Posted on 03/06/2007 2:08:07 PM PST by A. Pole
The John McCain presidency effectively began on January 10, 2007, when George W. Bush announced the deployment of five more combat brigades to Iraq. This escalation of an unpopular war ran counter to the advice of Bush’s senior military leadership, ignored the recommendations made by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and sidestepped the objections of the Iraqi government it was ostensibly intended to assist. But the plan was nearly identical to what the Republican senior senator from Arizona, nearly alone among his Capitol Hill colleagues, had been advocating for months: boost troop levels by at least 20,000, give coalition forces the authority to impose security in every corner of Baghdad, and increase the size of America’s overburdened standing military by around 100,000 during the next five years.
By enthusiastically endorsing McCain’s approach, the lame duck president all but finished the job of anointing the senator his political successor.
[...]
The significance of the McCain Plan transcended horse-race politics. It was a microcosm of the Arizona senator’s largely unexamined philosophy about the proper role of the U.S. government. Like almost every past McCain crusade, from fining Big Tobacco to drug-testing athletes to restricting political speech in the name of campaign finance reform, the surge involved an increase in the power of the federal government, particularly in the executive branch.
[...]
McCain’s dazzling résumé—war hero, campaign finance Quixote, chauffeur of the Straight Talk Express, reassuring National Uncle—tends to distract people from his philosophy of government
[...]
Like Kristol and Brooks, McCain regards Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln as political idols; like them, he never hesitates in asserting that government power should be used to rekindle American (and Republican) pride in government. Unlike most neoconservative intellectuals, however, McCain is intimately familiar with the bluntest edge of state-sponsored force. A McCain presidency would put legislative flesh on David Brooks’ fuzzy pre-9/11 notions of “grand aspiration,” deploying a virtuous federal bureaucracy to purify unclean private transactions from the boardroom to the bedroom. And it would prosecute the nation’s post-9/11 wars with a militaristic zeal this country hasn’t seen in generations.
[...]
To say John McCain comes from a military family is a little like pointing out that Prince Charles is a scion of the upper class. Born in 1936, McCain is the Navy captain son of a four-star admiral who was the son of another four-star admiral, all named John Sidney McCain. And that just scratches the surface.
John McCain and his ancestors have served in every major U.S. war from the Revolution to Vietnam, and the line won’t stop there: 20-year-old John Sidney McCain IV (you can call him Jack) is learning the family trade at the Naval Academy, and 18-year-old Jimmy is in the Marines, waiting to deploy to Iraq.
[...]
The senator, his father, and his grandfather all took as a given that the U.S. Navy should control the world’s shipping lanes, guarantee the political stability of far-flung continents, and use overwhelming force at the hint of a threat to national interests. When John Sidney McCain III was growing up, every male around the dinner table could cite the exploits of British Admiral Lord Nelson, recite verse from Rudyard Kipling, and sing ribald songs about drunken misbehavior in ports of call. It’s the character trait reflected by that last fact, more than any highfalutin’ stirrings of National Greatness, that initially gave young John the fighting will to survive five years of brutal captivity during the Vietnam War.
[...]
Reading McCain’s four best-selling books is a revelatory experience. Not since Teddy Roosevelt has a leading presidential contender committed so many words to print about his philosophies of life and governance before seeking the Oval Office. All of McCain’s charming strengths and alarming foibles are there, hiding in plain sight, often unintentionally.
[...]
If you’re beginning to detect a rigid sense of citizenship and a skeptical attitude toward individual choice, you are beginning to understand what kind of president John McCain actually would make, in contrast with the straight-talking maverick that journalists love to quote but rarely examine in depth. For years McCain has warned that a draft will be necessary if we don’t boost military pay, and he has long agitated for mandatory national service. “Those who claim their liberty but not their duty to the civilization that ensures it live a half-life, indulging their self-interest at the cost of their self-respect,” he wrote in The Washington Monthly in 2001. “Sacrifice for a cause greater than self-interest, however, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause. Americans did not fight and win World War II as discrete individuals.”
McCain’s attitude toward individuals who choose paths he deems inappropriate is somewhere between inflexible and hostile. Nowhere is that more evident than when he writes about his hero Teddy Roosevelt
[...]
“In the Roosevelt code, the authentic meaning of freedom gave equal respect to self-interest and common purpose, to rights and duties,” McCain writes. “And it absolutely required that every loyal citizen take risks for the country’s sake.…His insistence that every citizen owed primary allegiance to American ideals, and to the symbols, habits, and consciousness of American citizenship, was as right then as it is now.” McCain, always disarmingly transparent in projecting his own ambitions onto the objects of his hagiography, describes Roosevelt as an “Eastern swell” who traveled West and fought wars to become “a man of the people.”
[...]
“A world where our ideals had a realistic chance of becoming a universal creed was our principal object in the last century,” he wrote in Worth the Fighting For. “In the process, we became inextricably involved in the destiny of other nations. That is not a cause for concern. It is a cause for hope.”
[...]
Regarding the U.S. president’s war-related prerogatives, McCain has a nearly unbroken record of deferring to them, from the moment he volunteered to testify against The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case (even though his only expertise was in being a prisoner of war) to his rollover when Bush insisted that his ballyhooed anti-torture bill deny habeas corpus rights to War on Terror detainees and give the White House authority “to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.” McCain once wrote that Teddy Roosevelt “invented the modern presidency by liberally interpreting the constitutional authority of the office to redress the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches that had tilted decisively toward Congress.” This is the kind of president John McCain is aching to be.
[...]
That it never occurred to McCain why a libertarian Westerner might keep a “national greatness” conservative and D.C.-bred carpetbagger at arm’s length is both touching and deeply worrisome. Does he not understand that there are at least some people in American life who take liberty as seriously as McCain takes his notions of national duty? Judging by a comment he made recently on the Don Imus radio show, the answer seems to be no. Defending campaign finance reform, McCain said, “I would rather have a clean government than one…where ‘First Amendment rights’ are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice I’d rather have a clean government.”
He may have his choice soon enough.
(Read the rest of the article at reason.com)
What a punch of crap. Unreason is bashing McCain for being too tough on terrorists.
There are plenty of reasons to be critical of McCain, but that is not one of them. If anything, given the al-Queda Bill of Rights, McCain is too soft on the jihadists.
What a load of HS, go to hell Matt
By enthusiastically endorsing McCain’s approach, the lame duck president all but finished the job of anointing the senator his political successor.
If the Iraq war is so unpopular among American voters, then the president basically put an end to McCain's political career.
I don't believe this to be the case, however . . . the purpose of the "surge" was to establish some semblance of order in Iraq so that most American troops could be brought home (or at least be taken out of harm's way) long before November of 2008.
McCain will never be president, but not for the reasons laid out in this article.
Borrowing a phrase from a basketball announcer,
I wondered why one would "fear a McCain presidency" - since there will never be one.
regards, Ivan
For the most part I think I agree with McCain's take on the terror war, at least his thoughts on fighting it. For the most part, otherwise, he seems to have wanted all his life to be a Democrat.
He has been groin kicking conservatives on salient conservative domestic issues for so long it's a reflex. Any Republican who thinks he can with without conservatives turning out in large numbers is a candidate for an insane asylum.
I hope for McCain's sake he doesn't measure his worth as a man by his ability to gain the Republican nomination. He won't succeed. If he does succeed he will be dragging another massive raft of good people down with him in the general election.
To choose between McCain as the Manchurian candidate or Hitlery Clinton the hardcore communist ultra-left scandal-ridden liar.
To choose between McCain as the Manchurian candidate or Hitlery Clinton the hardcore communist ultra-left scandal-ridden liar.
That silly "Straight Talk Express" and "Gang of 14" nonsense is the only thing that ever kept him in the news after 2000. Were it not for the excessive media coverage, he'd be no different than any other career political hack.
Neither one will be a candidate.
It's astonishing how short a period of time elapses between his statements on opposite sides of an issue (including one of 11 minutes!).
...with extreme prejudice!
I wondered why one would "fear a McCain presidency" - since there will never be one.
Having read this, I can state that this magazine is ill named.
He wouldn't run as a Democrat. These are some of his latest ratings from some famous interest groups: Citizens Against Government Waste, 92%; Americans for Tax Reform, 90%; Republican Liberty Caucus, 82%; NAACP, 5%; Planned Parenthood, 0%; and NEA, 0%. Many Republicans think that he's moderate or liberal, but they haven't researched his voting record. He's conservative.
I think you have to seriously ask yourself what the mission is in Iraq, when judging our success and predicting future developments.
Keep in mind that the minute stability was established back in '03, '04, '05, whatever, the left here and abroad would have voiciferously demanded a pullout.
Keep in mind our dilemma after 9/11 was having to defend the Saudi Royals from overthrow or invasion to retain dollar hegemony and Persian Gulf stability, but not be on Saudi soil to do so....
Keep in mind this dollar hegemony demands not only a steady flow of exports from KSA,but also that they not be surpasssed in output by a Euro baseed market. KSA controls OPEC because their output is #1, they are followed by Russia in worldwide production. I think a major factor is keeping Russia,France and China's paws off Iraq's oil,as much as ensuring we have first dibs purchasing it. (we still hold higher moral ground, they were set to rearm Saddam with us left to clean up the mess)
And of course keep in mind Al Qaeda is an organization of rats, you cannot chase them to kill them you must lay traps carefully and invite them.
My point is I believe our mission in Iraq now is to be in Iraq now. By 2008 it may very well go the way you say, but consider it may also do this: Bush may, despite added troops, allow the country to slip into further snd further violence because if an Obama was elected he'd pull the troops out in weeks. This could allow France and Russia, and to a lesser extent China, walk right in and resume those deals we interrupted. Making that easy for them would be irresponsible, a sure threat to the US economy- leave it in a full blown civil war and they wouldn't have the balls to go near the thing... and though we all know anti-war activists claim compassion for the innocent civilians we slaughter is their motivation, and we know what a farce that is, maybe even Obama would have no choice but stay and keep the peace.
Just speculating for thought, but if it seems too fantastic just repeat the words "we're only in Iraq for the welfare and good of the Iraqi pekil.
If you were thinking Bush is planning to use those 21k troops to win the war, mop up and get out to secure his legacy, I would offer he or you or maybe I need to review the enemy we are dealing with.
I can see no situation that can possibly allow the Bush haters to ever allow OIF to be published in any history book as a win. They set the bar, they will move it.
We saw the fascists even eat their own with Lieberman.
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