John McCain

2008

2008-08-17-NYT-Kirkpatrick

Response to 9/11 Offers Outline of McCain Doctrine
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times, 2008-08-17

[An excerpt; emphasis is added.]

It was during the Balkan wars that Mr. McCain and his advisers
read a 1997 article on the Wall Street Journal editorial page
by William Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard —
both now Op-Ed page columnists at The New York Times —
promoting the idea of “national greatness” conservatism, defined by
a more activist agenda at home and a more muscular role in the world.

“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 have already done a lot of the work,”
said John Weaver, a former McCain political adviser.
“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.”

Soon Mr. McCain and his aides were consulting regularly with
the circle of hawkish foreign policy thinkers
sometimes referred to as neoconservatives —
including Mr. Kristol, Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann,
a former aide to Mr. Dole who became a McCain campaign adviser —
to develop the senator’s foreign policy ideas and instincts
into the broad themes of a presidential campaign.
(In his e-mail message, Mr. McCain noted that
he had also consulted with friends like Henry A. Kissinger,
known for a narrower view of American interests.)

One result was a series of speeches in which
Mr. McCain called for “rogue state rollback.”
He argued that disparate regional troublemakers,
including Iraq, North Korea and Serbia,
bore a common stamp:
they were all autocracies.
And as such, he contended, they were more likely to
export terrorism, spread dangerous weapons, or start ethnic conflicts.
In an early outline
of what would become his initial response to the Sept. 11 attacks,
Mr. McCain argued that
“swift and sure” retribution against any one of the rogue states
was an essential deterrent to any of the others.
But Mr. McCain’s advisers and aides say his “rogue state” speeches
stopped short of the most sweeping international agenda
put forth by Mr. Kristol, Mr. Kagan and their allies.
Mr. McCain explicitly disavowed direct military action merely to advance American values,
foreswearing any “global crusade” of interventions in favor of
relying on covert and financial support for internal opposition groups.

...

[The conclusion of the article:]

But Mr. McCain, in his e-mail message, said

the reason he had supported the war was
the evolving threat from Mr. Hussein.

“I believe voters elect their leaders based on their experience and judgment —
their ability to make hard calls, for instance, on matters of war and peace,”
he wrote.
“It’s important to get them right.”

---

[In the boxed text above,
we can see clearly and unmistakably how the media
(in this case the New York Times, America’s most esteemed newspaper)
continues to propagate totally erroneous ideas about Saddam Hussein.
There was no evolving threat from Hussein,
at least not against the United States.
The article would have been accurate if it spoke of
what Senator McCain perceived as a threat from Hussein,
making it clear that this was only a perception, not reality.

How on earth can such a basic error on such an important matter
be made by their reporter and get past their editors and fact-checkers,
other than as part of an ongoing
deliberate attempt to plant false impressions in the American public
about Hussein and the need for the war?]

2008-09-04-McCain-acceptance-speech

John McCain’s Acceptance Speech
by John McCain
to the RNC, 2008-09-04

[A paragraph from the speech; emphasis is added.]

As president,
I’ll work to establish good relations with Russia
so that we need not fear a return to the Cold War.
But

we can’t turn a blind eye to
aggression and international lawlessness
that threatens
the peace and stability of the world and
the security of the American people.

[Note the slick conversion here.
From the context, it is clear that he is talking about
the Russian reaction to Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia.
But he goes on to link that to “the security of the American people.”
But how is that related to “the security of the American people”?
There is no link.
Whether Georgia is an independent nation or, most extreme case, part of Russia
makes no difference to America’s security.
This is
a) the Big Lie in action, and
b) something he, I think quite clearly, has picked up from the neocons.

As to
“aggression and international lawlessness
that threatens
the peace and stability of the world and
the security of the American people”,
he might take a look at Israel’s actions on the West Bank.
Now that does fit the bill.

The McCain campaign might respond by making the valid point that
Senator McCain has had a valorous and honorable career in the military
and over twenty years in Congress
to acquire expertise in what is needed for America’s security,
expertise which none of his critics can hope to match.
This is certainly true as far as it goes,
and I wish to congratulate him for the fine example he set in his captivity.
But I would make a further point, that
since the defeat of Bush-41 in 1992
no politician has been able to say “No” to the Israeli lobby,
no matter how splendid and valorous their military record might have been,
and this holds true all the more for those who are making a serious
(i.e., with a reasonable probability of success) run for the presidency.

To put it picturesquely,
the Israeli lobby puts out a powerful tractor beam
which captures any politician who hopes to succeed at the national level.]

2008-10-07-Hershberger-Forrestal

Investigating John McCain’s Tragedy at Sea
By Mary Hershberger
Truthdig.org, 2008-10-07

2013

2013-09-06-MotherJones-john-mccain-world-attack-map

Map: All the Countries John McCain Has Wanted to Attack
Syria, Iraq, Russia, North Korea, and nine other nations
the Arizona senator has been eager to bomb, invade, or destabilize.
by Tim Murphy and Tasneem Raja
Mother Jones, 2013-09-06