Wimps!

Evan Bayh says that Democrats can't be a bunch of wimps on terror, but on CNN this morning he was following the McCain and Graham line. McCain cited unnamed generals and admirals who are worried that Bush's proposal would be treated as a withdrawal from the Geneva Conventions. Cornyn cleaned his clock. It seems to me that the Geneva Accords did really contemplate a war like this, where the enemy isn't a national government. The Supreme Court compounded this by ruling that Article 3 applies to captured terrorists, who wouldn't consider for a moment abiding by these rules.

I think it would be well to be more explicit about illegal combatants and terrorism and explicitly waive the convention as to such people. They certainly don't deserve treatment according to the norms of civilized society. The resistance to a common sense change undermines respect for the Geneva Conventions and would turn them into just one more reason to involve lawyers in warfare.

Bill Kristol thinks this will hurt the Dems and McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins. His reasoning is fine, but I'm not sure logic applies, the way things have been going lately. The media has been so deliberately one-sided and anti-war that it's getting difficult to trust that the voters are really informed. People seem to see the war as an annoyance and boring. Will enough of them really weigh the consequences this Fall? A lot of conservatives feel that the Republicans are taking them for granted and may sit this one out or even vote against them. On the other hand, what have the Democrats got to offer but anger, revenge and repeating Vietnam?