I was wrong to list legitimate concerns over Mike Huckabee’s record. I temporarily forgot that he is running in the Republican primary, and so he will be scrutinized over whether or not he has the capacity for hate. In a somehow-without-irony post entitled “MIKE HUCKABEE — TOO MORALISTIC TO PROTECT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY,” one of the brain surgeons at TIME’s Blog of the Year, Powerline, notes that Huck has come out against torture – meaning he just can’t ever become President.
Now we learn (but are surprised) that Huckabee opposes waterboarding and would close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Huckabee reached this conclusion after meeting with a group of retired generals (the usual suspects, I assume) who are lobbying candidates to oppose Bush administration interrogation and detention policies.
I suspect that Huckabee required little lobbying. Waterboarding and long-term detention aren’t very “Christian”; they merely keep terrorists out of action and, in special circumstances enable us to find out where we’re going to be attacked next and/or where we can find those who are planning the next attacks. But if Huckabee actually did reach his position based on the views of a handful of generals, and without consulting the people actually charged with protecting this country from terrorists, then he’s even less qualified to be president than I suspect.
Of course, interrogators, who are the people charged with protecting the country from terrorists, have denounced the use of torture as degrading, inhumane, and useless as an information-gathering tool.
Well, the ship has been righted, I’ve seen the error of my ways. I was assessing the race as if rational human beings would be doing the voting, not sadists.
Something to say?
