was in Iraq, even stranger given we’ve clearly learned at this point that Iraq was not invested in global terror on any large scale as we were led to believe prior to our invasion.
Boat cat (alt), originally uploaded by Orcinus O.