Torturing Churchill

Winston Churchill's old bones must be writhing in their tomb. The suicide-pact Left has appropriated Churchill in their cause for a Terrorists' Bill of Rights.

President Obama has cast himself as following in the footsteps of his antithesis Churchill. In the unwatched prime-time press conference on the occasion of his 100th day as president, Obama told this howler: "London was being bombed to smithereens and had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture.'" Obama considers waterboarding to be torture, so we're left to suppose from this that waterboarding would have been too strong stuff for Churchill.

Can anyone who knows anything of Churchill seriously believe he would have had the slightest misgiving about dousing -- under supervision of a doctor -- three known terrorists, to make them talk and save innocent lives? Terrorists who want us all dead and burning in hell, who observe no law of war, and who target civilians primarily?

Churchill, the man who ordered area bombings of German population centers with incendiary explosives intended specifically to create sucking, all-consuming firestorms, for vengeance and the destruction of German national will?

Churchill, who was prepared to turn the English Channel into a lake of fire if the Germans crossed it? Churchill, who was prepared to meet the Germans with mustard gas if they set foot on the shores of England?

Churchill, who had 16 captured German spies hanged? Churchill, who opposed the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals and ordered his SAS to assassinate wanted German officers before the preening lawyers had them "arrested"?

Churchill's daughter said it: "He would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things, but they didn't unman him."

The kookery seems to have originated with the hysterical blogger called Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan's blog on Palin family conspiracy theories was apparently read by the president of the United States, who really ought to have better things to do. President Obama then credulously shared his new Sullivan's Fairy Tale with the world in his 100th day celebratory prime-time presser, about the Blitz and the 200 detainees and Churchill's supposedly saying "we don't torture."

Only, it was more like 500 detainees, and nowhere in Churchill's millions of recorded words was any such sappiness ever expressed. Churchill was on record as opposing torture for British citizen convicts, but enemy spies in war were another matter. And of course, a lot hangs on what is meant by "torture": I daresay Churchill wouldn't have ordered roughness for its own sake; but if a captured enemy was outside the law of war and had valuable intelligence, it would not have been a good time for him.

Under Churchill, captured German spies and SS officers were beaten, starved, drugged, deprived of sleep, threatened with hanging, and forced to betray their homeland as double-agents.

The irony is that Barack Obama's Kenyan grandfather claimed to have been tortured by British forces during Churchill's second premiership. Hussein Onyango Obama was involved in the Kikuyu Central Association which sparked the Mau Mau Rebellion of the early 1950s. He was detained for two years and allegedly tortured for information on the rebellion.

Barack Obama's "Granny Sarah" Onyango claims British forces whipped Obama's grandfather "every morning and evening 'til he confessed," "squeeze[d] his testicles with parallel metallic rods," and "pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down."

The British certainly killed over 10,000 rebels, detained about 70,000, and had official sanction for rough treatment where warranted -- while Churchill was Prime Minister.

Anyone who throws around "war criminal" to describe President Bush or others in his administration would have also to brand Churchill a "war criminal," many times over. The same for Democrat Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. If you didn't like George W. Bush, you'd have hated Winston S. Churchill.

Churchill was an anachronistic, arch conservative, an Anglo-Saxon imperialist, a Zionist, the foremost advocate in the English-speaking world for the utility of force in international relations, and a brutal war-master. Churchill was also the greatest figure of the 20th Century.

If decadent, historically-illiterate leftists are going to fight for the rights of terrorists, to take up the cause of sparing terrorists from unpleasantness as a righteous moral crusade of our time, they have the luxury for now to be so suicidal. But let none of them claim Churchill as a champion of their cause. The historical revisionism of Churchill as some limp-wristed, weak-stomached, bleeding-heart coddler of the enemy in war is something like the vegetarian who imagines that dogs don't actually like meat.

Churchill gave as good as he got, and then some: "We will mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us." And don't you forget it.