McCain Style

This campaign is the worst of history repeating itself. This campaign is turning into "guilty by association", "if you're not with us your against us", intolerant, hate inciting, bullshit. When has this happened before? It's called McCarthyism stupid. That disgraceful period of our history is when people were accused of being traitors (that's 50's speak for "terrorist" or "anti-American") merely for being acquainted with people who were thought to be traitors. That's when anyone who dissented from the left was equated with the most extreme left. Dissent is the point of democracy. Dissent is the most American thing we've got.

And while we've mentioned it, I hate this word "terrorist". And before you accuse me of being soft let me say I absolutely detest the killing of innocent people and consider it the highest of crimes. But the word terrorist is brandied about to mean some sort of super evil criminal who is beyond human and beyond rights. Some murderers are criminals because they are heartless sociopaths, some murderers are criminals because they are desperate. Neither one's crime is more forgivable but how you stop them is very very different. I don't know which kind of murderers bombed the world trade center. But I do believe most people are good. I am not so cynical as to think most people fighting us were not at some point in their lives as complicated and human as I am. I believe this is the more moral and optimistic way to see the world, to search for the humanity in our enemy. And even as we seek to punish them and defend and protect ourselves, I really believe that it is this human connection that is our best defense. The word "terrorist" strips people of their humanity. Once someone is labeled a "terrorist" it doesn't matter if they are even guilty let alone why they committed their crime. But if we can't understand their crime how can we fight it, and prevent more? Our hubris has made us forget our own capacity for fallibility, which is why suspects have rights in the first place. If our hubris makes us so short sighted as to strip our enemies of their humanity, we miss and opportunity to learn, we miss an opportunity to understand, and we miss an opportunity to make a case in our defense. This is in no way about appeasing our enemy, this is about thwarting their power to build their movement. If we had put our best, most compassionate, most enlightened, most liberated foot forward seven years ago, our case would have been made. Instead we went to war in a country totally irrelevant to 9/11 and we committed some of the worst human rights abuses in our history interrogating suspects. We embarrassed ourselves. We should be embarrassed to use the word terrorist so flippantly as Sarah Palin does. Recent history has shown we are not very good at figuring out who those people actually are. Especially when we lack intellegence.