John McCain knows what we should be doing to help rescue the children kidnapped by Nigerian terrorists. If you guessed "send in the troops," congratulations. And if you didn't guess "send in the troops," you
haven't really been paying attention now, have you.
But let's remember for a moment that this guy wanted to become president.
“If they knew where they were, I certainly would send in U.S. troops to rescue them, in a New York minute I would, without permission of the host country,” McCain told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t be waiting for some kind of permission from some guy named Goodluck Jonathan,” he added, referring to the president of Nigeria.
Add a new calculation to the John McCain status of where to send U.S. forces and under what circumstances, then: Whether or not John McCain likes the other guy's name. What a diplomat.
McCain may yet get his wish—the United States has deployed satellites, aircraft and drones to help hunt for the missing children—but note that there's a catch:
U.S. military intervention may also be complicated by existing law. The Leahy Amendment bars direct aid to any foreign military guilty of human rights abuses — a charge the State Department has made of the Nigerian military in the past.