Senator John McCain — America’s Voice for Demented Militarism

© 2011 Peter Free

 

23 June 2011

 

 

John McCain has never been noted for the depth or quality of his thinking — now that he is older, what little superficial thoughtfulness he once had has entirely vanished

 

Senator McCain’s analytical shortcomings pose policy direction problems for the United States, simply because he has been politically and influentially prominent for such a long time.

 

For example, he now represents the staunchly “perpetual war” wing of the Republican Party.

 

Many people take the Senator's pronouncements on foreign policy seriously — apparently operating under the assumption that having been a fighter pilot and a prisoner of war gives McCain expertise that more geopolitically knowledgeable people lack.  Consequently, when he is obviously wrong, as he increasingly is on virtually every subject he addresses, a substantial portion of Americans are misled.

 

From a conservative perspective, George Will — a thoughtful writer with more traditional (and certainly more consistently) conservative credentials than Senator McCain’s, wrote the following in regard to the Senator’s absurd accusation that Republicans who disfavored the President Obama’s unnecessary Libyan war were “isolationist”:

 

Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war — and who think a decade of warfare in Afghanistan is enough — are isolationists.

 

This is less a thought than a flight from thinking, which involves making sensible distinctions.

 

Between wishing success to people fighting for freedom and sending in the Marines (or the drones), there is as much middle ground for temperate people as there is between Buchanan, a sort of come-home-America conservative, and McCain, a promiscuous interventionist.

 

When asked his response to those, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who say there was no vital U.S. interest at stake when the Libya intervention began, McCain said:

 

“Our interests are our values” and “our values are that we don’t want people needlessly slaughtered by the thousands,” as Moammar Gaddafi seemed to threaten to do, “if we can prevent such activity.”

 

Under the McCain Doctrine, America’s military would have just begun to fight, and would never stop.

 

© 2011 George F. Will, John McCain’s never-ending war, Washington Post (22 June 2011) (paragraphs split)

 

 

For the good of the nation, the Republican Party needs to wrest itself free from the concept of un-ending war and perpetual foreign military interventions

 

War is seldom a good idea.  Perpetual war is really bad policy — except for people who financially profit from its waging.  These profiteers are parasites on the blood of our troops.

 

The Republican Party needs to return to more balanced foreign policy thinking.  It is time for Senator McCain and his think-alikes to be ignored off the national stage.