"Image"
Andy McCarthy, former prosecutor, has a wonderful piece this morning on McCain's dangerously weak approach to torture and interrogation. McCarthy expertly knocks down the notion that a tortured captive will always give bad information: it depends on the quality of the questions. If you let him know which answer you want to hear, he will probably give you that answer; but if you ask open-ended questions, he won't be able to decide. He may still give you bad info, but you can check.

As I've said before, McCain's feelings about torture can certainly be understood. And this is exactly why he cannot be a wartime President. His feelings, his personal history, will make it impossible for him to do necessary things. We already have an occupant of the Oval Office who cannot do any of the necessary things, for different reasons. We don't need another.

Let's get down to the basics. Yes, Darwin again. Why do we have things like families, cities, and nations? So that each of these entities can provide civilization and other goodies for its members, not for outsiders. Most of the time a family or nation doesn't have to bother with outsiders, but when outsiders intrude with knives, guns, bombs, or 747s, the family or nation must destroy the outsider.

Bush and McCain go wrong by confusing the layers of this structure.

It's true that an individual or a family can behave nicely and non-violently, when placed within a functional city or nation. Again, that's exactly why the city was created: to provide police and fire services, so that a family doesn't have to spend most of its time and money on fortifications and guns. This frees up the individuals to pursue their own talents, in business or art or science. Niceness and pleasantries are important lubricants in business, art, and science.

But a nation is never free to be nice and non-violent. There is no structure above nations that serves as policeman. The Bush family seems to believe that the UN serves this purpose, which is why they always ask the UN for permission, and always try to get the UN to act like police. This is simply idiotic. Every rational observer knows that the UN has been totally useless since its founding.

I'm not sure what McCain's reasoning is; he seems to think that maintaining our "image" is important to survival. This is again true for an individual within a civilized structure. If you have the reputation of fierceness and nastiness, you probably won't be a good employee or a respected neighbor, though you might be a good robber baron. But McCain's "image" is precisely and suicidally wrong for nations. An "image" of niceness guarantees constant attack by not-so-nice countries and tribes.

If you want to keep your nation's internal niceness intact, you must show outsiders an "image" of unforgiving fierceness. They must have the "image" of unending torture, for them and for their families, if they dare to insult us, let alone attack us.

Even nice people understand, better than Bush and McCain, the limits of niceness. Look at a drug-infested ghetto. You'll see plenty of fortifications: bars on every window, fierce dogs in every yard. These nice Christian grandmothers understand that there is no effective police agency, no civilizing influence; so they have chosen to spend their money and time on the fortifications and weapons that should have been provided by the city, in order to preserve their lives and the future of their grandkids. They don't bother to argue their case before the City Council, because they know it won't work. They know instinctively that the gangs own the Council, whether directly or through the mediation of Jackson, Sharpton, and the ACLU.

Instead, they just put up iron bars and buy dogs and guns.
  ¶ 10:44 AM