You know, it's stuff like this that deflates me regarding McCain. It's the NYTimes story today about how gung-ho he was about the Iraq war, and how gung-ho he still is for a foreign policy that's aggressive and crusading. Excerpt:
Whether through ideology or instinct, though, Mr. McCain began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same. He drew on principles he learned growing up in a military family and on conclusions he formed as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He also returned to a conviction about "the common identity" of dangerous autocracies as far-flung as Serbia and North Korea that he had developed consulting with hawkish foreign policy thinkers to help sharpen the themes of his 2000 presidential campaign.While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi's opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein's supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. McCain's supporters note that he became an early critic of the administration's execution of the occupation, and they credit him with pushing the troop "surge" that helped bring stability. Mr. McCain, though, stands by his support for the war and expresses no regrets about his advocacy.
You really should read the whole thing. It puts McCain's legendary hotheadedness into a certain very disturbing perspective. Is there any reason at all to think his approach to dealing with the world would be any different from Bush's.
I wish we could look to Obama and the Democrats for a clear alternative on this point. But I don't see it. Here's Andrew Bacevich from the Moyers interview:
BILL MOYERS: And, yet, you say that the prime example of political dysfunction today is the Democratic Party in relation to Iraq.ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I may be a conservative, but I can assure you that, in November of 2006, I voted for every Democrat I could possibly come close to. And I did because the Democratic Party, speaking with one voice, at that time, said that, "Elect us. Give us power in the Congress, and we will end the Iraq War."
And the American people, at that point, adamantly tired of this war, gave power to the Democrats in Congress. And they absolutely, totally, completely failed to follow through on their commitment. Now, there was a lot of posturing. But, really, the record of the Democratic Congress over the past two years has been - one in which, substantively, all they have done is to appropriate the additional money that enables President Bush to continue that war.
BILL MOYERS: And you say the promises of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi prove to be empty. Reid and Pelosi's commitment to forcing a change in policy took a backseat to their concern to protect the Democratic majority.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Could anybody disagree with that?
Sigh.
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They did try. And exactly what was anticipated was exactly what happened.
They were not going to sign the funding bill for the war. They were told they were obstructing the running of the government. They were called traitors, said they weren't supporting the troops. Endangering our servicemen and women for such a thing. And the president who didn't take out a veto pen, or even threaten it for the previous six years has used it the first time in 2006.
So, yes, they DID try. And it was both the Republicans who prevented it.
No, they didn't. They backed down. I don't consider it trying unless they actually failed. Almost no one has the backbone to adhere to principle and take a stand. It's all about false prudence.
Making the bill was trying.
The voting public shows itself easily manipulated by such talk, and we sure, awfully easy, expect people to vote themselves out of a job, when we can't even handle a rhetoric before pushing the panic button that makes people think they WILL lose their job for such action.
We need backbone too. And to understand what it takes to do what we want done, and show them that we'll stand by them when they do it.
I can't say that most people will.
You willing to run for a single term to get done what needs to be done? Knowing that you'll quit your day job, and spend millions and get the kind of things done to your family that get done to our representatives while they go around digging for dirt for a single 2 or six year term to take care of this?
Because that might be what it takes. Then you'd have to find people willing to vote you in.
In the end, politicians are people who, like all of us, want to keep their job.
Sure, it is public service, but that also involves doing what the public wants, to represent them. And that's built into the system. We never want a rep to think their job is totally safe and they can do what they please.
I think, honestly, the ones who REALLY need to show conviction and backbone?
We do. The public. We need to show that this is really what we want. That we know what it'll take to get it. That we will stick by those who do it. That we aren't going to cave the first time someone spooks us, or calls us a name, or infers we might be something or another if we support that position.
We get the representation we deserve. We need to deserve better.
Karen,
"The US public opinion is not quite so cut and dried as all that, SO."
You and I actually agree on this point. My primary point was to take Bacevich to task for reading the 2006 election results as signifying that US public opinion was quite cut and dried with respect to the Iraq war. That's not an interpretation that can be made with any confidence, IMO.
I think that, at the time of the election, there were many who did. But, obviously, given the hair thin majority in one house, the opinion on it, at that time, was divided.
Even now, and this is from someone who was against it from the beginning, most don't have the will, and the backbone to do what is needed TO end it, from the Legislative branch. Which is, and ONLY is, to defund the war.
They get too twitchy, too easily guided into the idea this makes the soldiers vulnerable, or impacts their paychecks, or shuts down the government, etc.
If we, the people, the ones who put them in, aren't willing to stand BY the politicians and tell them our will, and that we know what it takes to enact it, we might as well, otherwise, be telling them, 'Get from Point A to Point B, and the only acceptable way for you to do so is to teleport by the power of your mind. All other ways will be punished.' Then acting all surprised when they don't manage it.
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