The Madness of John McCain

No jobs and more war. Fuck this Son of Bitch conservatives hold out

till we get a real conservative as a nominee.

It may not be till 2012 but it will be worth it. It is imperative not

to reward a Neo-con warmonger and amnesty lover.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/cover.html

February 11, 2008 Issue

Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative

The Madness of John McCain

A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush

Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.

by Justin Raimondo

John McCain's reputation as a maverick is no recent contrivance. The

senator first captured the media spotlight in September 1983, not long

after he'd been elected to his first term in the House, when he voted

against President Reagan's decision to put American troops in Lebanon

as part of a multinational "peacekeeping" force. One of 27 Republicans

to break with the White House, the freshman McCain made a floor speech

that reads as if it might have been written yesterday--by Ron Paul:

The fundamental question is: What is the United States' interest

in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what

peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what

government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask,

how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region?... The longer we stay

in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped

by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will

happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will

increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent

civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any

event.

Now insert "Iraq" where McCain said "Lebanon." It's as if McCain the

Younger foresaw our present predicament and taunted his future

incarnation, showing that wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age.

In sketching out McCain's political career alongside a timeline of

American interventions abroad, one comes, at last, to a turning point.

But his course was set much earlier, in his first visible venture into

the realm of national-security issues at the time of the Lebanese

events: Reagan's request for U.S. troops and the subsequent attack on

the Beirut marine barracks, where 241 military personnel were killed.

This vaulted McCain to national attention. His initial opposition to

the administration's resolution authorizing the sending of troops was

picked up by the media, and he basked in the spotlight. As he put it

in his memoir, Worth the Fighting For:

It [his vote against the resolution] caught the attention of the

Washington press corps, who tend to notice acts of political

independence from unexpected quarters. My press secretary, Torie

Clarke, began receiving interview requests from national print and

broadcast media. Because of my POW experience, I had always enjoyed a

little more celebrity than is usually accorded freshmen, but not so

much that my views were solicited or even taken seriously by the

national media. Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like the

MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of the New York Times and the

Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more.

On the strength of his prescient skepticism of U.S. intervention in a

Middle Eastern nation known for its fierce sectarian passions,

McCain's star burned bright. U.S. News & World Report lauded him as a

"Republican on the rise," while on the other side of the culture-

chasm, Rolling Stone hailed the Arizonan for his dissenting voice on

an important foreign policy issue. His reputation was made as that

straight-talking, idiosyncratic, interesting Republican congressman

from the Southwest, a version of Barry Goldwater the liberal media

could like--and would come to love.

Not yet, however: there was a dark interregnum during which McCain and

the media were at odds. There were shouting matches between the

voluble senator and reporters over the "Keating Five" scandal and his

wife's struggle with drugs. But this adversarial relationship turned a

corner, in 1991, when the first Gulf War erupted. McCain reflected in

his memoir, "As self-interested as this sounds, I was relieved when

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August of that year gave reporters some

other reason to talk to me and something else to report."

His position on that war was not the reflexive interventionism we have

come to expect from him but a more thoughtful approach, as cited in

the New York Times of Aug. 19, 1990: "If you get involved in a major

ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode

significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate,

in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood."

McCain preferred to use air power to keep Saddam Hussein out of Saudi

Arabia, rather than introducing ground troops, and opposed the call

that went out from the more militant neoconservatives that U.S.

troops, having freed Kuwait from Saddam's clutches, should push on to

Baghdad.

What changed his foreign-policy purview, however, was the Kosovo War.

Again he played the maverick role for all it was worth, taking up the

cudgels against many in his own party. But this time, he was on the

side of intervention.

Monday, April 5, 1999, was a busy day for McCain: Larry King, Charlie

Rose, Catherine Crier, two appearances on MSNBC, another two on CNBC,

capped by an interview on ABC's "Nightline." The next morning, he was

up early for Don Imus. "We've turned down far more than we've

accepted," McCain enthused. It was "all McCain, all the time," as one

Republican strategist put it to the Washington Post, and it sure

wasn't hurting his presidential campaign.

"When I urged the president of the United States not to rule out the

option of ground forces, then I also assumed responsibility for what

may be the loss of young Americans' lives," averred McCain. "I don't

know how it affects my campaign. But I've basically put my campaign on

hold to some degree."

This was disingenuous, at best. Far from putting his campaign on hold,

his newfound visibility gave it a shot in the arm, and political

operatives in both parties saluted the pragmatism of his stance. "He

looks presidential at a time when many Republicans don't believe the

current president does," said Whit Ayres, an Atlanta-based GOP

pollster. "He's where the country is," added Mark Mellman, a

Democratic pollster. "Americans certainly like to win and they don't

like politicians sniping in the corner when the question is whether

we're going to win it."

"We're in it, and we've gotta win it!" McCain repeated endlessly as he

berated his "isolationist" fellow Republicans and demanded that they

get behind the president and support the war. Yet his support was

framed by a critique of the handling of the conflict that disdained

Clinton's alleged timidity in taking steps to ensure a victory.

Three weeks after hostilities began, McCain delivered a speech to the

Center for Strategic and International Studies in which he declared

that American intervention in the Balkans had been effectively

stymied: "I think it is safe to assume that no one, including me,

anticipated the speed with which Serbia would defeat our objectives in

Kosovo, and the scope of that defeat." While conceding, "yes, the war

is only three weeks old, and yes, NATO can and probably will prevail

in this conflict with what is, after all, a considerably inferior

adversary," he warned "victory will not be hastened by pretending that

things have just gone swimmingly."

According to McCain, there were two big problems with the conduct of

the war: first, "an excessively restricted air campaign that sought

the impossible goal of avoiding war while waging one. The second is

the repeated declarations from the president, vice president, and

other senior officials that NATO would refrain from using ground

troops even if the air campaign failed. These two mistakes were made

in what almost seemed willful ignorance of every lesson we learned in

Vietnam."

We were, he warned, in danger of "losing" to the Serbian army--with its

outdated equipment and complete lack of an air force--if we failed to

launch air strikes that were "massive, strategic and sustained."

Furthermore, "no infrastructure targets should have been off limits"--

factories, water plants, hospitals, schools, markets, whatever. Yes,

"we all grieve over civilian casualties as well as our own losses,"

but "they are unavoidable."

But all of this was eminently avoidable, as critics of the war--

including many of McCain's fellow Republicans in Congress--pointed out

at the time. The war itself was unnecessary. The U.S. was never

threatened by the Serbs, and the trumped-up charge of "genocide" was

egregious overstatement. Aside from that, the conflict lasted little

more than 11 weeks, and, contra McCain, the U.S. was never in danger

of losing. A "massive" bombing campaign would have accomplished little

aside from inflicting untold suffering on innocent civilians and

incurring the everlasting enmity of the Serbian people--and of decent

people everywhere.

Yet McCain was persistent in demanding that the situation called for

American "boots on the ground"--a phrase that, if you Google it, you'll

discover what might be called the McCain Panacea. To hear McCain tell

it, there is apparently no crisis anywhere in the world that cannot be

resolved by the presence of U.S. armed forces. This full-throated,

high-handed interventionism is a long way from the hard-headed realism

of the young congressman who challenged the disastrous decision to

send peacekeepers to Lebanon by asking, "What peace?"

It is impossible to know what is in McCain's heart. There may be a

purely ideological explanation for his changing viewpoint. But what

seems to account for his evolution from realism to hopped-up

interventionism is nothing more than sheer ambition. This was the case

in 1983, when he defied the Reagan administration over sending U.S.

soldiers to die at the hands of a Beirut suicide bomber, and in 1999,

when the cry went up to take on Slobodan Milosevic. He was positioning

himself against his own party, while staking out a distinctive stance

independent of the Democrats. It was, in short, an instance of a

presidential candidate maneuvering himself to increase his appeal to

the electorate--and, most importantly, the media.

The brace of arguments McCain made in his CSIS speech in support of

the Kosovo War didn't hold together at the time--and fares even worse

in retrospect. According to McCain, the Serbs threatened "our global

credibility and the long-term viability of the Atlantic Alliance"--the

former because two successive presidents had warned Milosevic against

committing "aggression" against Kosovo, and failure to act would

embolden other "rogue states" to defy American edicts. Yet McCain's

reasoning is circular: according to him, our government's edicts must

be obeyed because they are, by definition, non-negotiable--even by

Americans. A certain course, once taken, must be pursued to the bitter

end, even if it acts against our long-term interests. McCain's

worldview, which admits no possibility of error, is undiluted hubris.

The illogic of McCain's interventionism is further underscored by his

appeal to "the long-term viability of the NATO alliance." With the

implosion of the Communist empire a decade earlier, the original

rationale for the creation of the alliance vanished. Was the unnatural

perpetuation of an outmoded alliance really worth the lives of 5,000

Serbs, mostly civilians?

McCain's arguments are so facile that one can hardly believe they are

held with any degree of sincerity. There has to be something else

involved, and a hint of this was revealed in the opening of his CSIS

address, thanking his sponsors "for so graciously providing me a forum

to share a few thoughts on the crisis in the Balkans. I've been having

a terrible time finding media opportunities to get my views out, so I

appreciate your help."

One can well imagine the appreciative laughter, albeit tinged with an

undertone of nervous uncertainty at the sight of someone who gets far

too much pleasure out of being in the spotlight. Such narcissism,

unseemly in anyone, is especially unbefitting in a president, yet it

is key to understanding McCain's evolution from conventional

Republican realist to relentless interventionist.

During the 1990s, he earned the attention and adulation of the media

by supporting a war most journalists approved of and doing so more

consistently and vociferously than even the Clinton administration.

He's pursuing the same strategy now that we're in Iraq. While the

media has largely turned against this particular war, McCain's

criticism of Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration's handling of

the war has won him plaudits and given him credit as the "real" author

of the surge.

If opportunism married to an inflated ego birthed his persona as the

Ares of America's political pantheon, then this psycho-political

pathology soon found expression as a full-blown delusional system. By

1999, in defense of Clinton's war, McCain was declaring, "I think the

United States should inaugurate a 21st-century policy interpretation

of the Reagan Doctrine, call it rogue state rollback, in which we

politically and materially support indigenous forces within and

outside of rogue states to overthrow regimes that threaten our

interests and values."

In 2006, McCain traveled to Tskhimvali, in the disputed region South

Ossetia, where pro-Russian citizens want to secede from the former

Soviet republic of Georgia and seek union with Russia. After his

visit, he concluded:

I think that the attitude there is best described by what you see

by driving in [to Tskhinvali]: a very large billboard with a picture

of Vladimir Putin on it, which says 'Vladimir Putin Our President.' I

do not believe that Vladimir Putin is now, or ever should be, the

president of sovereign Georgian soil.

Imagine if the British, annoyed by American encroachments in Texas,

had sent a member of Parliament to denounce the defenders of the

Alamo. That, at any rate, is how the South Ossetians think of it. And

what American interests or values are at stake in that dirt-poor, war-

torn corner of the Caucasus? What American values are reflected in the

Mafia-like "democratic" government of today's Kosovo, where Orthodox

churches are burnt-out ruins and the few remaining Serbs are under

siege?

In the warmonger sweepstakes now taking place among the major GOP

presidential contenders, John McCain out-demagogued even Rudy

Giuliani, whose studied belligerence seems narrowly centered on the

Middle East. McCain's enmity is universal: if he were president, in

addition to taking on the Arabs and the Persians, we'd soon be at

loggerheads with the Russians. The G-8, he says, should be "a club of

leading market democracies: It should include Brazil and India but

exclude Russia." Putin's Russia, he claims, is "revanchist" and surely

qualifies as one of those "rogue states" that "threaten our values."

If we take him at his word, President McCain would launch a campaign

for "regime change" in Moscow, just as we did in Iraq.

Prefiguring the revolutionary Jacobinism of Bush's second inaugural

address, which proclaimed the goal of U.S. foreign policy to be

"ending tyranny in our world," McCain was straining at the bit to

launch a global crusade while George W. Bush was still touting the

virtues of a more "humble foreign policy." Neither time nor bitter

experience has mitigated his militancy.

Other politicians were transformed by 9/11. McCain was unleashed. His

strategy of "rogue state rollback" was exactly what the

neoconservatives in the Bush administration had in mind, and yet, ever

mindful to somehow stand out from the pack while still going along

with the program, the senator took umbrage at Rumsfeld's apparent

unwillingness to chew up the U.S. military in an endless occupation.

He publicly dissented from the "light footprint" strategy championed

by the Department of Defense. More troops, more force, more of

everything--that is McCain's solution to every problem in our newly

conquered province.

Rumsfeld became increasingly un-popular not only with the American

people--the abrasive defense secretary saw his poll numbers dropping to

34 percent from 39 percent in May 2004, as McCain and Gen. Norman

Schwartzkopf took aim--but also with the media, which had grown tired

of him. In the bitter winter of 2001, when the War Party was riding

high, the Philadelphia Inquirer had enthused, "No doubt about it,

Donald Rumsfeld is a stud muffin." As Rumsfeld's cachet faded, McCain

felt safe in attacking him, and, after Rumsfeld had resigned,

declaring him "one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." As

the war itself became more unpopular, McCain managed a feat of

triangulation of Clintonian proportions, posing simultaneously as a

war critic and a super hawk.

He was unrelenting in his criticism of the Bush administration, even

as he pledged to carry its foreign policy forward: he continued to

denounce the "tragic mismanagement" of the war, while hailing the surge

--and strongly implying that the Bush White House had plagiarized his

views. With the war enjoying the support of about a quarter of the

American people, however, it was necessary to frame a narrative that

would deflect the disadvantages of a pro-war position, while enhancing

his image as a straight-shooter who doesn't care about polls and just

tells it like it is.

But "straight talk" has increasingly turned to reckless talk: on the

campaign trail, he was caught on video singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"

to the tune of "Barbara Ann"--not one of his better moments. With his

presidential campaign in the doldrums, and Giuliani and the rest of

the Republican pack stealing much of his thunder, a new extremism

seemed to possess him: in answer to repeated questions from one

antiwar voter, McCain told a town-hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire

that the United States could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years"

and that "would be fine with me... as long as Americans aren't being

killed or injured" in any great numbers, as in Korea.

Yet the longer we stay in Iraq, the more hostility is directed at

American soldiers. The majority of Iraqis now believe attacks on our

troops are justified, a far cry from McCain's prewar prediction that

it is "more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the

Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant

Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its

ruthlessness."

McCain isn't bothered by the failure of his prediction, just as the

absence of WMD in Iraq didn't phase him in the least. He is an actor

following a script that was written years ago and cannot be altered

because of mere facts: he is McCain the Conqueror, the fearless war

hero, the commander in chief who will lead us to victory and stay in

Iraq, as he told Mother Jones magazine, for "a thousand years, a

million years" because American grit will tame those obstreperous

Iraqis, just as we tamed the Koreans, the Bosnians, the Japanese, and

the rest.

With the extreme rhetoric appearing to work, an emboldened McCain

recently told a crowd of supporters in Florida: "It's a tough war

we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be

other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We

will never surrender, but there will be other wars."

If McCain finally makes it to the White House, the U.S. will surely

start new wars, and not just in the Middle East. With the world as his

stage, the persona McCain has created--given visible expression by what

Camille Paglia trenchantly described as "the over-intense eyes of

Howard Hughes and the clenched, humorless jaw line of Nurse Diesel

(from Mel Brooks' Hitchcock parody, High Anxiety)"--will have every

opportunity to act out his fantasies of soldierly greatness.

On Feb 18, 8:16 pm, "Bill O'Really" <billorea...@gmail.com> wrote:

> No jobs and more war. Fuck this Son of Bitch conservatives hold out

> till we get a real conservative as a nominee.

>

> It may not be till 2012 but it will be worth it. It is imperative not

> to reward a Neo-con warmonger and amnesty lover.

>

> http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/cover.html

>

> February 11, 2008 Issue

> Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative

>

> The Madness of John McCain

>

> A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush

> Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.

>

> by Justin Raimondo

>

> John McCain's reputation as a maverick is no recent contrivance. The

> senator first captured the media spotlight in September 1983, not long

> after he'd been elected to his first term in the House, when he voted

> against President Reagan's decision to put American troops in Lebanon

> as part of a multinational "peacekeeping" force. One of 27 Republicans

> to break with the White House, the freshman McCain made a floor speech

> that reads as if it might have been written yesterday--by Ron Paul:

>

> The fundamental question is: What is the United States' interest

> in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what

> peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what

> government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask,

> how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region?... The longer we stay

> in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped

> by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

>

> What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will

> happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will

> increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent

> civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any

> event.

>

> Now insert "Iraq" where McCain said "Lebanon." It's as if McCain the

> Younger foresaw our present predicament and taunted his future

> incarnation, showing that wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age.

>

> In sketching out McCain's political career alongside a timeline of

> American interventions abroad, one comes, at last, to a turning point.

> But his course was set much earlier, in his first visible venture into

> the realm of national-security issues at the time of the Lebanese

> events: Reagan's request for U.S. troops and the subsequent attack on

> the Beirut marine barracks, where 241 military personnel were killed.

> This vaulted McCain to national attention. His initial opposition to

> the administration's resolution authorizing the sending of troops was

> picked up by the media, and he basked in the spotlight. As he put it

> in his memoir, Worth the Fighting For:

>

> It [his vote against the resolution] caught the attention of the

> Washington press corps, who tend to notice acts of political

> independence from unexpected quarters. My press secretary, Torie

> Clarke, began receiving interview requests from national print and

> broadcast media. Because of my POW experience, I had always enjoyed a

> little more celebrity than is usually accorded freshmen, but not so

> much that my views were solicited or even taken seriously by the

> national media. Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like the

> MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of the New York Times and the

> Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more.

>

> On the strength of his prescient skepticism of U.S. intervention in a

> Middle Eastern nation known for its fierce sectarian passions,

> McCain's star burned bright. U.S. News & World Report lauded him as a

> "Republican on the rise," while on the other side of the culture-

> chasm, Rolling Stone hailed the Arizonan for his dissenting voice on

> an important foreign policy issue. His reputation was made as that

> straight-talking, idiosyncratic, interesting Republican congressman

> from the Southwest, a version of Barry Goldwater the liberal media

> could like--and would come to love.

>

> Not yet, however: there was a dark interregnum during which McCain and

> the media were at odds. There were shouting matches between the

> voluble senator and reporters over the "Keating Five" scandal and his

> wife's struggle with drugs. But this adversarial relationship turned a

> corner, in 1991, when the first Gulf War erupted. McCain reflected in

> his memoir, "As self-interested as this sounds, I was relieved when

> Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August of that year gave reporters some

> other reason to talk to me and something else to report."

>

> His position on that war was not the reflexive interventionism we have

> come to expect from him but a more thoughtful approach, as cited in

> the New York Times of Aug. 19, 1990: "If you get involved in a major

> ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode

> significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate,

> in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood."

>

> McCain preferred to use air power to keep Saddam Hussein out of Saudi

> Arabia, rather than introducing ground troops, and opposed the call

> that went out from the more militant neoconservatives that U.S.

> troops, having freed Kuwait from Saddam's clutches, should push on to

> Baghdad.

>

> What changed his foreign-policy purview, however, was the Kosovo War.

> Again he played the maverick role for all it was worth, taking up the

> cudgels against many in his own party. But this time, he was on the

> side of intervention.

>

> Monday, April 5, 1999, was a busy day for McCain: Larry King, Charlie

> Rose, Catherine Crier, two appearances on MSNBC, another two on CNBC,

> capped by an interview on ABC's "Nightline." The next morning, he was

> up early for Don Imus. "We've turned down far more than we've

> accepted," McCain enthused. It was "all McCain, all the time," as one

> Republican strategist put it to the Washington Post, and it sure

> wasn't hurting his presidential campaign.

>

> "When I urged the president of the United States not to rule out the

> option of ground forces, then I also assumed responsibility for what

> may be the loss of young Americans' lives," averred McCain. "I don't

> know how it affects my campaign. But I've basically put my campaign on

> hold to some degree."

>

> This was disingenuous, at best. Far from putting his campaign on hold,

> his newfound visibility gave it a shot in the arm, and political

> operatives in both parties saluted the pragmatism of his stance. "He

> looks presidential at a time when many Republicans don't believe the

> current president does," said Whit Ayres, an Atlanta-based GOP

> pollster. "He's where the country is," added Mark Mellman, a

> Democratic pollster. "Americans certainly like to win and they don't

> like politicians sniping in the corner when the question is whether

> we're going to win it."

>

> "We're in it, and we've gotta win it!" McCain repeated endlessly as he

> berated his "isolationist" fellow Republicans and demanded that they

> get behind the president and support the war. Yet his support was

> framed by a critique of the handling of the conflict that disdained

> Clinton's alleged timidity in taking steps to ensure a victory.

>

> Three weeks after hostilities began, McCain delivered a speech to the

> Center for Strategic and International Studies in which he declared

> that American intervention in the Balkans had been effectively

> stymied: "I think it is safe to assume that no one, including me,

> anticipated the speed with which Serbia would defeat our objectives in

> Kosovo, and the scope of that defeat." While conceding, "yes, the war

> is only three weeks old, and yes, NATO can and probably will prevail

> in this conflict with what is, after all, a considerably inferior

> adversary," he warned "victory will not be hastened by pretending that

> things have just gone swimmingly."

>

> According to McCain, there were two big problems with the conduct of

> the war: first, "an excessively restricted air campaign that sought

> the impossible goal of avoiding war while waging one. The second is

> the repeated declarations from the president, vice president, and

> other senior officials that NATO would refrain from using ground

> troops even if the air campaign failed. These two mistakes were made

> in what almost seemed willful ignorance of every lesson we learned in

> Vietnam."

>

> We were, he warned, in danger of "losing" to the Serbian army--with its

> outdated equipment and complete lack of an air force--if we failed to

> launch air strikes that were "massive, strategic and sustained."

> Furthermore, "no infrastructure targets should have been off limits"--

> factories, water plants, hospitals, schools, markets, whatever. Yes,

> "we all grieve over civilian casualties as well as our own losses,"

> but "they are unavoidable."

>

> But all of this was eminently avoidable, as critics of the war--

> including many of McCain's fellow Republicans in Congress--pointed out

> at the time. The war itself was unnecessary. The U.S. was never

> threatened by the Serbs, and the trumped-up charge of "genocide" was

> egregious overstatement. Aside from that, the conflict lasted little

> more than 11 weeks, and, contra McCain, the U.S. was never in danger

> of losing. A "massive" bombing campaign would have accomplished little

> aside from inflicting untold suffering on innocent civilians and

> incurring the everlasting enmity of the Serbian people--and of decent

> people everywhere.

>

> Yet McCain was persistent in demanding that the situation called for

> American "boots on the ground"--a phrase that, if you Google it, you'll

> discover what might be called the McCain Panacea. To hear McCain tell

> it, there is apparently no crisis anywhere in the world that cannot be

> resolved by the presence of U.S. armed forces. This full-throated,

> high-handed interventionism is a long way from the hard-headed realism

> of the young congressman who challenged the disastrous decision to

> send peacekeepers to Lebanon by asking, "What peace?"

>

> It is impossible to know what is in McCain's heart. There may be a

> purely ideological explanation for his changing viewpoint. But what

> seems to account for his evolution from realism to hopped-up

> interventionism is nothing more than sheer ambition. This was the case

> in 1983, when he defied the Reagan administration over sending U.S.

> soldiers to die at the hands of a Beirut suicide bomber, and in 1999,

> when the cry went up to take on Slobodan Milosevic. He was positioning

> himself against his own party, while staking out a distinctive stance

> independent of the Democrats. It was, in short, an instance of a

> presidential candidate maneuvering himself to increase his appeal to

> the electorate--and, most importantly, the media.

>

> The brace of arguments McCain made in his CSIS speech in support of

> the Kosovo War didn't hold together at the time--and fares even worse

> in retrospect. According to McCain, the Serbs threatened "our global

> credibility and the long-term viability of the Atlantic Alliance"--the

> former because two successive presidents had warned Milosevic against

> committing "aggression" against Kosovo, and failure to act would

> embolden other "rogue states" to defy American edicts. Yet McCain's

> reasoning is circular: according to him, our government's edicts must

> be obeyed because they are, by definition, non-negotiable--even by

> Americans. A certain course, once taken, must be pursued to the bitter

> end, even if it acts against our long-term interests. McCain's

> worldview, which admits no possibility of error, is undiluted hubris.

>

> The illogic of McCain's interventionism is further underscored by his

> appeal to "the long-term viability of the NATO alliance." With the

> implosion of the Communist empire a decade earlier, the original

> rationale for the creation of the alliance vanished. Was the unnatural

> perpetuation of an outmoded alliance really worth the lives of 5,000

> Serbs, mostly civilians?

>

> McCain's arguments are so facile that one can hardly believe they are

> held with any degree of sincerity. There has to be something else

> involved, and a hint of this was revealed in the opening of his CSIS

> address, thanking his sponsors "for so graciously providing me a forum

> to share a few thoughts on the crisis in the Balkans. I've been having

> a terrible time finding media opportunities to get my views out, so I

> appreciate your help."

>

> One can well imagine the appreciative laughter, albeit tinged with an

> undertone of nervous uncertainty at the sight of someone who gets far

> too much pleasure out of being in the spotlight. Such narcissism,

> unseemly in anyone, is especially unbefitting in a president, yet it

> is key to understanding McCain's evolution from conventional

> Republican realist to relentless interventionist.

>

> During the 1990s, he earned the attention and adulation of the media

> by supporting a war most journalists approved of and doing so more

> consistently and vociferously than even the Clinton administration.

> He's pursuing the same strategy now that we're in Iraq. While the

> media has largely turned against this particular war, McCain's

> criticism of Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration's handling of

> the war has won him plaudits and given him credit as the "real" author

> of the surge.

>

> If opportunism married to an inflated ego birthed his persona as the

> Ares of America's political pantheon, then this psycho-political

> pathology soon found expression as a full-blown delusional system. By

> 1999, in defense of Clinton's war, McCain was declaring, "I think the

> United States should inaugurate a 21st-century policy interpretation

> of the Reagan Doctrine, call it rogue state rollback, in which we

> politically and materially support indigenous forces within and

> outside of rogue states to overthrow regimes that threaten our

> interests and values."

>

> In 2006, McCain traveled to Tskhimvali, in the disputed region South

> Ossetia, where pro-Russian citizens want to secede from the former

> Soviet republic of Georgia and seek union with Russia. After his

> visit, he concluded:

>

> I think that the attitude there is best described by what you see

> by driving in [to Tskhinvali]: a very large billboard with a picture

> of Vladimir Putin on it, which says 'Vladimir Putin Our President.' I

> do not believe that Vladimir Putin is now, or ever should be, the

> president of sovereign Georgian soil.

>

> Imagine if the British, annoyed by American encroachments in Texas,

> had sent a member of Parliament to denounce the defenders of the

> Alamo. That, at any rate, is how the South Ossetians think of it. And

> what American interests or values are at stake in that dirt-poor, war-

> torn corner of the Caucasus? What American values are reflected in the

> Mafia-like "democratic" government of today's Kosovo, where Orthodox

> churches are burnt-out ruins and the few remaining Serbs are under

> siege?

>

> In the warmonger sweepstakes now taking place among the major GOP

> presidential contenders, John McCain out-demagogued even Rudy

> Giuliani, whose studied belligerence seems narrowly centered on the

> Middle East. McCain's enmity is universal: if he were president, in

> addition to taking on the Arabs and the Persians, we'd soon be at

> loggerheads with the Russians. The G-8, he says, should be "a club of

> leading market democracies: It should include Brazil and India but

> exclude Russia." Putin's Russia, he claims, is "revanchist" and surely

> qualifies as one of those "rogue states" that "threaten our values."

> If we take him at his word, President McCain would launch a campaign

> for "regime change" in Moscow, just as we did in Iraq.

>

> Prefiguring the revolutionary Jacobinism of Bush's second inaugural

> address, which proclaimed the goal of U.S. foreign policy to be

> "ending tyranny in our world," McCain was straining at the bit to

> launch a global crusade while George W. Bush was still touting the

> virtues of a more "humble foreign policy." Neither time nor bitter

> experience has mitigated his militancy.

>

> Other politicians were transformed by 9/11. McCain was unleashed. His

> strategy of "rogue state rollback" was exactly what the

> neoconservatives in the Bush administration had in mind, and yet, ever

> mindful to somehow stand out from the pack while still going along

> with the program, the senator took umbrage at Rumsfeld's apparent

> unwillingness to chew up the U.S. military in an endless occupation.

> He publicly dissented from the "light footprint" strategy championed

> by the Department of Defense. More troops, more force, more of

> everything--that is McCain's solution to every problem in our newly

> conquered province.

>

> Rumsfeld became increasingly un-popular not only with the American

> people--the abrasive defense secretary saw his poll numbers dropping to

> 34 percent from 39 percent in May 2004, as McCain and Gen. Norman

> Schwartzkopf took aim--but also with the media, which had grown tired

> of him. In the bitter winter of 2001, when the War Party was riding

> high, the Philadelphia Inquirer had enthused, "No doubt about it,

> Donald Rumsfeld is a stud muffin." As Rumsfeld's cachet faded, McCain

> felt safe in attacking him, and, after Rumsfeld had resigned,

> declaring him "one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." As

> the war itself became more unpopular, McCain managed a feat of

> triangulation of Clintonian proportions, posing simultaneously as a

> war critic and a super hawk.

>

> He was unrelenting in his criticism of the Bush administration, even

> as he pledged to carry its foreign policy forward: he continued to

> denounce the "tragic mismanagement" of the war, while hailing the surge

> --and strongly implying that the Bush White House had plagiarized his

> views. With the war enjoying the support of about a quarter of the

> American people, however, it was necessary to frame a narrative that

> would deflect the disadvantages of a pro-war position, while enhancing

> his image as a straight-shooter who doesn't care about polls and just

> tells it like it is.

>

> But "straight talk" has increasingly turned to reckless talk: on the

> campaign trail, he was caught on video singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"

> to the tune of "Barbara Ann"--not one of his better moments. With his

> presidential campaign in the doldrums, and Giuliani and the rest of

> the Republican pack stealing much of his thunder, a new extremism

> seemed to possess him: in answer to repeated questions from one

> antiwar voter, McCain told a town-hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire

> that the United States could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years"

> and that "would be fine with me... as long as Americans aren't being

> killed or injured" in any great numbers, as in Korea.

>

> Yet the longer we stay in Iraq, the more hostility is directed at

> American soldiers. The majority of Iraqis now believe attacks on our

> troops are justified, a far cry from McCain's prewar prediction that

> it is "more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the

> Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant

> Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its

> ruthlessness."

>

> McCain isn't bothered by the failure of his prediction, just as the

> absence of WMD in Iraq didn't phase him in the least. He is an actor

> following a script that was written years ago and cannot be altered

> because of mere facts: he is McCain the Conqueror, the fearless war

> hero, the commander in chief who will lead us to victory and stay in

> Iraq, as he told Mother Jones magazine, for "a thousand years, a

> million years" because American grit will tame those obstreperous

> Iraqis, just as we tamed the Koreans, the Bosnians, the Japanese, and

> the rest.

>

> With the extreme rhetoric appearing to work, an emboldened McCain

> recently told a crowd of supporters in Florida: "It's a tough war

> we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be

> other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We

> will never surrender, but there will be other wars."

>

> If McCain finally makes it to the White House, the U.S. will surely

> start new wars, and not just in the Middle East. With the world as his

> stage, the persona McCain has created--given visible expression by what

> Camille Paglia trenchantly described as "the over-intense eyes of

> Howard Hughes and the clenched, humorless jaw line of Nurse Diesel

> (from Mel Brooks' Hitchcock parody, High Anxiety)"--will have every

> opportunity to act out his fantasies of soldierly greatness.

Sigh whew ..how about some paragraphs and indents next

time ..??

I will edit and read it ....you obviously know your topic.

"Bill O'Really" <billoreally@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:50d3fb58-6eb8-45fb-bbde-8f9b3e3c8862@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

> No jobs and more war. Fuck this Son of Bitch conservatives hold out

> till we get a real conservative as a nominee.

>

> It may not be till 2012 but it will be worth it. It is imperative not

> to reward a Neo-con warmonger and amnesty lover.

>

> http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_11/cover.html

>

>

> February 11, 2008 Issue

> Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative

>

> The Madness of John McCain

>

> A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush

> Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.

>

> by Justin Raimondo

>

> John McCain's reputation as a maverick is no recent contrivance. The

> senator first captured the media spotlight in September 1983, not long

> after he'd been elected to his first term in the House, when he voted

> against President Reagan's decision to put American troops in Lebanon

> as part of a multinational "peacekeeping" force. One of 27 Republicans

> to break with the White House, the freshman McCain made a floor speech

> that reads as if it might have been written yesterday--by Ron Paul:

>

> The fundamental question is: What is the United States' interest

> in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what

> peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what

> government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask,

> how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region?... The longer we stay

> in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped

> by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.

>

> What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will

> happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will

> increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent

> civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any

> event.

>

> Now insert "Iraq" where McCain said "Lebanon." It's as if McCain the

> Younger foresaw our present predicament and taunted his future

> incarnation, showing that wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age.

Okay, let us explore that. What was the US interest in Iraq? Well, unlike

Lebanon, there is a whole lot of oil in Iraq. Lebanon never attacked

anyone, Iraq did. Lebanon never had WMD's. Iraq not only had WMD's, but is

the only country in modern times to actually use WMD's. There really was

not any really big scale humantiarian crisis in Lebanon, there was a large

scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The US Senate did not believe that

Lebanon was a security threat to the United States. The U.S. Senate, under

both the Clinton and Bush Administration, did believe that Iraq was a

security threat to the United States. So, why was it necessary to send our

military into Lebanon?

Jerry Okamura wrote:

>

> Okay, let us explore that. What was the US interest in Iraq? Well,

> unlike Lebanon, there is a whole lot of oil in Iraq. Lebanon never

> attacked anyone, Iraq did.

Fill us in, who did Iraq attack?

Lebanon never had WMD's. Iraq not only had

> WMD's,

So Cheney lied when he said there were no WMDs?

but is the only country in modern times to actually use WMD's.

> There really was not any really big scale humantiarian crisis in

> Lebanon, there was a large scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

A crisis that began long before Reagan aided Saddam. A crisis that

Bush never expressed concern about until after 9/11.

The US

> Senate did not believe that Lebanon was a security threat to the United

> States. The U.S. Senate, under both the Clinton and Bush

> Administration, did believe that Iraq was a security threat to the

> United States. So, why was it necessary to send our military into Lebanon?

>

On Feb 18, 7:41 pm, "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj...@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

>

> Okay, let us explore that. What was the US interest in Iraq? Well, unlike

> Lebanon, there is a whole lot of oil in Iraq. Lebanon never attacked

> anyone, Iraq did. Lebanon never had WMD's. Iraq not only had WMD's, but is

> the only country in modern times to actually use WMD's. There really was

> not any really big scale humantiarian crisis in Lebanon, there was a large

> scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The US Senate did not believe that

> Lebanon was a security threat to the United States. The U.S. Senate, under

> both the Clinton and Bush Administration, did believe that Iraq was a

> security threat to the United States. So, why was it necessary to send our

> military into Lebanon?

Here's the thing that you neo-cons refuse to consider, is the fact

that we are borrowing money to fight an enemy who wasn't even there

until we occupied the Goddamn country. As a result it pulled valuable

resources from Afghanistan and now that is now a black hole that will

never end.

Somewhere along the way a coconut brain like you has to consider the

"diminishing returns" of the whole operation.

We're fighting a pointless war and passing the bill to the future

generations gee whiz how smart is that.

Bill O'Really

On Feb 18, 7:54 pm, "Bill O'Really" <billorea...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Feb 18, 7:41 pm, "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj...@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

>

>

>

> > Okay, let us explore that. What was the US interest in Iraq? Well, unlike

> > Lebanon, there is a whole lot of oil in Iraq. Lebanon never attacked

> > anyone, Iraq did. Lebanon never had WMD's. Iraq not only had WMD's, but is

> > the only country in modern times to actually use WMD's. There really was

> > not any really big scale humantiarian crisis in Lebanon, there was a large

> > scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The US Senate did not believe that

> > Lebanon was a security threat to the United States. The U.S. Senate, under

> > both the Clinton and Bush Administration, did believe that Iraq was a

> > security threat to the United States. So, why was it necessary to send our

> > military into Lebanon?

>

> Here's the thing that you neo-cons refuse to consider, is the fact

> that we are borrowing money to fight an enemy who wasn't even there

> until we occupied the Goddamn country. As a result it pulled valuable

> resources from Afghanistan and now that is now a black hole that will

> never end.

>

> Somewhere along the way a coconut brain like you has to consider the

> "diminishing returns" of the whole operation.

>

> We're fighting a pointless war and passing the bill to the future

> generations gee whiz how smart is that.

>

> Bill O'Really

I believe the "sternly worded letter' to people that are trying to

kill has been tried and it didn't work.

"JSM" <ekrubmeg@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:18b6f0b2-7bc1-4f9f-bb88-4d2d74c11c2c@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

> On Feb 18, 7:54 pm, "Bill O'Really" <billorea...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> On Feb 18, 7:41 pm, "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj...@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

>>

>>

>>

>> > Okay, let us explore that. What was the US interest in Iraq? Well,

>> > unlike

>> > Lebanon, there is a whole lot of oil in Iraq. Lebanon never attacked

>> > anyone, Iraq did. Lebanon never had WMD's. Iraq not only had WMD's,

>> > but is

>> > the only country in modern times to actually use WMD's. There really

>> > was

>> > not any really big scale humantiarian crisis in Lebanon, there was a

>> > large

>> > scale humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The US Senate did not believe that

>> > Lebanon was a security threat to the United States. The U.S. Senate,

>> > under

>> > both the Clinton and Bush Administration, did believe that Iraq was a

>> > security threat to the United States. So, why was it necessary to send

>> > our

>> > military into Lebanon?

>>

>> Here's the thing that you neo-cons refuse to consider, is the fact

>> that we are borrowing money to fight an enemy who wasn't even there

>> until we occupied the Goddamn country. As a result it pulled valuable

>> resources from Afghanistan and now that is now a black hole that will

>> never end.

>>

>> Somewhere along the way a coconut brain like you has to consider the

>> "diminishing returns" of the whole operation.

>>

>> We're fighting a pointless war and passing the bill to the future

>> generations gee whiz how smart is that.

>>

>> Bill O'Really

>

> I believe the "sternly worded letter' to people that are trying to

> kill has been tried and it didn't work.

McKook will be forced to reinstate the Draft.