Iranian Hostage Crisis Redux

Powerline makes a brilliant point today about the Iranian hostage crisis:

"[T]hese uniformed British servicemen (and woman), unlike captured terrorists, are entitled to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, which Iran has signed. Pretty much every aspect of their treatment has violated the Convention: a video showing them in captivity has been filmed and played on television, they have been "interrogated," in Iran's own description, and are now being held incommunicado in an undisclosed location. Has anyone noticed any outcry from the "world community" about this? Does the Geneva Convention apply to anyone other than the U.S.?"

Ann Coulter

I'm not blogging on Ann Coulter, and you can't make me.

I do have to say, however, that there is some illogic in the position that some have taken that says, well, look at Bill Maher and what he said about the assassination attempt against Dick Cheney, that's just as bad.

1. Two wrongs, if I recall, do not make a right.
2. Maher was speaking on TV as a TV host. He's a jerk, but he's a jerk without portfolio. Coulter was speaking at an important Republican event, the CPAC convention, at which, not incidentally, all but one of the major Republican Presidential candidates spoke. There is a difference between a bear shitting in the woods and a bear shitting in your living room.

Republicans need to be cleaner than Democrats. Partly that is tactical -- given the MSM biases, we have to be cleaner, or they'll make us look dirtier. But mostly it is just a moral point -- when the political language becomes debased, the culture will become debased. Conservatives are supposed to stand against the debasement of culture and for seriousness. We are the adult party. We're supposed to do better than this.

Hello again!

Well, hello again. Haven't blogged for awhile -- work, family, work, family, work, work, work... you know the drill -- but I'm back.

Here is a picture that belies the Angry Left's vision of Dubya. I know what they will say... this is all a photo-op, this is just a way of making sure that he doesn't get "Katrina-ed" by the Alabama tornados. There is, of course, this sort of cynicisn in politics, but there is also real compassion, real humanity. Wouldn't our political culture be better for everyone if we let our default assumption be the good intentions of others, even our opponents? I believe in the President's good intentions, here, in Iraq, in everything. But, even if I didn't, wouldn't my criticisms of him -- if I were a Man of the Left, which I'm not -- wouldn't they be more substantive if I assumed that he was acting honorably for what he believed to be good ends?

Just a thought.