The Effects of Conflict - Turning into the Enemy

There is lots of debate about the counterproductive effects of counter-terrorism: how the denial of freedom and the extension of intolerance (together with the apparent tolerance of crimes like torture) mean that the terrorists have won. But that's not what I want to talk about here.

In his Washington Diary, BBC Correspondent Matt Frei reports on something that has been getting more obvious for a while - the complete destruction of John McCain by his captors. Taken prisoner by the Republican Right (his Freudian slip a few weeks ago revealing his true feelings), McCain is no longer the honest and open-minded anti-politician, and now sounds more and more like the man who beat him in 2000.

"Was George W Bush about to beat McCain once again, this time because of an excess of friendship?"

"Perhaps the man who had spent almost six years in solitary confinement had developed political Stockholm syndrome? "

And here's a similar comment from Rolling Stone

In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000.