Congressional Love Note
Dear Senator McCain,
Thank you for championing an explicit U.S. ban on torture. This needed to be done; the moral gray area which the current administration was allowing to persist needed to end. You stood your ground, and you have prevailed.
I am not one of your constituents, although I heartily wish I were. In the 2000 Texas primaries, back when I still identified myself as a Republican, I voted for you over our current president. Even though the increasing corruption and extreme right-wing fascism of the Republican party drove me to vote primarily Democrat in the last election, if faced with the chance to vote for you again I most likely would.
You publicly refused to compromise your position on this issue, and for that I respect you greatly. Even when Vice President Cheney made a public appeal to Congress to allow the CIA the option to circumvent the proposed ban, even when they demanded the ability to protect those guilty of violating the ban from civil or criminal prosecution, even when the White House declared flat-out it would veto any such bill, you refused to bend. You knew it would be wrong, that such compromises and exceptions would only undermine the bill's purpose in an unacceptable way.
I am not so naive as to think that even you, one of the few politicians I admire, have no political motivations for what you do. I know you had the popular support for the ban, and that you likely had the votes in both chambers of Congress to override the threatened presidential veto. I also think it quite possible you will again seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008, and as a result you would find it useful to gain more news exposure to the voting public.
I also have seen you on many occasions support the administration's position on a number of facts. You still support the administration's decision to go to war, even as you acknowledge that the intelligence that gave us the justification to do so was faulty in the extreme. You have remained faithful to your party and your president throughout this American crisis of faith. To be honest, there have been several times I wished you would have done otherwise, when I wished you would oppose policies I personally felt were enacted in bad faith. I have wondered if you wished to do just that, and were constrained by the political 'necessities' of serving in Congress. I wondered if it galled you to do so, after how you were treated by President Bush when you ran against him in the 2000 primary.
Yet on this issue, you firmly and emphatically condemned the practices the White House has allowed--practices you yourself have sadly been a victim of. You never wavered in your position on this matter, from the moment the conditions Abu Ghraib were exposed to the world. Several of the most highly-placed members of the Republican party have attempted, and will still attempt, to thwart the passage of this bill. Yet you have defied them at every turn.
For this, I salute you, sir. Thank you for giving me hope that the party I grew up believing in still contains men and women of decency and honor. Thank you for refusing to bow to political pressure in this national debate. Thank you for restoring some small amount of my faith in the American legislative progress. We need more leaders like you.
Sincerely,
A Former Republican
Thank you for championing an explicit U.S. ban on torture. This needed to be done; the moral gray area which the current administration was allowing to persist needed to end. You stood your ground, and you have prevailed.
I am not one of your constituents, although I heartily wish I were. In the 2000 Texas primaries, back when I still identified myself as a Republican, I voted for you over our current president. Even though the increasing corruption and extreme right-wing fascism of the Republican party drove me to vote primarily Democrat in the last election, if faced with the chance to vote for you again I most likely would.
You publicly refused to compromise your position on this issue, and for that I respect you greatly. Even when Vice President Cheney made a public appeal to Congress to allow the CIA the option to circumvent the proposed ban, even when they demanded the ability to protect those guilty of violating the ban from civil or criminal prosecution, even when the White House declared flat-out it would veto any such bill, you refused to bend. You knew it would be wrong, that such compromises and exceptions would only undermine the bill's purpose in an unacceptable way.
I am not so naive as to think that even you, one of the few politicians I admire, have no political motivations for what you do. I know you had the popular support for the ban, and that you likely had the votes in both chambers of Congress to override the threatened presidential veto. I also think it quite possible you will again seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008, and as a result you would find it useful to gain more news exposure to the voting public.
I also have seen you on many occasions support the administration's position on a number of facts. You still support the administration's decision to go to war, even as you acknowledge that the intelligence that gave us the justification to do so was faulty in the extreme. You have remained faithful to your party and your president throughout this American crisis of faith. To be honest, there have been several times I wished you would have done otherwise, when I wished you would oppose policies I personally felt were enacted in bad faith. I have wondered if you wished to do just that, and were constrained by the political 'necessities' of serving in Congress. I wondered if it galled you to do so, after how you were treated by President Bush when you ran against him in the 2000 primary.
Yet on this issue, you firmly and emphatically condemned the practices the White House has allowed--practices you yourself have sadly been a victim of. You never wavered in your position on this matter, from the moment the conditions Abu Ghraib were exposed to the world. Several of the most highly-placed members of the Republican party have attempted, and will still attempt, to thwart the passage of this bill. Yet you have defied them at every turn.
For this, I salute you, sir. Thank you for giving me hope that the party I grew up believing in still contains men and women of decency and honor. Thank you for refusing to bow to political pressure in this national debate. Thank you for restoring some small amount of my faith in the American legislative progress. We need more leaders like you.
Sincerely,
A Former Republican