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For many years, John McCain has been one of the major war hawks in the Senate, but he was not that way for more than a decade after he was first elected to Congress. When he entered the House of Representatives in 1983, he was a cautious realist, holding the position that U.S. military power should only be used to protect vital national interests. He developed this view as a result of his experience in the Vietnam War and his post-Vietnam studying of the origins of that war at the National War College.[1]John B. Judis, “Neo-McCain,” New Republic, October 16, 2006, https://newrepublic.com/article/60839/neo-mccain That view loomed large among military leaders at this time and was exemplified by General Colin Powell.
In his first year in Congress, McCain, although a strong supporter of then President Reagan, voted against the latter’s decision to continue the deployment of troops in Lebanon during that country’s civil war. The measure would pass in both Houses of Congress, with substantial support from Democrats, and with only a small minority of Republicans daring to oppose Reagan. In his floor speech on this issue, McCain stated:
“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.”[2]Quoted in Justin Raimondo, “The Madness of John McCain,” February 11, 2008, The American Conservative, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the...ccain/
[3} Quoted in Norman Kempster, “Vietnam War Leaves Legacy of Anguish,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-28/news/mn-2129...-war/2
After a truck filled with explosives rammed into the Marine compound in Beirut, killing 241 service members, Reagan opted to remove the remaining troops a few months later. McCain was vindicated and he gained considerable attention from the mainstream media for his prescience and courage to take such a stand against a popular President from his party. This helped to develop his reputation as a “maverick.”
“The American people and Congress now appreciate that we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent,” McCain would later tell the Los Angeles Times, “and they are not prepared to commit U.S. troops to combat unless there is a clear U.S. national security interest involved. If we do become involved in combat, that involvement must be of relatively short duration and must be readily explained to the man in the street in one or two sentences.”[3]
In 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the United States was supporting Iraq, McCain, now a Senator, opposed President Reagan’s move to put American flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers and have the U.S. Navy protect them against possible Iranian attacks. In the Arizona Republic, he described Reagan’s action as a “dangerous overreaction in perhaps the most violent and unpredictable region in the world.” He continued: “American citizens are again being asked to place themselves between warring Middle East factions, with no tangible allied support and no real plan on how to respond if the situation escalates.”[4]Quoted in Matt Welch, McCain, The Myth of a Maverick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 157.
McCain did support the Gulf War in 1991, but even here he was something of a moderate. McCain biographer Matt Welch writes: “When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, McCain oscillated between hawkishness and reluctance, denouncing the Iraqi dictator and then the U.S. government for having cozied up too closely to Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, but at the same time warning against a protracted land battle.”[5]Welch, p. 158. McCain stated: “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.”[6]Quoted in Michael Wines, “Confrontation in the Gulf,” New York Times, August 19, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/world/confrontati...cubz=0
Under Republican Presidents Reagan and the elder Bush, it must be acknowledged that McCain was not an actual non-interventionist since he supported the American opposition to the Soviet Union, and what he considered to be pro-Soviet forces in Central America. Moreover, he supported the removal of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega by the U.S. military in 1989. But this was still a far cry from the global interventionist that McCain would become.
Moreover, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, McCain would be even more non-interventionist until his radical change during the last years of Clinton’s term. In a commencement address he made to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia in June 1994, McCain emphasized that his cautious approach to war resulted from his Vietnam experience. He solemnly orated that he had not forgotten “the friends who did not return with me to the country we loved so dearly. The memory of them, of what they bore for honor and country, causes me to look in every prospective conflict for the shadow of Vietnam.”[7]Quoted in Robert Timberg, John McCain: An American Odyssey (New York: Touchstone, 1999), pp. 149-150.
In December 1992, after losing the November election to Bill Clinton, the elder George Bush dispatched American troops to Somalia, then embroiled in a many-sided civil war, to facilitate the provision of food to the starving civilian population. This was part of a United Nations effort. By the fall of 1993, this military mission morphed into one of arresting war lords and nation-building. In October 1993, a 15-hour battle took place in Mogadishu that left 18 Americans dead and 73 injured, with many of these casualties the result of two Black Hawk helicopters being shot down.[8]NPR Staff, “What A Downed Black Hawk In Somalia Taught America,” NPR, October 5, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/10/05/229561805/what-a-down...merica
Because of this loss of American lives, there was a Senate bill supported by President Clinton which planned to remove American troops from Somalia. Demanding a quicker troop exit, McCain stated: “Mr. President, can anyone seriously argue that another six months of United States forces in harm’s way means the difference between peace and prosperity in Somalia and war and starvation there? Is that very dim prospect worth one more American life? No, it is not.”
Drawing an analogy to what happened in Lebanon in 1983, McCain contended: “240 young Marines lost their lives, but we got out. Now is the time for us to get out of Somalia, as rapidly, and as promptly, and as safely as possible.”
“The longer we stay the more difficult it will be to leave,” McCain asserted. “The loss of American lives is not only tragic, it is needless.”[9]Quoted in “Backing Clinton, Senate Rejects Bid to Speed Somalia Pullout,” Clifford Krauss, October 15, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/15/world/backing-cli...t.html His proposed amendment for a quicker departure, however, was voted down.
McCain also opposed Clinton’s intervention in Haiti to bring back President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been elected in 1990 and then overthrown in a coup in 1991. After a UN resolution authorized the use of military force to return Aristide to power, the United States would ultimately do so on October 15, 1994. In late August 1994, McCain declared: “It is the post-invasion circumstances that I fear will bog down U.S. forces in a low-level, open-ended, ill-defined conflict which will require U.S. servicemen and women to serve as a virtual palace guard for President Aristide once he is returned to power.”[10]“McCain Firm in Opposition to Invasion of Haiti,” August 31, 1994, https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press...c9b56d
The major international concern in the 1990s was the conflict in Yugoslavia—with the focus first on Bosnia and then Kosovo. After the downfall of Communism, Yugoslavia dissolved, with the secession, in 1992, of Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia. Bosnia also declared its independence despite the staunch opposition of Bosnian Serbs, who wanted to remain united with Serbia. Civil war broke out between the Bosnian Serbs, supported by Serbia, and the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government. Thousands of people were killed, raped, and expelled from their homes. The West generally looked upon the atrocities, real and imagined, as being primarily perpetrated by the Serbs. In the United States, this was especially the case among American liberals who would advocate “humanitarian” military intervention to protect the Muslims.
In 1992, the UN peacekeeping forces intervened for humanitarian reasons and set up several so-called safe areas for refugees, which often turned out to be not very safe. The UN forces were composed of non-American troops, while American ships and airplanes enforced an arms embargo.
The wars in Yugoslavia would ultimately lead to a sea change in McCain’s position on American military intervention, but this did not occur all at once. Initially, McCain was, like many Republicans, opposed to American involvement in the conflict. In fact, biographer Matt Welch describes McCain as having been “one of the Senate’s most stubborn opponents to US military intervention against Serbs.”[11]Welch, p. 162. McCain contended that any American military “peace-keeping” effort in Bosnia would likely lead to a quagmire. “I think you can draw a parallel to the military challenge in Bosnia with what the Russians faced in Afghanistan,” McCain opined in May 1993. “Even with ground forces and with overwhelming air superiority, they were unable to defeat a motivated, very capable enemy.”[12]Quoted in Michael Wines, “Conflict in the Balkans; Senator Who Saw War Up Close Doesn’t Want to See Another,” New York Times, May 5, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/05/world/conflict-in...r.html
In December 1994, McCain, whom the Los Angeles Times described as a “a leading opponent of greater American military involvement in the war,” stated: “I think we have a very full plate of a legislative agenda, which are the commitments we made to the American people–and Bosnia wasn’t one of those.”[13]Quoted in Ronald Brownstein, “Leaders Clash on U.S. Role in Bosnia,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1994, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-09/news/mn-7054...h-push In May 1995, McCain held that U.S. efforts in the Balkans were “doomed to failure from the beginning, when we believed that we could keep peace in a place where there was no peace.”[14]Quoted in Franklin Foer, Election 2008: A Voter’s Guide, p. 105. Neocon Robert Kagan bemoaned the fact that on Bosnia, Senator McCain led the Republican attack, warning that any use of military power there would result in “another failure like Vietnam or Lebanon.”[15]Robert Kagan, “A Retreat from Power?,” Commentary, July 1, 1995, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/a-retrea...power/
Prospects for peace, however, improved in the summer of 1995 when NATO, led by the United States, launched airstrikes against Bosnian Serb targets, which combined with better-equipped Muslim and Croatian forces pressured the Bosnian Serbs into participating in peace negotiations. This led to the Dayton Accords in November 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia. NATO would provide peace-keeping troops, including 20,000 from the U.S.
After NATO’s success, McCain quickly dropped his staunch anti-interventionist position. McCain later claimed that his position had begun to change as a moral reaction to the Serbs’ massacre of thousands of unarmed Bosnian Muslims in July 1995.[16]David D. Kirkpatrick, “Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine,” New York Times, August 16, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mcc...n.html While most Republican members of Congress were opposed to sending American troops to Bosnia, McCain joined Senator Robert Dole (Republican—Kansas) in putting forth the nonbinding Dole-McCain resolution which permitted Clinton to send troops, though limiting the deployment to one year–which was Clinton’s stated time period—and requiring the United States to lead an effort to arm and train Bosnian troops. The resolution passed in the Senate but was not taken up in the House.[17]Jonathan S. Landay, “Congress Tiptoes Into Delicate Issue Of Dispatching GIs,” Christian Science Monitor, December 13,1995, https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1213/13013.html; Helen Dewa and Guy Gugliotta, “Senate Backs Troops to Bosnia,” Washington Post, December 14, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995...d75dac
Showing that he had not completely dropped his previous cautious approach to intervention, McCain emphasized that the Dole-McCain resolution was not seeking support for President Clinton’s decision to deploy the troops. “It asks that you support the deployment after the decision has been made,” he said. “The decision has been made by the only American elected to make such decisions [i.e., the President].” However, McCain also expressed a firm interventionist conviction: “When we arrive at the moment when less is expected from our leadership by the rest of the world, then we will have arrived at the moment of our decline.” And he said, “We cannot withdraw from the world into our prosperity and comfort and hope to keep those blessings.”[18]Quoted in Katherine Q. Seeleye, “Anguished, Senators Vote to Support Bosnia Mission,” New York Times, December 14, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/14/world/balkan-acco...ed=all
While a change from his previous strong opposition to American intervention abroad, supporting this peace effort in Bosnia did not portend McCain’s radical transmutation to the global super-hawk that he would become. That final step would require the involvement of the neoconservatives. This connection began when, in 1997, McCain and his advisers read an article in the Wall Street Journal editorial page by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and David Brooks who were promoting the idea of “national greatness” conservatism, which consisted of a more activist domestic agenda and a more interventionist global role.[19]Kirkpatrick.
While this article may have fit in with the direction that McCain’s thinking was moving, it had political implications as well: McCain had been eyeing the presidency for a number of years. According to John Weaver, a major political adviser to McCain at this time: “I wouldn’t call it a ‘eureka’ moment, but there was a sense that this is where we are headed and this is what we are trying to articulate and they [Kristol and Brooks] have already done a lot of the work. . . . And, quite frankly, from a crass political point of view, we were in the making-friends business. The Weekly Standard represented a part of the primary electorate that we could get.”[20]Quoted in Kirkpatrick. And it should be emphasized that McCain’s change was not a gradual one but rather one that was quite radical and took place in a very short period of time.
After reading this article, McCain and staff were consulting regularly with leading neocons, including Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Randy Scheunemann[21]Scheunemann was a member of the Board of Directors of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and would later be Director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and McCain’s foreign policy adviser in his 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns., to, in the words of journalist David Kirkpatrick, “develop the senator’s foreign policy ideas and instincts into the broad themes of a presidential campaign.”[22]Kirkpatrick. In short, McCain realized that he needed the neocons’ intellectual and political support if he were to achieve higher office. The neocons were already well-known and had played a significant role in the Reagan administration. And during the Clinton years, neocons promoted their views from a strong interlocking network of think tanks which have had a significant influence in shaping American foreign policy.
McCain would begin to support neocon positions. On January 26, 1998, the neocon-dominated Project for a New American Century (PNAC), created in 1997 and headed by Bill Kristol, sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to take unilateral military action against Iraq to overthrow Saddam and offered a plan to achieve that objective. After the Clinton administration failed to take action, another neocon-front group, the resurrected Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, which had promoted the 1991 Gulf War, sent another letter urging war. And, because of Clinton’s continued inaction, PNAC would send another such letter in May.
While President Clinton failed to take action, McCain pushed for military action against Saddam in 1998. McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, committing the United States to support the overthrow of Saddam and funding opposition groups, most importantly the Iraqi National Congress. Headed by the notorious neocon-favorite Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress would provide much of the spurious information that generated support for the war on Iraq in 2003. The bill passed in both houses of Congress and on October 31, 1998, President Clinton signed it into law. Clinton, however, did not intend to implement this measure and George Bush made no mention of it during the 2000 campaign.[23]Justin Vaisse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 248. McCain, however, remained in lock-step with the neocons on Iraq and would be made Honorary Co-chair of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq when it was created in 2002.
McCain had been in line with the neocons as a strong supporter of Israel even during the time he adhered to a cautious realist position regarding U.S. military interventionism. He was the 1999 recipient of the Defender of Jerusalem award, given by the National Council of Young Israel. In his acceptance speech, McCain in effect told his pro-Zionist audience that the United States should be prepared to make war for Israel’s sake. “Certainly, no one would argue with the proposition that our armed forces exist first and foremost for the defense of the United States and its vital interests abroad,” McCain intoned. “We choose, as a nation, however, to intervene militarily abroad in defense of the moral values that are at the center of our national conscientiousness even when vital national interests are not necessarily at stake. I raise this point because it lies at the heart of this nation’s approach to Israel. The survival of Israel is one of this country’s most important moral commitments. . . . Like the United States, Israel is more than a nation; it is an ideal.”[24]“Remarks of Senator John McCain to the National Council of Young Israel in New York City,” John McCain Press Release, March 14, 1999, quoted in Joseph Sobran, “The Patriot Game,” Wanderer, February 24, 2000, p. 6. Note that this was diametrically opposed to his former view that American intervention abroad should only take place to protect vital American interests.
However, it was not Iraq or any of Israel’s enemies that put McCain in the national limelight but rather the U.S.-led NATO war on Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. As Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz wrote in early April 1999, “no politician has been more visible on the issue of Kosovo the past two weeks than the former Vietnam prisoner of war, and a number of political analysts say his performance has given a boost to his presidential aspirations.”[25]Dan Balz, “Kosovo Conflict Gives McCain Prominence,” Washington Post, April 7, 1999, A4, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campa...99.htm
President Clinton orchestrated the NATO war on Serbia, because of the Serbs “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims in their territory of Kosovo. Since Serbia could not possibly threaten the United States, the war was presented as being largely for humanitarian reasons. At this time, there were all types of stories of Serb mass killings of Kosovars, with figures up to 100,000 Kosovar civilians being missing and conceivably murdered.[26]Tom Doggett, “Cohen Fears 100,000 Kosovo Men Killed by Serbs,” Washington Post, May 16, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm...99.htm Physical evidence for these extreme claims was not found and former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was not even charged with crimes of such great magnitude at his trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). And according to German government documents no “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovar Albanians took place until after the NATO bombing.[27]Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, “Internal Documents from Germany’s Foreign Office Regarding Pre-Bombardment Genocide in Kosovo,” CounterPunch, April 24, 1999, https://www.counterpunch.org/1999/04/24/internal-doc...osovo/
Unlike many Republicans, McCain supported Clinton’s decision for war. But while Clinton limited American actions to air strikes, McCain maintained that it was essential to win this military confrontation at all costs and called on the Clinton Administration to deploy ground troops if the reliance on air strikes alone appeared to be insufficient to achieve victory.[28]CNN, “McCain resolution urges use of ‘all necessary force’ in Yugoslavia,” April 20, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/20/k...gress/]
McCain thus sponsored a resolution that would have given President Clinton congressional authorization to use all means necessary to win the military campaign in Kosovo. The leaders of both parties opposed this resolution and it was tabled. McCain complained: “The president doesn’t want the power he possesses by law because the risks inherent in its exercise have paralyzed him.”[29]McCain quoted in CNN, “Senate tables Kosovo resolution authorizing ‘all necessary force,’’ May 4, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/04/k...gress/
McCain’s hawkish position reflected the views of the neoconservatives. And obviously, his pro-intervention stance represented a sea change from his previous emphasis on caution and support of war only if it involved a vital American interest.
. Members of the interventionist Balkan Action Committee, which advocated NATO ground troops for Kosovo, included such prominent neoconservative mainstays as Richard Perle, Max M. Kampelman, Morton Abramowitz, and Paul Wolfowitz. Other neoconservative proponents of a tougher war included Eliot Cohen, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Norman Podhoretz.[30]Balkan Action Council, Press Release, “Balkan Action Council Urges NATO Intervention, Ground Forces in Kosovo,” January 25, 1999, Bosnian Institute, http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news/260199_6.cfm
Largely because of his bellicose position on Kosovo, McCain was the favorite presidential candidate for many leading neoconservatives in 2000. As Franklin Foer, editor of the liberal New Republic, put it: “Jewish neoconservatives have fallen hard for John McCain. It’s not just unabashed swooner William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard. McCain has also won over such leading neocon lights as David Brooks, the entire Podhoretz family, The Wall Street Journal‘s Dorothy Rabinowitz, and columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declared, in a most un-Semitic flourish, ‘He suffered for our sins.’”[31]Francis Foer, “The neocons wake up: Arguing the GOP,” New Republic, March 20, 2000, p. 13.
McCain was especially championed by Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and his associate David Brooks. They held that McCain would promote their idea of “national greatness,” as opposed to what they regarded as the standpatness of the conservative Republicans. The “national greatness” program would entail a greater role for the federal government and more extensive intervention throughout the world to promote American values.
Neoconservatives admired McCain for his support of the American war on Serbia, toward which many mainstream conservatives were decidedly cool. The attack on Serbia, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, provided the intellectual groundwork for the attack on Iraq, the neocons’ fundamental target, since it set the precedent of violating international law’s prohibition against initiating offensive wars. No longer would the United States have to be attacked, or even threatened, to engage in war. As Kristol and Brooks put it: “For all his conventional political views, McCain embodies a set of virtues that today are unconventional. The issue that gave the McCain campaign its initial boost was Kosovo. He argued that America as a great champion of democracy and decency could not fail to act. And he supported his commander in chief despite grave doubts about the conduct of the war–while George W. Bush sat out the debate and Republicans on the Hill flailed at Clinton.”[32]William Kristol and David Brooks, “The McCain Insurrection,” Weekly Standard, February 14, 2000, http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-mccain-insurrecti.../11707
But the neocons did not support McCain simply because of his defense of the Kosovars, but rather because of his broader interventionist position of “rogue state rollback,” which pointed directly at the enemies of Israel. While participating in a Republican debate moderated by CNN’s Larry King on February. 15, 2000, the candidates were asked: “What area of American international policy would you change immediately as president?” McCain replied: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically-elected governments.” And he added: “As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security.”[33]Talal Al-Khatib, “McCain Rewrites History on ‘Rogue-State Rollback’,” ABC News, April 17, 2008, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/mcc...s.html
What caused McCain’s radical shift from cautious realist to super hawk? Biographer Matt Welch sees it as essentially a return to his basic world view, largely derived from the family’s military background, after the non-interventionist effect of the Vietnam Syndrome. Welch writes: “But much less understood is the extent to which interventionist hegemony has been literally seared into McCain’s skull and then reignited late in life after the long intellectual detour of Vietnam.”[34]Welch, p. xxv.
Justin Raimondo sees it otherwise: “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.” He goes on: “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.”[35]Raimondo, “Madness of John McCain.”
In an article in Rolling Stone, Tim Dickerson expresses a view similar to that of Raimondo, describing McCain as “a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.” Dickerson continues: “Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness.”[36]Tim Dickerson, “John McCain: Make-Believe Maverick,” Rolling Stone, October 16, 2008, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-beli...081016
McCain has flip-flopped on domestic issues, sometimes supporting a conservative position and at other times a more liberal one which wins him the plaudits of the mainstream media—but once he moved into the neocon orbit regarding U.S. foreign policy, he has stayed there. It is obviously beneficial for a politician to have the broad neocon network of organizations on one’s side. And more than a few of these neocons—such as Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, David Brooks, are featured regularly in the mainstream media. Moreover, the mainstream liberal media itself has adopted many neocon interventionist positions in foreign policy in regard to Russia and the Middle East, so McCain’s positions are held in esteem there, too.
So while McCain portrays himself as a “maverick” and “straight-talker” who is above politics– and this image is largely accepted by the mainstream media—it would seem most likely that his political positions have been adopted to advance his own political interests.[37]McCain’s marriage in 1980 to his second wife appears to have been done, at least in part, for political reasons. McCain left his first wife that same year to marry Cindy Hensley, a young Phoenix, Arizona, heiress whose worth has been estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. Cindy’s father, Jim, was the owner of the area’s Anheuser-Busch distributorship, one of the largest beer distributors in the U.S. Without the Hensley connections and, especially, great wealth, it seems highly doubtful that McCain would have been able to win a Congressional seat, which he did in 1982. While this approach did not enable him to become President, it did serve to make him something of a public icon, which is a position few politicians attain. However, the war-oriented policies he has advocated have been disastrous for the United States. It is only fortunate that John McCain has not attained the power to have his positions adopted in their entirety.
Endnotes
[1] John B. Judis, “Neo-McCain,” New Republic, October 16, 2006, https://newrepublic.com/article/60839/neo-mccain
[2] Quoted in Justin Raimondo, “The Madness of John McCain,” February 11, 2008, The American Conservative, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-madness-of-john-mccain/
[3} Quoted in Norman Kempster, “Vietnam War Leaves Legacy of Anguish,” Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-28/news/mn-21292_1_vietnam-war/2
[4] Quoted in Matt Welch, McCain, The Myth of a Maverick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 157.
[5] Welch, p. 158.
[6] Quoted in Michael Wines, “Confrontation in the Gulf,” New York Times, August 19, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-largest-force-since-vietnam-committed-in-15-day-flurry.html?mcubz=0
[7] Quoted in Robert Timberg, John McCain: An American Odyssey (New York: Touchstone, 1999), pp. 149-150.
[8] NPR Staff, “What A Downed Black Hawk In Somalia Taught America,” NPR, October 5, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/10/05/229561805/what-a-downed-black-hawk-in-somalia-taught-america
[9] Quoted in “Backing Clinton, Senate Rejects Bid to Speed Somalia Pullout,” Clifford Krauss, October 15, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/15/world/backing-clinton-senate-rejects-bid-to-speed-somalia-pullout.html
[10] “McCain Firm in Opposition to Invasion of Haiti,” August 31, 1994, https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=bae7665f-1ee5-4646-aaa2-d4aee2c9b56d
[11] Welch, p. 162.
[12] Quoted in Michael Wines, “Conflict in the Balkans; Senator Who Saw War Up Close Doesn’t Want to See Another,” New York Times, May 5, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/05/world/conflict-in-the-balkans-senator-who-saw-war-up-close-doesn-t-want-to-see-another.html
[13] Quoted in Ronald Brownstein, “Leaders Clash on U.S. Role in Bosnia,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1994, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-09/news/mn-7054_1_gingrich-push
[14] Quoted in Franklin Foer, Election 2008: A Voter’s Guide, p. 105.
[15] Robert Kagan, “A Retreat from Power?,” Commentary, July 1, 1995, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/a-retreat-from-power/
[16] David D. Kirkpatrick, “Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine,” New York Times, August 16, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mccain.html
[17] Jonathan S. Landay, “Congress Tiptoes Into Delicate Issue Of Dispatching GIs,” Christian Science Monitor, December 13,1995, https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1213/13013.html; Helen Dewa and Guy Gugliotta, “Senate Backs Troops to Bosnia,” Washington Post, December 14, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/12/14/senate-backs-troops-to-bosnia/31129bff-112b-4061-b0d9-c788c324252c/?utm_term=.5c5337d75dac
[18] Quoted in Katherine Q. Seeleye, “Anguished, Senators Vote to Support Bosnia Mission,” New York Times, December 14, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/14/world/balkan-accord-congress-anguished-senators-vote-support-bosnia-mission-clinton.html?pagewanted=all
[19] Kirkpatrick.
[20] Quoted in Kirkpatrick.
[21] Scheunemann was a member of the Board of Directors of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and would later be Director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and McCain’s foreign policy adviser in his 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns.
[22] Kirkpatrick.
[23] Justin Vaisse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 248.
[24] “Remarks of Senator John McCain to the National Council of Young Israel in New York City,” John McCain Press Release, March 14, 1999, quoted in Joseph Sobran, “The Patriot Game,” Wanderer, February 24, 2000, p. 6.
[25] Dan Balz, “Kosovo Conflict Gives McCain Prominence,” Washington Post, April 7, 1999, A4, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/mccain040799.htm
[26] Tom Doggett, “Cohen Fears 100,000 Kosovo Men Killed by Serbs,” Washington Post, May 16, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/stories/cohen051699.htm
[27] Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, “Internal Documents from Germany’s Foreign Office Regarding Pre-Bombardment Genocide in Kosovo,” CounterPunch, April 24, 1999, https://www.counterpunch.org/1999/04/24/internal-documents-from-germany-s-foreign-office-regarding-pre-bombardment-genocide-in-kosovo/
[28] CNN, “McCain resolution urges use of ‘all necessary force’ in Yugoslavia,” April 20, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/20/kosovo.congress/]
[29] McCain quoted in CNN, “Senate tables Kosovo resolution authorizing ‘all necessary force,’’ May 4, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/04/kosovo.congress/
[30] Balkan Action Council, Press Release, “Balkan Action Council Urges NATO Intervention, Ground Forces in Kosovo,” January 25, 1999, Bosnian Institute, http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news/260199_6.cfm
[31] Francis Foer, “The neocons wake up: Arguing the GOP,” New Republic, March 20, 2000, p. 13.
[32] William Kristol and David Brooks, “The McCain Insurrection,” Weekly Standard, February 14, 2000, http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-mccain-insurrection/article/11707
[33] Talal Al-Khatib, “McCain Rewrites History on ‘Rogue-State Rollback’,” ABC News, April 17, 2008, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/mccain-rewrites.html
[34] Welch, p. xxv.
[35] Raimondo, “Madness of John McCain.”
[36] Tim Dickerson, “John McCain: Make-Believe Maverick,” Rolling Stone, October 16, 2008, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016
[37] McCain’s marriage in 1980 to his second wife appears to have been done, at least in part, for political reasons. McCain left his first wife that same year to marry Cindy Hensley, a young Phoenix, Arizona, heiress whose worth has been estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. Cindy’s father, Jim, was the owner of the area’s Anheuser-Busch distributorship, one of the largest beer distributors in the U.S. Without the Hensley connections and, especially, great wealth, it seems highly doubtful that McCain would have been able to win a Congressional seat, which he did in 1982.
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McCain would have fit in among the Japanese militarists in the 1930s.
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Yes, I remember when McCain was more anti-interventionist than average. Eerie, the striking change.
I also seem to remember Cheney being more anti-intervention, or so it seemed. That was a few administrations before W.
Justin Raimondo sees it otherwise: “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.”
It’s more Hambition than ambition.
If McCain were really about ambition, he would have been more flexible and savvy like Clinton the chameleon. Or Trump who took up different positions to play to populist passions.
But in his foreign policy, McCain went from cautious and moderate to hardline, even to his political detriment. If he was really a political animal driven by ambition, he would have moderated his position on the Iraq War once things went badly. By 2008, even majority of conservatives had turned against the war that became associated with Bush II, a truly reviled and despised political figure(and rightly so).
So, why did McCain stick to his guns on foreign policy?
McCain is a mental midget. He wasn’t much of a student. He wasn’t much of a soldier. So, he was always hungry for recognition from the Power. This is why he was so partial to sucking up to the NYT crowd. The idea that intelligent and educated Liberal establishment praised him as a ‘moderate and sane’ Republican was very flattering to him. But because he was a Gopper, he couldn’t lean too much to the Libby side.
Now, what became the intellectual and moral cornerstone of the GOP? Neocons. Why? Neocons gained control of the thinktanks and Big Ideas. They were supposed to be the Mind of the GOP in contrast to Evanjelly dummies, staid Paleocons, soulless libertarians, and beer-guzzling NASCAR types. Also, Neocons are Jews, and Holocaust became the neo-religion of America. So, the idea that Jewish Neocons, the mind and soul of the GOP, warmed up to him made him wet his pants with joy. Oh gosh, these Jews, yes, these intelligent and soulful Jews(the Holocaust folks) were praising him as a man of integrity, vision, ethics, and courage.
So, it wasn’t just political ambition. It was psychological and emotional, especially as Wasps and White Conservatives had lost so much intellectual and moral capital since the 60s. Wasp mind culture came to be associated with Dan Quayle, and Bush II presidency nailed the final coffins in Wasp intellectualism. Now, surely there are many very smart Wasps, but they were no longer joining the ranks of GOP elites. Most smart Wasps elites either became apolitical or libby-dib and into ‘white guilt’ crap. Also, among the boomers, most brainy and talented Wasps became more like Clintons than the Bushes. Democrats. So, to be a conservative Wasp in the 90s and 2000s was to be an intellectual zero. Also, with Holocaust and MLK cult as new religions of America, soon to be followed by worship of rainbow-colored homo anus, Wasp conservatives had no moral capital either.
So, just think how McCain felt when the brainy & soulful Holocaust people put their arms around him. He wet his pants. It’s like in THE GODFATHER the novel. Luca Brasi thinks himself irredeemable and cursed. But Vito Corleone, an intelligent and wise man, reached out to him. Brasi was so stunned that the great Vito would befriend someone so gross and vile that he became the most loyal henchman of Vito.
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McCain felt saved! He’d been confused and messed up all his life. He was shot down in Vietnam. He became crippled for life. He’d collaborated with the enemy but a myth was created around him that was mostly phony. The war was lost. He tried to make peace and seek reconciliation with Vietnam. But he was never sure of anything. He was a broken man whose politics was about compromise and moderation. No passion. But when he joined in backing the Serbian War, the praise from Neocons made him finally feel saved and armed with purpose in life. He finally had the intellectual and moral blessing he’d craved all his life. He was befriended also by Joe Lieberman, a wise-sounding Jew. Of course, these neocons and Zionists were cunning and shrewd and hardly wise, but Jews gained this aura of sanctimony as the holy Holocaust people… with lots of money and brains.
Another reason why McCain became increasingly vocal and aggressive in foreign policy was because it’s the only arena in which a white gentile leader can be manly and tough, at least against enemies chosen by Jews. It’s like a dog better listen to the master in the house, but it can bark loudly at other dogs and creatures outside. Because of the cult of ‘white guilt’ and Moral Hegemony of Jews(Holocaust), Blacks(Selma), homos(whoopity poo), and even illegals(as ‘undocumented immigrants’ in a ‘nation of immigrants’), the white gentile man has NO moral authority in the US. So, he can only act tough in foreign policy. And by denouncing other nations without ‘human rights’, even a white male as a proud American can act morally holier-than-thou.
Of course, white males can’t choose whom to hate, berate, and bark at. Jews get to choose. And Jews chose Russia, Syria, and Iran. And North Korea to a lesser extent. And McCain barks at them. But his toughness is bogus since he has no autonomy in choosing the enemy. If neocons were to decide that Putin is alright, McCain would stop barking at Russia. If Neocons said Saudis must be taken down, McCain would bark in that direction.
Also, foreign policy is the ONLY card McCain has left. He lost EVERYTHING. He lost to Bush in 2000. He supported the Iraq War and got burned as a result. He got burned in 2008 to Obama. His amnesty was angrily opposed by GOP voters. The financial and housing policies that he endorsed went to hell. And Trump insulted him and did everything opposite what McCain did and won. And Putin is a respected leader around the world. McCain is a nothing. Maybe a secret part of him resents the bargain he made with Neocons in 2000. But that is the only card he has left: the impression of him as a tough warrior standing up for American values and denouncing tyrants like Putin and etc. Of course, many people see how bogus this is. McCain met with Alqaeda scum in Syria and with Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. No one respects him. Conservative voters hate him. He won over and over in Arizona only because Democrats are allowed to vote in GOP primaries. Liberals had pretended to respect him but burned his ass so bad in 2008 in their support of Obama that the charade of non-partisan amicability is over. McCain is totally irrelevant. So, the only card he has left is accusing Trump of being a Russian agent and subverting his presidency out of sheer resentment and envy.
I saw how McCain reacted in the Senate when his effort to smuggle Montenegro into NATO failed, a child not getting his icecream.
Tiny Montenegro of course is just a pain in the ass for peace.
Who in his right mind wants the government of this tiny state to be able to provoke the last world war ?
People who have seen Russia as the USA arch enemy in fact are religious, religion defined as ‘deep seated irrational conviction’.
That Russia just wants to sell oil and gas, and wants to remain independent, impossible.
So McCains invented Russian militarism, as bible belters invented creationism.
McCain was braindead during Comey’s testimony in the Senate, even Comey had to screw up his face in painful confusion as McCain rambled. McCain is no longer fit to water the garden lawn let alone vote on key bills in congress. He needs to be forcefully removed from the Senate and replaced by a pro-Trump candidate from Arizona. I like my war heroes uncaptured by the way.
McCain has always been an asshole. The worst defeat suffered by the US at the hands of the North Vietnamese was the return of McCain alive.
He’s a traitor like his father, the captain of the USS Liberty attacked by Israel in 1967 with the loss of 34 American lives … the man who betrayed his men by falling in line with the cover-up to keep the truth of this war crime from the American people. One degenerate shitbag begot another. Maybe Junior just can’t help it.
Another excellent piece of work on a very putrid subject.
Whenever anyone, especially a politician, starts yapping about defending or promoting moral values, it’s time to grab both your wallet and to head to the toilet.
Alas, I miss Realism. I hoped Trump was a Realist. I despise Idealists. Neocons are Idealists. Communists are Idealists. They are all monsters. So much blood has been shed in the name of Idealism. Idealists don’t care about inconvenient things like body counts, so long as their Ideals are being pursued.
I want America to be friends with Russia, and fight radical Islam. This is the only course that makes sense, but the Idealists aren’t having any. It appears that the Neocons still have their claws around our country’s throat. I had hoped Trump could resist this, but apparently he cannot.
I’ve noticed that in a lot of the sappy, worthless goons in positions of power, even minor positions.
BTW, your comment is far beyond even some of the best columnists here. Bravo!
Neocons are the ones promoting and braying about radical Islam as a threat.
The biggest threat we face is the moneyed neocon crowd, and their water carriers and boot lickers like Little Johnny Boy. Forget Islam as an enemy, radical or otherwise. It’s obviously nothing more than a threat hatched by the usual reptiles to distract our attention from themselves.
If we can manage to get rid of neocon influence, we’ll see radical Islam and many other “threats” disappear like magic. Unfortunately that’s not likely to happen any time soon.
This dude’s time is short and he wants one with his name on it…we are all in grave danger.
McCain wet started his plane on the deck of the USS FORRESTAL which caused a rocket to cook off and fire causing a chain reaction which caused and explosion and fire that killed 134 men and wounded 161 McCain was the only one removed from the ship to keep him away from the crew of the Forrestal. This happened on July 29, 1967.
When McCain was in prison in North Vietnam he was given the name SONG BIRD by the North Vietnese because he made some 40 tapes condeming the U.S. and this was not because of torture as he was not tortured and the injuries he sustained were from ejecting from the plane.
McCain has done every thing in his power to cover up the fact that America POWS were left behind in North Vietnam and there is a youtube video showing McCain at a Senate hearing cursing a woman who was investigating the issue of POWS left behind in Vietnam and that is not the only video of McCain cursing out people who asked him questions on this issue.
McCain is one of the supporters of ISIS and he is pictured with members of ISIS numerous times and as such is of course a TRAITOR just as he was in prison in North Vietnam.
McCain is a TRAITOR and a disgrace to the United States.
The Captain was not McCain. The Captain was awarded the Medal of Honor. Admiral McCain did the coverup though.
Great summary. There is a yearning for acceptance and ‘being something more’ among the semi-retarded an completely uneducated in US. They know very little and have minimal experience. They are completely lost in culture, history, geography, languages, economics, etc… But they are living in a wealthy, resources-rich environment. That leads to a disconnect from the real world, they mix up myths and reality, there is chaos reigning in their minds. They suffer from a sense of inferiority, so they overcompensate and latch on a few ideas. It is a result of lack of selectivity and diligence in US education. That permissiveness allows for creativity and openness, but it also allows total simpletons to rise up because of connections (McCain) or industriousness. Lately this model has been spreading around the world. McCain is simply too stupid to be where he is.
A lot of today’s problems can be traced to the NATO bombing of Serbia. That’s when all rules, common sense and minimal fairness were tossed out. That’s when the western media lost any sense of standards or basic decency. That’s when ‘international’ law and agreed on rules was abandoned. Kosovo established a precedence – from changing existing borders by force and ‘we bomb because nobody can really stop us’, from media reporting what governments tell them and unhinged ‘journalists with a cause’ – it all started with bombing Serbia to force Kosovo separation. It has been downhill since then with ever-escalating use of force and lying by the media. McCain was prominent in that fiasco, but so were Blair and Clintons, European ‘leftists’ and Islamic expansionists. Kosovo created a template: it combined Neo-cons with unhinged liberal bombers, and added Islamic fanatics dreaming about taking over Europe. We are simply living with the consequences. McCain was there from the beginning.
So what happened? Has there been a gradual onset of dementia that’s gone undiagnosed? Or was he “eying the presidency” and needed the sponsors that would carry him there? Either way the man has been mentally and morally unfit all along for his entire life. He’s a spoiled brat who graduated at the bottom of his class yet was allowed to hold positions he should never have had due to family clout. He has an irrational animus towards the Russians which has led him to try to drag the US into unnecessary confrontations with them and which has had the effect of spurring them into building up their military even quicker as they realize that it may not be possible to make any worthwhile peace agreements from a position of weakness. Of course we haven’t gone into his immigration stance which has harmed this country immeasurably. He’s been bad, always, from childhood on. It’s strange to see that the voters of Arizona kept returning this cretin to the Senate over and over. He’s been there far too long for anything worthwhile he may have done. Go away, just go.
McCain is owned by the MIC. He came home drunk with a job in politics waiting for him. McCain’s role is to collude with his defense contractors for costly welfare that undermines US security. He’s just like any other scumbag Senator, a puppet for the mafia.
Haven’t we learned that what a politician says is at any given time to be typically worth less than worn out tires? Not the twiddling author of this drawn out character assessment. Conservatives are hopelessly delusional.
There’s no better example of standard issue duplicitu than the Orange Realtor who claimed he was going to cut defense spending, the F-35 and John McCain’s legacy all at once. All horseshit – all of it.
Incompetent officers running the obsolete USS John McCain into a cargo ship. That about sums it up.
Well, what do ya know? Look who was behind the push for war against Serbia. And the author of this fine article clearly articulates the motivation for this supposed R2P intervention against Serbia:
And we have these hasbarists (both xian and Jewish) trying to convince us that all these wars are truly for humanitarian reasons. What chutzpah!
another word for ‘the Power’, is The Fiend
which I consider somewhat more accurate in its description
in a word, McCain is a traitor
a man willing to betray his office, his constituents, the men and women in uniform, his sacred vows, and all notions of honor or decency in service to our nations most determined enemies. If he thinks doing so will advance his personal ambitions.
a crack whore has a thousand times more integrity
dog vomit in the grass is heroic by comparison
I’m reminded of that Detroit physician who diagnosed healthy patients as having cancer and requiring expensive chemo treatments, so that the physician could get richer and also bask in the grandeur of being a ‘great healer’, once his patients were declared ‘healed’. At least the ones who didn’t die from the chemo (many). A man who is trusted with the health and welfare of others, and then betrays that trust and sees those people die for his personal gain.
and then any article on John McBloodstain that leaves out his wanton corruption vis-a-vis the Savings and Loan mass looting, the 2008 mass looting, his treason in Vietnam, his treason vis-a-vis the USS Liberty and all the other remarkable acts of betrayal and craven venality that this singularly loathsome man has wrought upon the people of this planet… is wholly inadequate for a person to get a grasp on just what a spectacularly vile little man the Bloodstain really is.
It says something about the Jews that own and control our fecal government and media when their favorites to play POTUS are the very worst human beings in the nation. Hillary Clinton and John McBloodstain are arguably the most repulsive people in human memory.
the lying, vicious cackling gorgon and that murderous little Igor to the Fiend
two peas in a pod
not just the good people of the United States, but all people of good will the world over, will breath a great sigh of relief once that rotten soul has been flushed to hell to meet his long overdue reward.
the planet will be a noticeably better place. The air will taste less of sulfur and children and dogs will smile more. There’ll be a frolic in the mood of people everywhere, and a new light of hope and beauty will dance in people’s eyes.
Excellent synopsis. Sounds about right.
Keeping Obamacare was McCain’s final act to really stick it to the people who doubted he has the power. See! Look what I can do! The liberals swooned. John received congratulatory calls and emails from Dems all week, in the end they reiterated how they always know they can depend on John. Pitiful.
Unfortunately, Rurik, for every Killary and McBloodstain that pass away, there are dozens more to take their place. I need not run down the list of the candidates from both major parties that ran in the presidential primaries.
Yes. Basically, McCain is mentally unstable. He may have been able to keep it under control for a while, but whatever caused him to snap in the late 90’s (and doubtless raw ambition played a role), he has long passed the point of no return (as has America, sadly).
It was also a war to justify Nato’s existence, just in time for its 50th anniversary, when everyone was asking why it was still around.
Also, the neocons have always been strongly anti-Russian, and Serbia was viewed as a natural Russian ally, due to history and religion.
true Geo, but at least the world can be rid of a spectacularly execrable pestilence that has plagued it for so terribly long. Even if Tom Cotton is waiting in the wings to take its place.
just think of all the millions of people who suffer the Bloodstain’s every feculent breath.
the POWs in Vietnam and their families
the survivors of the Liberty and their families
the murdered souls throughout the world, from Ukraine to Syria whose unimaginable suffering can be laid directly at the feet of the Stain
all the people who have been tortured or crucified by ISIS
those people in Odessa, Ukraine who were burned alive, or the villagers in Donbas, and so many other places who have lost loved ones or been maimed by the Bloodstain’s relentless, relentless, relentless war mongering.
all these people will be able to wake to a new day knowing that John McCain is no longer befouling the air we all breath with his rotten lungs.
sure, Tom Cotton is being groomed, and there’s no doubt a bevy of would-be traitors and assholes waiting to take McCain’s place, but at least he will be dead and burning in hell.
Simple explanation: becoming an agent of influence for Israel is the sure route to the sort of $$ you need to run a presidential campaign (unless you are already loaded like DT).
McStain is what he is. The real problem is the people who vote for him.
I agree with Justin Raimondo that McCain’s evolution from realism to hopped-up interventionism is nothing more than sheer ambition. People may argue that many of his policies are not populist, but that is precisely the point. His strategy is to strike out a different stance in order to differentiate himself from the many other politicians who have the same ambitions. Hillary Clinton’s strategy is to be a populist, McCain’s strategy is to be an anti-populist.
Antifa, McCain’s latest basket case of ‘freedom fighters’.
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What are the people to do when the senate passes 98-2 a resolution to impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, NK?
The real problem is the swamp… and how to drain it.
It was encouraging to see that the most popular candidates from the two major parties during the previous presidential primaries were both putting forward policies that were against the status quo. And more and more people are beginning to realize the Luggenpresse of Weimerica is pumping out fake news. My prediction is the establishment will manage to remove trump either by impeachment or at the ballot box in 2020 and install one of their puppets who will resume their program of globalism (mass immigration, international trade agreements, and more regime change wars) to the point where things will become intolerably unbearable for the average American. Once that happens, the conditions will have been satisfied for the swamp draining to begin in earnest.
Bottom line: things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get any better.
The lessons of Vietnam. It wasn’t as bad as losing a war on your own soil, but the US Military pretty much spent the last of its political capital from winning WW 2.
Remember that the shadow from Vietnam was so large and so unpopular that the US couldn’t bring itself to take any serious military action during the Iran hostage situation. The country barely tolerated the trivial action taken by Reagan in Granada and the modest action in Panama a half decade later.
Some lessons only need to be learned once. But somehow Vietnam wasn’t one of them. I assumed that Bush was drunk or coked up during any campus discussion of Vietnam as a student at Yale. However, the one person who should have learned something about it was Leslie Gelb, editor of what became the Pentagon Papers.
Gelb supported the second Iraq invasion. He rather quickly regretted this decision, but it was too late. If he forgot the lesson — who is around that remembers? The 20th century US wars are increasingly unpopular. God only knows what undergraduates at elite universities, who need safe spaces to avoid emotional meltdown would do if they had to deal with a military draft. But they are isolated enough to bloviate about micro aggressions during our permanent failed interventions.
Americans want to win. They are tired of losing these things. And by ‘win’ — I mean win in a way that is unambiguous enough to use the term without irony or debate. They simply aren’t popular. It certainly wasn’t the only reason both Obama and Trump were elected, but it was a significant factor.
Obama was temperamentally inclined to wind down Iraq and Afghanistan, but couldn’t stand up to neocons. The only reason Trump hasn’t been overthrown is that he has surrounded himself with generals. The military, of course, is pro war. But they do have to go out and lose mindless adventures. And counter insurgency is not much fun compared to firebombing enemy cities. If the generals wanted to nation build, they would have gone into politics. They are good at killing people, not reinventing the peace corps.
Trump promised to spend more on the military while asking them to do less. Not good enough. Losing these things is simply unpopular. That is the lesson of the 2016 election — popular is good politics.
“Balkan Action Committee, which advocated NATO ground troops for Kosovo, included such prominent neoconservative mainstays as ”
This is the ideological Trojan Horse. It softens future military intervention to similar crisis and to dissimilar crisis as well The later will be presented with use of same language . Americans will not notice .
The idea was and is still to militarize America beyond the maximum necessary, beyond the inappropriate and always keeps it battle ready for ever . This atmosphere serves the interest of Israel. A peace seeking US will behave differently to ME crisis to I-P crisis . But Neo want it behave consistently and only like a military Goliath robot . They have already captured the language and the arena from where those are abused . Now the fascism , moral equivalence , threat to civilization – phrases and words like are hurled at those who question this madness . No alternative is allowed to be heard.
He can’t die soon enough!
My LOL button wont work, lol.
LOL and true!
McCain, imo, has always had some sort of severe neurosis with latent PTSD inside where the two peanuts rattle back and forth. When you’re a nobody, all of that “sucking up” to this one and that one doesn’t satiate the emptiness inside, always lacking any redeeming identity. Perhaps this is why he is loathed by many Veterans. He may lack true character and has simply changed his shell over the years to facilitate his dreams. Either way, I still can’t stand the man.
Perhaps he never really wanted to be a military man but, felt forced by family tradition. I believe that his fortune as a returning POW, in his mind, vindicated him with regard to his collaboration with the enemy and probably put a real thirst for power in his bowels.
I enjoyed the article, Stephen Sniegoski, and a well done reply, PrissFactor!
“The country barely tolerated the trivial action taken by Reagan in Granada and the modest action in Panama a half decade later.”
Unjustifiable wars of agression, both of them. They are precisely the reason a West Point Distinguished Graduate becomes a Conscientious Objector
Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOHuXjmWGjA
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Neocons are back. More wars?
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The author’s account of McCain and his foreign policy trajectory hangs together plausibly, even convincingly. But it also provokes a thought which may not be congenial to the more rabid anti-neocons on UR threads, or to the author
It occurs to me that Israel and its interests is not the main starting point for the famous 1990s neocon eruption though it would no doubt have been the genuine belief of most of the PNAC crowd that there was no incompatibility between Israel’s interests that their policy positions favoured and American interests as they conceived them. This is to see their clique
as *writing from the groupthink position of Knighta of the Round Table, not in a little Celtic Arthurian kingdom under siege, but in the next great world Empire, the one superpower, the exceptional and indispensable nation, which had defeated the great empire of evil and could remake the world*. Think Templars, think Milner’s Kindergarten, think (with less claim to highmindedness) Manifest Destiny.
I would suggest an important reconciling idea for neocons in the 90s was that America was so rich, and so much richer than the troublemakers of the world that they didn’t need to think of economics, or even what could be afforded, so didn’t. Now the disaster they have contributed to is as much economic as military.
I think I read somewhere that David Brooks’s son served in the IDF but it is notable that these neocons don’t seem attached to the idea of Israel for living there, or even holidays. And would it be surprising to learn that in 2017 they are much less united in one unified set of ideas when they touch upon Israel? Are there not some who think Israel’s security is not in danger and that war against Iran, or Russia, would be expensive folly? And at least some may note that Netanyahu is not an admirable politician or man and be glad that they are Ameticans, even with DT as president? After all they are npt bought politicians though some have to maintain their established fronts and no doubt have established sponsors to keep happy.
McCain also played a pivotal role in propagating the Trump/Russia collusion narrative the Democrats were promoting as part of their orchestrated effort to deflect from the substance of the Podesta and DNC email leaks. It was McCain, after all, who bestowed an aura of legitimacy to the ‘Steele Dossier’ by forwarding it to the FBI with an implicit demand for further investigation. He is also suspected of leaking the dossier to journalists and ultimately to Buzzfeed.
From McClatchy News:
John McCain faces questions in Trump-Russia dossier case
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160622854.html
“According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State Department official as two in a handful of people known to have had copies of the full document before it circulated among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed.
snip
Wood (Sir Andrew Wood) had told Britain’s The Guardian in January that McCain had reached out to him about the dossier, and had obtained it through other means. The court document confirms that Wood, Steele and former State Department official David Kramer decided together that new information gathered after the election should be shared with authorities in Britain and the United States.”
note: It was David Kramer, an Affiliated Senior Fellow at the McCain Institute, who went to England to obtain hard copies of the final version of the dossier. He was President of Freedom House from October 2010 to November 2014. Freedom house was a conduit for funding numerous Ukrainian NGO’s prior to the Maidan Revolution. According to Wikipedia: “Kramer is a member of the Ukraine Today media organization’s International Supervisory Council.” Ukraine Today, coincidentally, just happens to be owned by none other than the infamous Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoyskiy, a Zionist scumbag par excellence.
Coincidentally there is also Ukraine’s collusion with the Clinton campaign, including the now discredited CrowdStrike (owned by Dmitri Alperovitch, a Jewish Ukrainian no less) alleging Russian hacking of the DNC.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
Add to this mix the fact that Christopher Steele “was selected as case officer for Alexander Litvinenko and participated in the investigation of the Litvinenko poisoning in 2006.[10] It was Steele who quickly realised that Litvinenko’s death “was a Russian state ‘hit’”.(Wikipedia) (Another ‘fake news’ story.) The Litvinenko affair revolves around Boris Berezovky, a Russo-Jewish oligarch (read mobster) and his antipathy towards Putin. It turns out Livinenko was on Berezovsky’s payroll while concurrently being run by Steele, putting Steele firmly in the Russian mobster’s orbit with, at the very least, a confluence of interests. One has to wonder how much of the source material for the ‘Steele dossier’ came from contacts within this orbit, – ie. the Russo-jewish mafia.
Wheels within wheels.
My apologies for the digression. However it seems that everywhere you turn, from Trump’s inner circle and businesses to the Trump collusion story, once you scratch beneath the surface you find the Jewish mafia lurking there. WTF???
none of the neocon scum (or anyone else) believes Israel’s security is in danger wiz. That’s laughable
It isn’t about Israel’s security, but rather their success in using the ZUSA to bomb Israel’s neighbors into the stone age so that Israel can steal their land and lord it over their people.
it is written
and no, none of these neocon scum actually want to live in Israel because it’s a ‘shitty little country’ populated by assholes.
as far as war with Iran or Russia is concerned, of course it would be expensive folly, but all the expense and folly would be born by the ZUSA and their bullied and bribed allies. So it’s a win / win for the Zionists.
tiny john,
you are not important
you were never needed
you are a waste
you will be mostly forgotten
what will be remembered: keating 5, hanoi songbird, uss liberty, evil, jewpuppet
transmute into dust
soon
All you need to know about McCain was the manner in which he cast his vote against Obamacare repeal.
He walked to the center of the room with his arm extended, then dramatically performed a thumb’s down ,Roman Emperor style.
It was a gigantic middle finger fuck you to his fellow Republicans, to Trump, to the Arizonans who elected him, to the American people, indeed, to the entire universe who ever doubted John McCain’s greatness and power.
Surprised not much mentioned about the manner of the vote.
It was quite dramatic and telling.
Something seriously wrong with the system when the future of American healthcare can be decided by a single bitter 80 year old man with glioblastoma.Feinstein is thinking of running again. She is 86!!!
Good writing.
I don’t remember much of McCain before the presidential election show that delivered Obama I (i.e. err… 2008). I remember McCain being absolutely outrageous, unelectable, one would have thought Mussolini had had a good talk with him and given him some ideas and a vial of amphetamines.
Welcome to mass democracy.
About that:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/01/the-reasons-for-netanyahus-panic/
Soon.
The next “financial” bubble makes noises like you are sitting in a U-Boot at collapse depth. Need something to occupy the rubes that is more solid than Game of Thrones.
It’s a fine essay, as far as it goes, but conspicuous by its absence is any mention of Sen. McCain’s role in Maidan, which led to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych.
I know McCain has a lot of ugly baggage — much of which is covered in Stephen Sniegoski’s article — but the coup in Kiev is big, even for a traitor like “Songbird” McCain, one of many walking free, and living big in the U.S.A.
Because, you know, crime does pay, if you’re one of the untouchables.
So let us not forget there were murderous, false flag snipers firing on both sides — police and Maidan protesters alike — from buildings under control of the Maidan opposition, with whom Sen. McCain met, and offered encouragement, during his visit to Kiev in December 2013.
https://www.rt.com/news/ukraine-snipers-security-chief-438/
https://twitter.com/andreyp_p/status/570534538897567744
from the article
I have believed for a long time now that the main goal (of many) for destroying Muslim nations in the greater Levant has been so that Israel could steal the Golan Heights- fee simple. And have the theft recognized by the UN.
Now that Putin has vouchsafed Syria’s sovereignty intact, it’s a complication to Israel’s plans/agenda. I’m sure Bibi was all but threatening to call Vlad an ‘anti-Semite!’ if he didn’t at least tell Bibi he could steal the Golan.
Not being able to steal it, will reverberate painfully across the Zionist’s messianic view of themselves as ‘chosen’, and whose treachery always pays off, because their god of hatred and racial supremacy always favors them, like it did in WWII.
Now for the first time since WWII, the global PTB seem to be telling the ‘shitty little state’ to pound sand. And they simply don’t know how to deal with that. For seventy years they’ve always been able to get their way by threatening to call their opponents ‘anti-Semites’ if they didn’t toe the line. I can only imagine Putin’s face when Bibi
threatens to call him an anti-Semite if he doesn’t do as he’s told.
I would only take a stand when needfull. Let the others do it.
Yes, this is another example of his “maverickity in action. Is it OK to speak dead of the ill? That’s the question answered in the article I linked to, but this is the gist of it:
Same for Juan McAmnesty. 3 more words here, and I’m done: Fuck this guy!
How do his early abstentions line-up with Israeli interest?
At what point did he become pals with Joe Lieberman?
BTW, OT, but to a question you asked on a different thread:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nazi-grandma-ursula-haverbeck-sent-prison-holocaust-denial-1637098
Dangerous thought-criminal, indeed.
Thanks. I wonder what effect it has? I suspect that it could inspire those of rebellious spirit, if there are any left in Germany, to find ways of subverting the intent of the law.
I note BTW that it doesn’t, just as other answers didn’t, answer my question as to whether anyone had been convicted for denying the 6 million number.
I really don’t know what you’re asking about here. Are you wondering if someone like Hilberg, who in a literal sense disbelieves the 6M number (he puts the number of Jews killed at 5.7M, I believe), could be jailed under these laws?
What caused McCain’s radical shift from cautious realist to super hawk?
Senility?
Not of great importance to me but… Yes.. in the sense that my original nitpicking was because someone seemed to be suggesting that questionong or denying the 6 million figure was a criminal offence.
Doesn’t the article explain it in terms of political ambition?
McCain has always been a crook. Keating 5 Savings and Loan theft, cover-up of POW/MIA, funding ISIS, etc. He’s a murderous profiteer.
His fake Maverick persona was for public consumption, what a joke.
I prefer my Navy pilots uncrashed, also. But then, he’s addled from a brain tumor for a decade, probably. At his best, led by the nosering by the Neocons, he’s a moron, the demonstrations have been flowing for decades. Few of so little consequence on their own did so much damage as a tool of others. Senate senority does enormous damage when it goes to the heads of imbeciles like Pelosi, McCain, Kennedy, the older they geot, it seems the more damage they want to inflict. Illegal immigration support has wrecked us and the aforementioned Big Three liberals enabled all of it. All in the name of remaining on the Neocon cocktail circuit.
After all, it’s lonely on Friday and Saturday nights. Soon, he’ll be in a box, where they put you in the ground and they don’t even let you out on Saturday night anyway. Bet he’s no fun, never was.
Sometimes brain cancer can be a good thing.