Politics & Power Quote by Howard Baker

Baker’s sentence does the statesman’s favorite trick: it turns a contested policy choice into a matter of national character. “In our nature” is doing heavy lifting. It shifts the frame from law to identity, from what the government must do to what Americans instinctively want to do. That rhetorical move is meant to disarm the uglier reality embedded in the first clause: the United States “turns over” its own citizens, even service members, to foreign governments. The phrase is bureaucratically gentle, almost procedural, but it carries the chill of relinquished protection.

The intent is reassurance, aimed at a public that flinches at anything resembling abandonment. By emphasizing “including military personnel,” Baker spotlights the most politically sensitive case: people who are symbolically owed the nation’s maximum care. Once that emotional stake is established, the rest of the line supplies a moral checklist - “best,” “fairest,” “most humane” - a rising triad that sounds like standards and feels like a promise.

The subtext is more complicated. Wanting to “make sure” is not the same as being able, or willing, to guarantee. Baker’s language leaves wiggle room for diplomatic constraints, intelligence bargains, and the perennial temptation to outsource messy problems. In context, this is late-20th-century Washington speaking the dialect of rights while navigating extradition, prisoner transfers, and alliance politics. The genius, and the caution, is that “humane treatment” is offered as an American impulse rather than an enforceable obligation - an ethic that can be asserted even when accountability is hardest.