Vote '08

From a post at today’s Miami Herald’s Naked Politics Blog:

One of John McCain’s fellow POW’s in Vietnam defended the war in Iraq, saying, “The Muslims have said either we kneel or they’re going to kill us.”

In a phone call with reporters arranged by the McCain campaign, Colonel Bud Day added: “I don’t intend to kneel and I don’t advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn’t advocate to anybody that we kneel.”

Muslim leaders have complained that they have been villified as terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Day, who lives in Pensacola, was part of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that smeared former Democratic nominee John Kerry’s war record in 2004.

Day’s words are exactly the kind of thinking that puts our nation’s security in greater peril.

The statement paints Muslims unfairly with a broad brush, to say the least. Day should clarify that those statements come from Muslim terrorists & extremists, & not all Muslims. I will give John McCain the benefit of the doubt that this is not the way he views this struggle; but there is no question that many Americans who vote for him in November have this mindset.

Part of winning the struggle against terrorism is convincing the vast moderate Muslim world that it’s in their best interest to be on our side. We can not prevail without their support. & therefore it is your duty as an American to discourage this kind of thinking, which pushes Muslim moderates away from us.

Again — this kind of talk only makes us less safe.

UPDATE: The McCain camp refuses to disavow the statement.

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