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| Andy McCarthy - McCain, Graham, Warner Are Bad For Your Health |
| 2006-09-14 |
| In the raging 2006 controversy over military commissions lies the pressing 2008 question: Can the nation afford a President John McCain? Of all the wars fought in American history, the “war on terror” — or whatever we are calling it this week — is uniquely about intelligence. Al Qaeda, or better yet, the metaphorical ummah on whose behalf all Islamo-fascists purport to wage jihad, does not have a territory or a public fisc to defend. In what Norman Podhoretz sagely dubs “World War IV,” we cannot win by conquering land or seizing treasure. Embargoes and diplomacy will not do. The universal, reciprocal chivalry that guided warriors, and nation-states, when young John McCain’s unflinching valor blazed its legend on the honor-roll of American heroes no longer obtains. Now, the enemy is barbaric, and the only weapon is intelligence. We confront a transnational terror network that projects force like a nation but slithers in the shadows — that gleefully dares a superpower’s shock-and-awe to create civilian charnel houses for a rabid global media. Bombing, after all, can get you only so far — especially if the enemies who most threaten you have embedded in London … or Manhattan. In this war, there is one overriding question: Where are they? Where are they so we can capture or kill them before they mass-murder us? Where are they so we can disrupt the next attack — the one with hi-tech weapons that could make 9/11 look like a training exercise? Senator McCain and his entourage, Senators Lindsey Graham and John Warner, are making it ever more difficult to answer that question. They, like the JAG corps they champion, lack the vision to peer beyond familiar standards designed for dated challenges. They are an anachronism. We can admire their moorings in an era of honor — of nation-states and humanity and civilized hostilities. But we can’t afford it if they look at Zarqawi and see Hector. |
| Posted by:Captain America |