Running Scared

Jesse:
The often excellent Andrew Sullivan('s blog), which is the number one bane of my existence lately; he posts too often, but it's too good for me to ignore, which overloads my Google Reader (also Slate) has shown me a bit of a running theme among the post I've kept around to write about.

To whit:

First, a reader of his on transferring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to SuperMax prisons in the U.S.:

Can someone remind me what it is the NIMBY crowd thinks these detainees are going to do once transferred to the U.S.? They act like these guys are half-MacGyver, half-Houdini, and half-Lecter. Do they think they're Transformers or X-Men or something, and that as soon as these mostly low-level terrorists touch U.S. soil they're going to shoot lasers from their eyes and throw cars at people?

Second, reporting on a claim that Dick Cheney fouled up a British terror investigation because he pulled the trigger on an arrest too fast.

And third, another reader on how his or her local school massively over-reacted to people worrying about the President talking to their kids.

The common thread here is that the right wing has become incredibly fearful. Terrorists might magically escape our prisons; I can't let law enforcement take a chance, even if it means terrorists go free; President Obama is going to magically destroy my children's mind.

Obviously, it's ridiculous. But what I want to emphasize is that we need to start punishing them for it. When our Prime Minister refuses to repatriate a child who's been abused in American prisons, I think there should be less complaining and more accusing. It's not that Stephen Harper "doesn't care about human rights", or even "doesn't care about non-white Canadians". It's that Stephen Harper is craven.

He's afraid he'll "look weak on terror"
He's afraid the Bush Administration won't like it
He's afraid an abused young man, who is a huge media figure, will somehow overwhelm CSIS.

Look. If you're too scared of your base to do the right thing, you don't deserve to be elected. If you're too scared of the Americans, you don't deserve to be elected. And if the intelligence services you oversee can't handle one guy who turns 23 in ten days, you don't deserve to be elected.