McCain Makes a Stand Again

Opposing the Right-Wing Media Takes Courage

“These are questions that every member of Congress needs to think about long and hard, but especially my Republican colleagues.” –Sen. John McCain.

In what has been a stifling atmosphere since the present Congress convened in January, I appreciate any breath of fresh air that stirs the lockstep Republican miasma. Once again, Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, has provided a bit of a breeze.

He made the above comment this morning in reference to participation of the United States in NATO‘s military operation in Libya. Our role in the action has been limited to missile and drone strikes and the like, and we have put no troops on the ground there. Yesterday the Obama Administration made the assertion that because our involvement was limited in this way, it doesn’t require congressional approval under the War Powers Act of 1973.

That act requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours after committing forces, and limits military actions to 60 days, with a 30-day withdrawal period, unless war is declared or Congress authorizes more time.

Sen. McCain was not supporting the White House in its assertion that what we are doing in Libya is exempt from this restriction, but he did make a strong case in favor of the action itself.

Lots of GOP members of Congress have criticized President Obama for supporting the NATO mission, and there is Democratic opposition as well. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, has announced that he is suing the president for violating the War Powers Act.

But many of the Republicans who are now chastising Obama for his decision were among the most vocal, before he acted, in calling on him to do something for the poor, oppressed people in Libya. Such legislators make it clear that it is the president himself they really oppose, and they appear to be quite oblivious to the hypocrisy of their reversed positions.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about our participation in Libya; I think most of us do. I see a valid point in the argument that Congress needs to authorize further action. I am not going to imitate the lockstep Republicans and defend the administration at all costs. I think Kucinich’s lawsuit is an appropriate way to determine the scope of the War Powers Act and its restraint on executive power. In this case, especially, the law is not clear.

What I found refreshing in McCain’s speech this morning was his exhortation to fellow lawmakers to consider involvement in Libya itself, not just the fact that it was ordered by a president from the opposing party.

“Many of us remember well the way that some of our friends on the other side of the aisle savaged President Bush over the Iraq war, how they sought to do everything in their power to tie his hands and pull America out of that conflict…” he said. “We were right to condemn this behavior then, and we would be wrong to practice it now ourselves simply because a leader of the opposite party occupies the White House.”

Wow! And there’s more:

“Republicans need to ask themselves whether they want to be part of a group who are earning the grateful thanks of a murderous tyrant or trying to limit an American president’s ability to force that tyrant to leave power.”

For the second time in less than a month, McCain has spoken out against the politically correct GOP dogma. The first time was his condemnation of the assertion that torture of U.S. prisoners had helped track down Osama bin Laden. This time he stood in opposition to the most basic Republican tenet: anything President Obama does is wrong.

In between those two events we saw what happened to Newt Gingrich when he called the Ryan plan to dismantle Medicare “right wing social engineering.” The Faux-Limbaugh echo chamber almost blew a 50-amp fuse on that one, and Newt couldn’t backtrack, recant, apologize, or temporize quickly enough.

McCain escaped unscathed the first time; it’s hard to second-guess a man who was in captivity for years when he gives his opinion about torture. Will he get by with it this time?

I think so. He’s not running for president this time around, so his candidacy can’t be shot down, and he still commands a lot of respect from rank-and-file Republicans and independents who supported him in 2008. He was re-elected to his Senate seat just last year, so he can afford to speak out.

And usually McCain can be counted on to toe the party line. He’s careful about choosing the issues on which he differs from it. But that gives even more weight to his words when does decide to play the “maverick.”

I think both of his stances are courageous in the face of the bulldozer tactics of the right-wing media. I am reminded of the excesses of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Everyone was so frightened of communists, or of being accused of being one, that McCarthy was able to trample the rights of many innocent people and pervert the protections of the Bill of Rights as he crusaded against them. Finally, some courageous Republicans stood up to him and he quickly crumbled.

Faux News and the Limbaugh clones are just as vicious, and just as wrong, as Joseph McCarthy was. It is heartening to see at least some resistance to their excesses.

Keep it up, Sen. McCain!

McCain Takes the High Road

Gingrich Wallows in the Mire

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear.” – Sen. John McCain.

Frequent readers of this blog know that I’m a Democrat and seldom have good things to say about Republicans. There are exceptions, though, and today’s posting is one of them.

The back-story, of course, is that the whackadoodle fringe of the Republican Party received a double blow earlier this month. Not only did President Obama produce a copy of his original birth certificate, with signatures and all, just a few days later he announced that Osama bin Laden had been found in Pakistan and killed.

Desperate for some way to spin at least some of this to their advantage, several rabid right spokesdorks suggested that bin Laden would never have been found without George Bush, Jr.’s “enhanced interrogation” measures early in the war. That sterile phrase translates into water-boarding and other forms of torture and elicits the dreadful images of Abu Ghraib.

Michael Mukasey, who was one of Bush’s egregious attorneys general, said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information – including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.”

McCain knows a lot about torture. He was shot down in Vietnam in 1967 and was a prisoner of war there until 1973. He was repeatedly tortured and deals with the physical effects to this day.

Mukasey’s suggestion that U.S. torture led to bin Laden’s capture appeared in the Washington Post, and that’s where McCain rebutted him in an op-ed piece on May 11th. He responded to Mukasey’s claim quoted above by saying, “That is false.”

He also said, “Individuals might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that right to others.”

And that’s the point, isn’t it? We cannot preserve and extol our treasured rights and freedoms by denying them to others. We cannot legitimize torture in some foreign land or in some maximum-security prison without staining the very principles we are supposedly defending.

There was more from the apologists – search Rick Santorum and Dick Cheney if you want to know more – I don’t – but they were careful not to slander McCain himself, which is something new. It is refreshing to see a Republican draw a line that he won’t cross without having all the other elephants dump on him.

Before he ran for president, Sen. McCain was known as a statesman and someone who worked for bipartisan progress. His fellow Republicans called him a “maverick” because he didn’t always toe the party line – and it wasn’t always a term of endearment. He seemed to relinquish that title, even while he wrapped himself in it, in his campaign against Barak Obama. Perhaps now he can claim it again. (See McCain’s full text at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death-and-the-debate-over-torture/2011/05/11/AFd1mdsG_story.html.)

Of all the issues that call out for righteous rejection by Republicans who still claim some vestige of honor, the defense of torture is perhaps the most important, and the most obvious. McCain’s principled refusal to condone “enhanced interrogation” shows courage and conviction that have been scarce among GOP legislators. Maybe it will encourage others in the party to speak out against their colleagues who go too far.

Unfortunately, it didn’t inspire Newt Gingrich, who stepped out of line by calling Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan “right wing social engineering” on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Despite the accuracy of his statement, he was castigated and pilloried and left for dead by the right wing echo chamber, and instead of defending his remark, he proceeded to apologize and make the bizarre excuse that he had been tricked into saying it.

Then, on Faux News, he came up with the ultimate denial, saying, “any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood.”

No statesman Newt. Needless to say, his fledgling presidential campaign sank before it hit the water. Thank goodness.

May isn’t over, but so far it’s been a bad month for Republicans and their presidential hopefuls. The birth certificate did in Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich self-destructed, and Mike Huckabee decided he didn’t have enough fire in his belly. Osama bin Laden’s death gave President Obama a bump in the polls. Paul Ryan’s attempt to dismantle Medicare isn’t playing in Peoria, or anywhere else. Just yesterday, the Democratic candidate in a “safe” Republican district in New York won a House seat. Glenn Beck was apparently fired and Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are in the toilet. And what’s left of the GOP presidential bullpen seems to be populated by klutzes fresh off the farm-team.

But in the long run, Republicans can be proud of their former standard-bearer and once-and-perhaps-future maverick and statesman, John McCain.