It's a Question of Honor

People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get...And if anything should go wrong, there's soma
--Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous
--Aldous Huxley

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder
one another in cold blood
--Aldous Huxley
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John McCain's dogmatic insistence on staying the course, and his conflation of the concepts of nobility and honor and the ''courage and resolve of our troops'' with the failed war that is Iraq is shameful grandstanding. Yet, because he shows no equivocation at a time when waffling is the order of the day, that stalwartness is seen as moral rectitude. Pity, for history is full of unequivocal zealots and madmen.

After reading this glowing editorial in the Philadelphia Enquirer, ''On the Question of Honor, McCain Raises the Bar,'' certain distortions of history and misapplications of the law within the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) arise.

In "Character Is Destiny," [McCain] tells how Americans were tortured [in RVN] for military information, for details about one another, for statements against their country or their mission. If they would just speak, they were told, the pain would stop - and no one would know they had talked

McCain writes, "But the men I had the honor of serving with always had the same response: 'I will know. I will know.'

"That, dear reader, is good character. And I hope it is your destiny, your choice, your achievement, to hear the voice in your own heart, when you face hard decisions in your life, to hear it say to you, again and again, until it drowns out every other thought: 'I will know. I will know. I will know.''

This stuff just chokes me up and makes me want to wave flags and oppose torture for any reason. But wait a minute--isn't this the new McCain, a man firmly ensconced as a supporter of terror in our entertaining brave new world? How can McCain speak so disdainfully about North Vietnamese torture, yet support U.S. torture? It's a mite hypocritical.

Ranger finds it interesting that the U.S. policy in the Second Indochina war was to bomb the hell out of NVN sans the luxury of a declaration of war, a bombing which included civilian targets. And though there was no declared war, insisting that our captured airmen be afforded the rights of the Geneva Convention (G.C.). Fast forward to 2002-2007, and the U.S. has completely reversed its rhetoric.

Now the U.S. position is P.O.W.'s are not P.O.W.'s because there is no declared war, although there is a war when it benefits U.S. interests. We must get clear on this matter: either it is a War on Terror, or it is not a war. It would be noble and honorable to declare for one and stick with it, with all the attending ramifications.

If it is a war, then prisoners are P.O.W.'s, and this means no torture. Period.

As RVN was invoked by Senator McCain in his recent speech at the Virginia Military Institute, it is good to consider some similarities between then and now--what was gained, and what was/remains lost.

The Viet Cong, like the Taliban today, did not represent a sovereign state, did not wear uniforms, yet we afforded the VC G.C. protections. [Later G.C. Protocols dropped the military uniform requirement.] Somehow, we rationalize failing to extend that same protection to the Taliban and Iraqi resistance fighters.

However, if our soldiers are captured, the U.S. expects those same combatants to apply the G.C. protection to our captured personnel. In other words, the document works for us but not for them, as they are barbarians, i.e., subhuman (see Petraeus' recent letter).

The U.S. in the Republic of Vietnam ignored and short-stopped the G.C. in other areas, however.

One example is the North Vietnamese and VC graves which were mostly were unmarked and undocumented. No effort was made to comply with the G.C. by providing the names and burial locations of the dead. Not only is this lack of record keeping inhumane, it ignores the requirement of the convention. We seem to have contravened this messy bookkeeping aspect of the war.

So Vietnam demonstrated spotty application of the G.C., whereas Iraq demonstrates an almost total disdain of the documents. I don't think I'd count it progress.

Ranger's analysis: the U.S. administration wants it both ways.