Shut up John McCain

Hey McCain...Shut up.

The problem with presidential candidates generally is that they think they have big, good ideas. They think, after all, that they should be president. When they have the righteous fervor of one on a crusade, they are even worse. Like John McCain. John has been, to put it nicely, a royal pain in the ass to the Republican Party from the time he entered Congress in 1983 or so. I’m not saying that he doesn’t have the right to think and say whatever he wants to, but he is a member of a team, the GOP, and he isn't aiding its success . That team had better keep its substantive ideological spats out of the public's—and more importantly, the media’s—eye and present a united, coherent front so it can WIN THE ELECTION. Is that a hard concept? Should they walk in lockstep? Yes, pretty much, so long as it is properly agreed what the step will be.

So why pick on McCain? He’s not the only one that wreaks this destruction. Because right now, McCain is using his unique “moral authority” to push the particularly bad idea of mandating namby pamby treatment for terrorist prisoners. And John is the off-beat drummer who has thrown off the proper step. While he suffered under the barbaric North Vietnamese, he knows full well that what we have done and need to continue doing to terrorist prisoners is nothing at all related to the bayonet-stabbings, bone-breakings, starvation and beatings that he endured. That stuff is not simply an offense to “dignity” it is real, actual, torture. No one better than John should know that difference. Three things need to be realized by St. John and his squeamish toadies. First, the idea that he is protecting American prisoners is a pile of speciousness. Enemies of the United States are never going to obey the rules of civilized warfare. They are not civilized. That is why they are the enemy. Civilized people really don’t fight each other any more. Civilization is fighting monsters now. Monsters don’t sign agreements and obey conventions or rules of etiquette, any more than mad dogs temper their actions because others of their species are treated as friends by men. The Orcs who got ahold of John were in no way concerned with the Geneva Convention, and our kind treatment of prisoners wouldn’t've and didn't changethat a smidgeon.

Second, we aren’t even torturing anyone. Keeping people awake, making them chilly , putting bags on their heads and picking up their Korans without surgical scrubbing of the hands is not torture. It is okay to be impolite to the enemy.

Third, and this is a real biggy—stop with this ludicrous tripe that “torture doesn’t work”. It is an offensively transparent word game to anyone who should matter in this debate. Obviously whether or not any interrogation method works is matter of context and circumstances. Looking for general intelligence over a long period of time, the Make-Mahmoud-Your-Buddy Approach is probably more effective than any brutality. But if you need to know something—some very specific thing-- that Mahmoud knows, and you need to know it NOW don’t try to convince anyone honest that there aren’t ways to get that information very quickly.

So what we do to them is of such consequence only if criminals must obey the same rules as the good guys. They don't. The project here is to save American lives. Period. If a bad guy has information that will help do that, it is inexcusably softheaded not to do anything and everything necessary to extract it from him. Even if that means keeping him up nights. The other puff-bags who are holding up the clarification of the rules governing coercion are pathetic cases, but McCain is the one who matters and he needs to stop it. Shut up, John and let them get on with the work they have to do. Why he keeps this up is personal—and only personal—to him.