Government Droning Too Much to Media About Drones

American government agencies, facing the constant task of justifying to Congress the need for bigger budgets, frequently tout their importance to national security by disclosing their capabilities and technologies to the media. Such public disclosures, it is believed, improve an agency’s or department’s image, increase recruiting, and help Americans feel more secure. Agencies and departments also hope that widespread media reports of counterterrorism technologies and operations may act as a deterrent to future terrorist attacks, particularly on U.S. soil. This theory has some merit and is based largely on the example of overall crime statistics, which tend to decline sharply immediately after new enforcement methods or detection technologies are recognized by criminals and before they adapt their methodology.

However, the key to such successes is concealing the technologies and strategies from criminals (or terrorists) for as long a period as possible. By gushing to the media about our capabilities in hopes of bigger budgets and public adulation, agencies are hobbling their own counterterrorist efforts and exposing existing holes in our homeland defenses. The Navy phrase “loose lips sink ships” comes to mind as a suggested motto for all agencies and departments involved in the War on Terror.

Two very clear examples of well-intentioned but ultimately dangerous government disclosures to the media occurred yesterday and today, and both involved the ubiquitous unmanned aerial drones (UADs, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs) utilized by the U.S. in various war and terror surveillance operations worldwide. These drones have proven to be one of the most useful and cost-effective intelligence gathering (and covert attack) tools available in the War on Terror.

The first of the two examples of government droning on and on to the media was reported in a USA Today article titled “Drones Could Defend Airports”. The title and the concept of unmanned drones detecting, disabling, or destroying shoulder launched missiles (MANPADs) should bring some peace of mind to America’s air travelers. The use of drones in this manner is a promising system of defense for our airports and should be supported and fully implemented. Yet by publicly reporting plans for continued testing and implementation of a UAD airport defense system, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is also providing notice to terrorists worldwide that America currently has no systems in place around our airports to defend against shoulder-fired missiles, which, as the USA Today article mentions, are widely available and inexpensive.

Indeed, such portable and easily concealed missiles have already been utilized against civilian aircraft in several incidents. As I discussed in a previous post, Pakistan cloned American Stinger missile sensors and helped the Taliban equip their SAMs to make them more effective against U.S. and NATO aircraft. An Israeli airliner departing Mombasa, Kenya in 2002 was fired upon by a shoulder launched missile, but the attackers failed to hit their target. A DHL cargo jet luckily crash landed successfully after being hit in one wing by a similar missile in Iraq in 2005. And just today, a cargo plane was rumored to have been shot down by a missile upon take off from Mogadishu, Somalia. According to the State Department, since the 1970s, more than 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADs.

The potential for such an attack on an American civilian airliner cannot be overstated, yet DHS has now made it officially known that our government is concerned, but unprepared. Terrorists looking for a window of opportunity also learned from the DHS official quoted by USA Today the following useful intelligence information: the official internal DHS name of the project, when and where the airport defense drones will be tested, what technologies the UADs will be equipped with, and an admission that 4 years of testing of anti-missile laser systems mounted directly on jetliners did not produce a workable aircraft defense. Would it not have better served the interests of national security to have completed testing and successfully deployed UAD defenses for our major airports BEFORE making announcements about their existence?

The second example of “loose lips” about UADs by government officials was published in today’s Seattle Times, in the article “Border Drone Spots Suspect in Child Rape”. The article described the effective use of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP, also a DHS agency) UAD equipped with infrared cameras patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The UAD camera’s heat sensing infrared lens spotted 6 men illegally crossing the border from Mexico into Arizona, and relayed the images and GPS coordinates to CBP agents monitoring the UAD from a command center. Agents were dispatched to the coordinates and arrested the illegal aliens. The arrest netted a load of smuggled marijuana, but more importantly also resulted in the capture of a felon charged with child rape in the State of Washington. He had been wanted by authorities for more than a year. By all accounts, the use of UADs in this manner is a tremendously cost-effective method for patrolling broad desert expanses near our southern border. According to the CBP spokesman quoted by the Seattle Times, UADs have produced 3,900 arrests and significant seizures of narcotics in the Southwest.

Had the CBP spokesman resisted the understandable urge to “toot the horn” of the CBP, this article would have contained an encouraging example of why UADs are needed and a complimentary account of the CBP’s work. The spokesman, however, allowed enthusiasm for a successful program and a seemingly innocuous media question to override good judgment. It was clear from his response that the spokesman was asked a general question about how many drones are in operation and in what areas, as well as a specific question about CBP’s UAD use in the State of Washington. The reporter recorded the spokesman’s reply:

A second aircraft will be launched in North Dakota later this year to monitor the Canadian border. . . . He said there are no plans to have such an unmanned plane patrol the Canadian border in Washington State.

The spokesman thus announced to any terrorist or criminal seeking to infiltrate our borders in remote areas on foot that Canada, not Mexico, offers less risk of detection since there will be no UADs patrolling any part of the northern border until later this year. More specifically, terrorists, who already crossed into Washington State in December 1999 from Canada en route with explosives to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on New Years Day 2000, learned from the CBP spokesman that “there are no plans” to have UADs on that border in the future. A vehicle checkpoint and an alert Customs Inspector foiled the plot to bomb LAX, but the next group will know to walk through the forests with no fear of infrared detection from high above, thanks to a CBP spokesman justifiably proud of the UAD program.

In fairness to the spokesman, the plans to implement UADs on the Canadian border was first reported in January 2007 by the Canadian National Post, which obtained a press release from CBP containing detailed specifications of the UADs to be utilized as well as the location of their operational base and a general time frame for implementation. Why this information was provided to Canadian media instead of remaining known only to the Canadian and American governments is really the crux of the issue. The altitudes at which these drones fly, their relatively small size, and their quiet operational noise levels would have made it unlikely that residents on either side of the border, particularly along the North Dakota border area, would have noticed or paid any attention to them. Instead, CBP, because that is how the Beltway budget game is played, drew attention to the project intentionally.

Perhaps the most effective law enforcement and intelligence deterrent to terrorists and criminals plotting to strike America is the mystique which surrounds our agencies. The more terrorists and criminals know about our methods and technologies, the easier it is for them to adapt, and the less fear they will have of being detected or captured. Hollywood nearly always portrays government and law enforcement agencies as villains, but it also portrays these agencies as possessing a myriad of super secret advanced technologies and capabilities. This actually acts as a somewhat valuable deterrent to crime and terrorism in America, since fiction and reality are so skillfully intertwined that it is nearly impossible for the average American (or foreign national) to accurately estimate our capabilities. In many cases that is very helpful, since reality too often relies on budgets rather than threat assessments.

Some foreign militaries, intelligence services, and even terrorist groups possess such drones, but currently the U.S. inventory appears to contain the most sophisticated and most effective models yet developed. Foreign governments that have not developed or acquired their own silent sentinels desperately want them, and terrorists operate in constant fear of being detected and possibly bombed by our drones.

When the War on Terror began, terrorists were only vaguely aware, if at all, of the capabilities of our UADs, and did not account for them in the planning of their personnel and equipment movements. This resulted in successful destruction by the U.S. of terrorist Surface to Air Missile systems (SAMs) and in at least one instance, the assassination of 6 known al-Qaeda leaders bombed by a Predator drone. Likewise, terrorists were largely unaware of our communications interception capabilities, and spoke freely and frequently on their cell phones. Unfortunately, through treasonous internal leaks and willing media exposure, the communications intercepts became front page news and terrorists, who employ their own media monitoring and production staffs, soon realized their vulnerability and the phones went silent. Now they use disposable, prepaid phones and have also embraced encrypted email systems.

Once terrorists realized the dangers posed by UADs, through government “horn tooting” press releases to the media, they began targeting these drones with SAMs and MANPADs, shooting down several in the past few years. In the BBC account linked here, note the details available to the public of the drone’s features, equipment, capabilities, and vulnerabilities. Where did those details come from? What national security purpose was served by making these details available to the media?

Having an open society must also be tempered by being a wise society. Too many details of too many government intelligence and law enforcement agency programs and strategies are made public, for no other reason than to increase their public visibility and budgetary justifications. Publicly announcing what we can and cannot do, and where we are weak and where we are strong invites our enemies to exploit those holes in our defenses. Publishing manuals containing our military doctrines and tactics and later making them available for purchase by the public helps our enemies learn how we think and how we are trained to respond. We should make it more difficult for them to identify those vulnerabilities, rather than announce them to the media. Budgets and agency images will not seem so critical when we suffer another attack on America soil.

Forgetting the Unforgettable: Pills May Soon Erase Traumatic Memories

The erasing of memories, a staple of science fiction books and films, has become reality, and soon it may also become readily available in pill or capsule form for patients treated by physicians or psychiatrists. ABC reporter Russell Goldman’s story, “Erasing the Pain of the Past” detailed the development of drugs that target memories of traumatic events and slowly eliminate them. Using an Iraqi War veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a case study, the report describes how these memory erasing drugs could be utilized to target the military veteran’s memories of frequent mortar attacks and over time remove them from his long term memory.

According to researchers, available knowledge of how the brain stores memories is fairly limited, but studies have revealed an important breakthrough:

But in their early efforts to understand the way in which short-term memories become long-term memories, researchers have discovered that certain drugs can interrupt that process. Those same drugs, they believe, can also be applied not just in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event — like a mortar attack, rape or car accident — but years later, when an individual is still haunted by memories of event.

The science involved in these studies is fascinating. The research is being conducted at a prominent hospital, Massachusetts General, by Dr. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pitman’s work, as reported in ABC’s story, identified that adrenaline plays a critical role in imprinting memories into our minds:

"There is a period of time after you first learn something before it's retained," Pitman explained. "This is called consolidation."

Some research has shown that stress hormones, particularly adrenaline, make that process faster and more intense.

"That's why you remember what you were doing the morning of Sept. 11, better than August 11," he said.

Some scientists believe that post-traumatic stress disorder is the result of too much adrenaline entering the brain at the moment the memory of a traumatic event is being consolidated, or stored, for the first time.

But "the real hot topic," Pitman said, is not consolidation but reconsolidation, the process by which an old memory is recalled and the same "window of opportunity" to alter it with drugs is opened for a second time.

Since the traumatic memory was imprinted due to a chemical influence (adrenaline), in theory during the moment that memory is being accessed or experienced by the patient, the memory itself can be chemically influenced again. The drugs under development would work to reverse the effects of adrenaline in the storage of that particular traumatic memory, lessening its physical and psychological effects on the body and mind and making it gradually more difficult to access the memory at all. The discovery of adrenaline’s role in traumatic memory retention and PTSD involved patients brought to the hospital emergency room after suffering automobile accidents. To calm the accident victims, doctors prescribed the drug propranolol to some and a placebo to others.

Propranolol has become a popular “social phobia” medication used by performers, politicians, and others whose work demands public speaking appearances that cause anxiety and nervousness. That anxiety manifests itself in releases of adrenaline, which produces rapid heart rate, shaking, and embarrassing voice cracking that all such performers dread. Propranolol was found to counteract the effects of adrenaline, and when researchers realized the link between adrenaline and traumatic memory, the idea to explore Propranolol treatment for PTSD symptoms was born.

Of course, as with any such potential medicinal breakthrough, ethical questions take center stage. Like cloning and other controversial research, the question arises, “Because we CAN do something, does that mean we SHOULD do it?” The President’s Council on Bioethics opposes all research focusing on memory alteration, but apparently the U.S. Army is at odds with the White House on this issue. According to ABC, the Army reportedly offered a monetary grant to help fund Dr. Pitman’s research involving treatment of Iraq War veterans for PTSD.

A question not raised in the ABC story is chemical “leaching” or “bleed over.” If the hormone adrenaline is what causes the mind to store traumatic memories along with the physical and psychological reactions associated with them in long term memory, is there a possibility that chemically altering one adrenaline induced memory could “bleed over” into another existing memory that also resulted from adrenaline release? For example, competitive athletes often experience “adrenaline rush” before, during, and immediately after a race, game, or performance. If such an athlete suffered an automobile accident on the way home after the game or event, the athlete’s memories of that day, the event as well as the accident, would be almost exclusively adrenaline imprinted memories. If this athlete were treated for accident-related PTSD later using Propranolol, would the drug differentiate between good adrenaline imprinted memories (the athletic competition) and negative traumatic memories imprinted on the same day and so closely linked? In the desire to remove the trauma of the accident, will the memory of achievement and competition also be removed?

Even the smallest of confrontations produces adrenaline release. The “fight or flight” response is well-documented and most adults retain vivid memories of schoolyard bullies, fights, sports achievements, and embarrassing situations. Certainly any life-threatening event induces adrenaline release. Law enforcement personnel, fire fighters, paramedics, military personnel, and civilian war survivors experience such moments frequently, and as a result PTSD is much more common among them than in the general population. Even intense training scenarios and tactical exercises will produce sufficient adrenaline to ensure long term memory of each and every such moment.

Removing some or all traumatic memories for such people would fundamentally alter who they are as well as their value as experienced professionals in critical public service fields. Whatever one thinks of Senator John McCain’s politics, it is worth considering what career he would be engaged in and what kind of man he would have become had memory erasing drug treatment been prescribed to him upon his return after 5 years of suffering in North Vietnamese POW camps. Few would suggest that President Kennedy would have been better off without the traumatic memory of his PT boat being destroyed by an enemy destroyer during WWII. He was injured in the incident and was later decorated for rescuing his surviving crewmembers.

A contrasting case to ponder might be Sulejman Talovic, the Salt Lake City youth who went on a shooting spree at a local mall. In a previous post I wrote at length about Talovic’s background as a Bosnian war refugee and genocide survivor, traumatized for five consecutive years by these events. In that post I compared Talovic’s history with battlefield experiences of a U.S. soldier who committed suicide, apparently due to PTSD, after his return home from the Iraq War. Would Talovic have gone on a shooting rampage had he been treated with memory altering medications? Likewise, would the U.S. soldier mentioned in that post have committed suicide had his traumatic war memories been suppressed or erased?

It is worth taking a moment to consider what memories you are storing, particularly those you can recall with little or no effort and that involve significant events in your life. The majority of such memories, whether traumatic or otherwise, likely involved a degree of adrenaline release. Childbirth certainly involves anxiety, nervousness, and intense physical exertion and adrenaline release for the mother, and anxiety and adrenaline release for the father as well. Childbirth is a life-altering event for everyone involved, and most people can recall with relative ease the event years later in great detail, presumably because the memories were adrenaline imprinted for long term memory storage. Who isn’t nervous and sustained by adrenaline on their wedding day? Is there a higher level of excitement induced adrenaline than that found in a child on Christmas morning?

Consequently, it is likely that most, if not all, of our long term memories, whether traumatic or happy, were chemically affected by adrenaline sufficiently to be stored in long term rather than short term memory. What if, while recollecting a traumatic event in order to have it altered and erased by medication, the mind wanders, as it often does, and recalls a different memory than the one targeted for erasure? If the drug therapy targets the memories in the moments they are being experienced, then the superimposition of a good memory or even another traumatic memory could, in theory, result in unintentional and permanent damage to or complete deletion of the wrong memory.

Clearly the research into memory alteration or erasure is still an emerging science, but the ethical questions involved with it are significant. What will be the medical standard for traumatic memory? As medical ethicist Felicia Cohn, consulted by ABC, wondered, “Who gets to decide what is horrific enough?” Cohn raised another important dilemma that anyone wanting to rid themselves of traumatic memories will face: unless the memories of everyone who has ever known the person are also erased, there will be, as the song bemoans, “always something there to remind me.” Cohn warns:

What are the effects of altering a particular person's memory but not changing the context the person is living in. We might erase a young girl's memory of a rape, but people around her will still know and inadvertently remind her.

Memory alteration drugs may not prove be the panacea hoped for by PTSD sufferers, or the ultimate government conspiracy tool depicted in science fiction stories and films, but perhaps they will, through successful and limited testing, serve to at least blunt some of the physical and psychological trauma characterized by PTSD sufficiently to help war veterans and others retain memories and lessons learned through experience, and regain control over their disrupted lives. If the release of adrenaline these sufferers experience each time they relive a traumatic memory can be suppressed, then the sufferer will be less likely to want the memory itself erased. If Dr. Pitman’s research leads down that path, rather than actual memory alteration or removal, it may prove invaluable to victims of a wide variety of traumas.

Post Editors and Columnist Absolute on Immorality of Torture: But What Would President Applebaum Do?

Apparently the only moral issue that liberals treat as an absolute is the faux-noble assertion that torture is always wrong, regardless of who is being tortured, or why. Today’s Washington Post editorial “Top-Secret Torture” meshes seamlessly with Post columnist Anne Applebaum’s commentary, “Tortured Credibility” to form a forked-tongued hiss against the Bush administration for allegedly torturing confessed terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Both pieces asserted that the alleged use of torture had destroyed America’s credibility in the war on terror. The Post’s editors and columnist, relying on the military tribunal testimony of Mohammed, accepted at face value Mohammed’s accusations of torture in “secret CIA prisons”, and interpreted the fact that the Bush administration was debating the legality and merits of torture immediately prior to the capture of Mohammed in 2003 as concrete evidence that torture had actually been performed. In essence, if the administration openly debated the issue, it must have done so out of guilt for current and future applications of torture.
On that flimsy premise, the Post’s editors sink their fangs into America’s interrogation methods as it related to terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Yet some of the harshest action taken against Mr. Mohammed has already been widely reported: He was treated to "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, an ancient torture method that every U.S. administration prior to this one has considered illegal. CIA detainees are also known to have been subjected to temperature extremes and sleep deprivation.

The Post editorial sanctimoniously declared that all previous U.S. administrations had considered “waterboarding” to be illegal, but typically failed to place such an accusation in historical context. Conveniently omitted was the fact that only one U.S. administration prior to the current one had experienced an attack on U.S. soil by Islamic terrorists: The Clinton administration and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. After that incident, terrorists were tracked down by law enforcement, jailed, tried, convicted, and sentenced. The perpetrators of that attack remain incarcerated and will continue to be for multiple life terms. What was the result of that “humane and dignified” counterterrorism legal approach? It encouraged al Qaeda and other groups to conclude that they had nothing to fear from our legal proceedings and ponderously slow law enforcement investigations. They continued planning and executing more spectacular attacks, including the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the Bombing of the USS Cole, and ultimately 9/11.

The fact that the Bush administration was, gasp, “debating the merits of torture,” demonstrates only that the administration was doing its job by exploring all options, not immediately taking any choices off of the table simply because the international community might find them distasteful. Comparatively, the civilized world would prefer that we never utilize a nuclear weapon in combat, but we won’t be beating those proverbial swords into plowshares anytime soon. There are no Geneva Convention rules that apply to international terrorists like al Qaeda that recruit and operate in a multitude of nations, wearing no uniform and fighting under no recognized governmental flag. Prisoner of war status, let alone full American legal rights, should not be afforded these opportunistic killers. They are fighting for an extremist religious creed, not a nation.

A credible commander in chief never rejects outright any options available to him or her in the defense of the nation, and it is liberal peacenik utopianism to declare, as Applebaum did, that torture:

. . . is not merely immoral. . . it is also ineffective and in fact profoundly counterproductive: There is no proof that it produces better information but plenty of evidence that it has discredited the United States.

Applebaum is not privy to the classified interrogation reports generated during terrorist detainee interviews, and thus has no real knowledge of whether interrogation or “torture” tactics are implemented. Likewise, she is in no position to judge whether the information thus gleaned is better than intelligence obtained through criminal prosecutions or Geneva Convention compliant prisoner of war “interviews”. Since the intelligence gathered from Mohammed and other detainees, regardless of the methods used to obtain it, will remain classified for two more decades, it is reckless to make absolutist blanket statements now about the efficacy of intense interrogation or even actual torture in the War on Terror.

The frequent and injudicious use of torture is distasteful to everyone, including those who may be asked to perform it. However, if liberals continue to insist that torture is always wrong and should never be utilized, they may eventually come to rue the day they had an opportunity to discover and prevent a catastrophic attack but could not stomach the method that would have exposed the plot.

It is quite a simple exercise to think up a scenario in which the resolute morality of the anti-torture absolutists would face its ultimate challenge. Imagine that U.S. President Anne Applebaum, who was elected on a platform promising an end to the Iraq War and condemnation of torture as immoral and ineffective, is reading to children at an elementary school in Washington, DC one late summer morning. As she reads, her Chief of Staff whispers in her ear that the FBI, following a tip from a concerned Muslim-American, has captured a known terrorist who appears to be suffering from severe radiation poisoning in his apartment in Alexandria, VA.

The Chief of Staff further whispers that the terrorist has admitted to planting an armed, timed-detonation nuclear device inside the District of Columbia, but refuses to reveal where the device has been placed. The Chief of Staff concludes with the words, “He told the FBI the device would detonate in 2 hours. We cannot evacuate the city in that time, Madame President.” President Applebaum politely excuses herself without alarming the children, and moves to a holding room where she can confer with her advisers.

The CIA director advises President Applebaum that the terrorist in custody was previously imprisoned by the Russians during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The CIA Director further advises that Russian intelligence received much useful information on Mujahideen movements from this terrorist because he displayed only moderate resistance to torture. Russian intelligence operatives had found “waterboarding” to be the single most effective method for extracting information from this individual now in FBI custody, usually requiring no more than 1 hour of the procedure before he broke.

The FBI Director reminds President Applebaum that the terrorist knows where the device is and how to disarm it, but laughs and shouts “Death to the Great Satan” when asked to reveal where the bomb is located. No one in the room wishes to be responsible for recommending it, but the question hanging in the air, to be answered only by President Applebaum, is, “Should we ‘waterboard’ this terrorist, find the bomb, and save Washington, or would that be immoral, further discrediting the United States in the eyes of the world?”

The Washington Post editorial and Applebaum’s column would indicate that the writers have not given sufficient consideration to the ramifications of declaring torture as an intelligence tool to be immoral and universally insisting that it should never be used. Sound advice in time of war would be to keep all available arrows in the quiver, no matter ho unattractive, sharp and prepared for flight. Moral absolutism as it applies to torture is convenient and noble in peacetime, but when potential death for millions hangs in the balance, as in the above hypothetical scenario, international opinion should not dictate what tools a U.S. president should utilize to “provide for the common defense” of the nation.

McCain: "I'm Sure I have a Policy on That, I Just Need to Check What it is"

After 25 years in Washington (as a Congressman and Senator), 2008 presidential candidate Senator John McCain, when asked his position on government subsidies for contraception, made the following statement on the campaign trail in Iowa, as reported by the Telegraph (UK):

"I'm sure I have a policy on that. I just need to check what it is," he replied, before seeking illumination from his aides.

Can a candidate or elected official really claim to have a policy on any issue if it is not ingrained sufficiently into his knowledge base that he can recall it without prompting from an aide? This one sentence response illustrates much of what is lacking in political campaigning and in a larger sense, in governance itself. Elected officials believe themselves too busy to dedicate themselves to any actual study and internalization of issues, preferring instead to hire cadres of aides to learn the issues for them and advise the politicians of what they should think and say about an issue. While this approach allows the politicians more time to engage in glad-handing and stump speaking for their election and reelection campaigns, it also has the unfortunate consequence of assuring that the individuals Americans actually vote for suffer a deplorable paucity of personal awareness of the issues on which they vote. Those issues seriously affect the nation’s course in economics, health, morality, and national security, but are deemed less important than campaigning by candidates while others learn the issues for them.

The question asked of Senator McCain was not a complicated one. Either you believe that the government should spend taxpayer money to buy contraceptives for America’s youth who choose promiscuity over abstinence, or you don’t. It is highly improbable that Senator McCain did not know what he thought about such a question, and if one defends his response by praising his wisdom in clarifying his position before answering, one is actually defending a candidate’s right to say what others want to hear rather than what he personally believes or what needs to be said. Stating what you believe and saying what needs to be said are demonstrations of leadership. Declining to answer questions until you can confer with aides and read your politically correct cue cards is a demonstration of unprincipled ambition. Soothsayers tell the masses whatever is popular and what they want to hear. Leaders tell the masses what needs to be done and why, knowing that it will likely be unpopular.

McCain also seems to be seeking a career as soothsayer to Europe and other regions that harbor anti-American sentiment (hat tip to Wizbang Politics). During his speech to the farmers of Cedar Falls, Iowa, McCain expressed great concern for America’s image around the world, particularly in Europe, and that restoring a good image (i.e. being more like them and less like us) will be a “top priority” if he is elected president in 2008. On the surface, the concept of improving relations with our once loyal European allies seems laudable, but then McCain explained what steps he would take to improve America’s image abroad and the pandering to European popularity takes an ominous turn:

"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth (an army base in Kansas) and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases," he said. "I would reaffirm my commitment to address the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. I know how important this is in Europe in particular."

Perhaps Senator McCain’s aides, who apparently tell him what his positions are, should advise him that he was elected to represent Arizona in the Senate, not The Hague, and that if elected president in 2008 he would be obligated to implement the will of the American electorate, not the EU. Climate change is also very important to Al Gore, so perhaps Senator McCain is auditioning for a VP spot in Gore’s undeclared but inevitable run for the White House, since these statements embracing liberal ideologies will assure McCain’s quick exit in the GOP primaries and availability as Gore’s running mate.

More troubling than his desire to please Europe is the fact that he embraces the idea of closing the Guantanamo detention facility, where enemy combatants are held and interviewed. At Guantanamo, terrorists captured during our counterterrorism actions worldwide are kept them from killing our troops in the field, and we receive the added benefit of occasionally gleaning valuable information from them that disrupts future terrorist attacks or provides better understanding of the structure and operational tactics of al Qaeda and other groups.

John McCain is opposed to torture, and based on his well-documented experience as a POW in Vietnam, the reasons for his opposition are valid and unassailable. However, Guantanamo is not Abu Ghraib, and as confessed 9/11 planner and self-proclaimed super terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed clearly stated in his testimony last week, he was never tortured at Guantanamo and no part of his confession was the result of coercion or was extracted through torture tactics.

I wrote recently about the legal and practical dangers associated with closing Guantanamo and relocating the detainees to military brigs inside the U.S. Proposals for closure and relocation have come from Democrats in Congress, but Senator McCain has allied himself with their cause, another issue on which he has ignored the will of the people in order to cast himself as a “maverick” or as more palatable to the liberal media than his more conservative opponents for the GOP presidential nomination. Virginia’s citizens, regardless of party, are opposed to the relocation of Guantanamo detainees to Quantico or other facilities within the Commonwealth.

If Senator McCain’s support for facility closure is sincere, he should also be in favor of relocating the terrorist detainees to Arizona for criminal trials in federal courts in his own state. So far, Senator McCain has been silent on whether his Arizona constituents would approve of having hundreds of terrorists transported to and housed in their state. Perhaps the Senator has a policy on this, but needs to check with his aides to learn what it is.

Throughout his Senate career, Senator McCain has straddled the fences between the two parties far too often to be trusted by either one. In some respects, though he worded it differently, McCain echoed a sentiment he apparently shares with John Kerry. Kerry, as readers will remember, called America “an international pariah” during a World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. McCain, in his Cedar Falls speech, stressed his desire to counter the “ugly American” image prevalent in Europe. Kerry and McCain seem to share the conviction that anti-American sentiment in Europe is America’s fault, and that American policies and administrations (President Bush in particular) are responsible for giving Europeans cause to dislike America.

Conservative media, including Spy The News!, lambasted Kerry for his remarks, but McCain deserves equal condemnation for ignoring history (which he claims to study and love). Europeans have always disdained America and its culture. We were considered uncouth ruffians by the French during the Revolutionary War, and that opinion has not been changed by 231 years of global leadership in technology, industry, transportation, medicine, and military achievement. Not even our generous rebuilding of nations destroyed in world wars has moved European nations permanently into America’s corner.

Liberating France in WWII did not create an eternal debt of gratitude among the French, and rebuilding Germany did not prevent that nation from protesting against American Cold War policies or opposing our post 9/11 military actions. The Marshall Plan was unparalleled in human history for its strategic compassion and generosity, yet few of the nations restored to viability by that plan can be counted today as reliably pro-American. The idea that if America would stop being so American, and would try to be more like Europe, then Europe would love America and never oppose it again is patently ludicrous. The same logic is put forward by anti-war demonstrators who claim that if America will address the root causes of terrorism, or if America will stop supporting Israel, or if America will just sit down and negotiate with the terrorists, the terrorists will stop wanting to kill us.

Appeasement will always fail, regardless of whether the appeasement is given to “friend” or foe. America did not cause anti-American sentiment. Blaming America is an international pastime rivaling only soccer in popularity. Whether it stems from envy, revenge, fear, insecurity, or ignorance, the motivation behind anti-Americanism is rarely the result of American action or inaction, though we are demonized for both. They dislike America for what America is and for what the EU aspires to be but falls short.

Senator McCain’s aides may wish to consider researching whether the American electorate wants America to be more, or less, like Europe. Europe is gravitating, rather quickly, toward universal socialism via the EU. Religion has been purged from political discourse, and politically correct tolerance there has resulted in a severe decline in societal morals and families bound by marriage. The only segments of European society that are continuing to marry and produce children are religious immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Senator McCain, Senator Kerry, please remind us again why we want to be more like Europe? Other than 2 hour naps during lunch time and a mandatory month of annual summer vacation, there is little reason for America to adopt European societal or political habits.

Presenting Europe, and the rest of the world, with a strong, confident, and noble America that says and does what is right may not always win friends among the feckless, but it is a demonstration of leadership. McCain and Kerry consistently place their concern for global popularity ahead of what America’s voters want from their leaders. Also not surprisingly, McCain’s declining appeal to presidential election voters will assure that he, like Kerry, will remain a soothsaying Senator with frustrated presidential aspirations.