Wars Do Not Make One Great

If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee in the general election, he will be subjected to withering broadsides targeting his lack of foreign-policy experience and what is taken to be his naivete about the nature of American power. This weekend's newspapers afforded us a preview of this strategy. The following excerpts show how hollow these attacks really are but, more importantly, they illustrate the amoral and insatiably militaristic depths to which our republic has sunk.

The Iraq War will become a Republican plus. On the one hand, he voted to authorize the invasion. On the other, he consistently disagreed with the administration’s prosecution of the war in general and with the judgment of defense Secretary Rumsfeld in particular. And on the third hand, he advocated for a course of action that was at last implemented in the so-called “surge,” and with some success.

To say that the Iraq War could still become a "Republican plus" is to tread a bit too lightly on the graves of one million human beings as well as to engage is some rather comprehensive self-delusion. Maybe some folks will, for some pedestrian and pedantic "reasons", despise John McCain slightly less than Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz, but this war will not be a "Republican plus" barring the invention of a time machine that will allow us to withdraw from Iraq in May of 2003.

To say that McCain has credibility because he: 1.voted for the war 2.criticized Rumsfeld and 3. "supported the surge" is to miss the point, a point everyone even remotely connected to the establishment, except for Barack Obama, consistently refuses to acknowledge.

That point is 3-fold: 1.the war was illegal and those who authorized it are war criminals 2.criticizing Rumsfeld's strategy in Iraq is like criticizing Saddam's strategy in Kuwait; it is beside the point entirely 3.the surge has "bought" fewer American deaths in the most literal sense, by paying off insurgents to take a breather. So why didn't McCain support just paying Saddam Hussein to not attack us in 2002?

So, at any moment, he would be able to present himself as a strong patriot, and at another moment as a critic of the hard-line hawks, and at still another as a hard-line hawk with more experience and military knowledge than the others.

Here we have that rosiest of herrings, the blithe and supremely casual observation that supporting a war of aggression in contravention of all international and domestic law to be followed by an indefinite military occupation of a hostile population makes one "a strong patriot". Which made Saddam Hussein quite the patriot when he invaded Kuwait, I would imagine. I bet he even had a little Iraqi flag pin on his lapel.

So, while McCain supported the Hitler / Hussein school of international relations, he still qualifies as a critic of "the hard-line hawks", presumably Ghengis Khan and the aliens from Independence Day and and the alien from Alien. The pseudo-dovish McCain, of course, was able to restrain these dogs of war because, after all, he has more "experience and military knowledge than the others".

Ah yes, the experience and military knowledge born of Vietnam, when 500,000 American troops could not pacify a nation of 25 million. This experience and military knowledge led McCain to conclude that America's problem in Iraq was too few troops. In a perfect world, something tells me McCain would have asked for, oh, I don't now....500,000 or so troops to pacify a nation of 25 million.

And he can add, I too had my doubts about the conduct of the war, but now a policy I long advocated has been put in place with good results. Moreover, by saying something like that he would be reminding the electorate that he knows how to think tactically about military strategies, while his opponent’s only experience in combat has been trying to figure out how to beat Alan Keyes in the Illinois senate race, something anyone with the letter D (for Democrat) after his name would have been able to do easily.

So McCain had his doubts about the conduct of the Iraq War, which reflected his doubts about the Vietnam War. The problem wasn't that American soldiers were sent to an impoverished and alien land to spread the gospel with hand grenades, it was that they weren't allowed to stay long enough or kill enough people.

Thankfully, though, a new strategy has brought "good results". Instead of the pornographic violence of 2006, we know have intolerable levels of violence. Nice! And all it took was paying the killers of thousands of American soldiers not to attack us. To say that the surge has brought good results (or "bought" good results, to be far more accurate) is like saying that 9/11 brought good results because the 4th plane missed its target; it indicates a morbidly low standard for "good".

Nonetheless, we are meant to believe that support for the surge indicates that McCain "knows how to think tactically about military strategies". Okay, McCain has the tactical gravitas to support cutting checks to Sunni insurgents. That's super. But Barack Obama had the strategic gravitas to warn against this abattoir in the first place. How about taking someone who gets the strategy right versus someone who, four years in, prescribes a tactical band-aid for the strategic hemorrhage that he helped set in motion?

Despite the unalterable fact that McCain is prescribing futile tactics to rescue a strategic bus-off-a-cliff, Obama would have avoided the catastrophe entirely, rendering McCain's "tactics" irrelevant. But Obama, we are told, is a lightweight, since his only "combat" was beating Alan Keyes, who any Democrat would have dispatched. Interesting. Apparently the author slept through Obama's 28 head-to-head victories over Hillary Clinton, who any other Democrat would have lost to.

The parts of McCain’s story, even with one or two twists and turns, fit nicely into a coherent narrative that brings credit to him in every chapter. I was resolute in the beginning, I demurred for a while but for good reasons, and now I am resolute again, and you can trust me because, in this area especially, I know what I’m doing.

At my age, I'm surprised by less and less, but this is pretty staggering. "I was resolute in the beginning"???? Yes, he was resolutely wrong. Yes, he resolutely made a decision that made him a war criminal. Yes, he resolutely supported a war of aggression. Yes, he resolutely signed on for the most fundamental sin (let us stop calling this a "mistake") in recent American history.

But, we can "trust" John McCain because he "knows what he's doing". Honestly. Does anyone think George Bush "knows what he's doing?" And on Iraq, how have Bush and McCain differed? They have not.

He can rehearse this narrative without apologizing for anything and then turn around to Obama and (borrowing from Clinton’s attacks on him), declare: You, on the other hand, don’t know what you’re doing, as everything you say, not only about the war, but about the conduct of foreign policy, proves.

Without apologizing. What would John McCain have to apologize for? Well, for starters, about a million specific things. But they're all dead. Then again, McCain doesn't speak Arabic, so expecting him to apologize may be a bit much. "He can rehearse this narrative without apologizing."

Yes, he can. And he will. Because American has nothing to apologize for. The million dead? Well, they shouldn't have been there. But we should have, of course. Without apologizing for the incinerated children and the eviscerated women, or being expected to do so by a proto-fascist and supremely sedated and deluded public, McCain will turn to Obama and question his judgement.

As the quote above indicates, Barack Obama "doesn't know what he's doing". Again, is there anyone left who thinks that anyone who supported invading Iraq really "knew what they were doing?"

We also have Obama's assertion that he would strike locations in Pakistan if he found that bin Laden were there, and that he would do so without Pakistani permission if necessary. McCain has said that he would follow bin Laden "to the gates of Hell." Apparently, John McCain will go to Hell, but not to Pakistan, which actually exists. Okay. Just keep in mind, Obama is the one who "doesn't know what he's doing."

Obama’s judgment -- what little we know of it -- lacks a foundation in history and evidences no understanding of how the levers of American power can be pulled to move the world.

Okay. Same thought exercise: does McCain's judgment on Iraq illustrate "an understanding of how the levers of American power can be pulled to move the world"? Well, yes, if he aimed to "move the world" to a place in which America is despised, its military bloodied, its treasuries depleted, and its credibility gone. If that was his intention, he nailed it. If it was not his intention, then it seems that Obama had a pretty sound footing on the levers of American power and when not to use them.

Does he really believe that the war the terrorists and the nations supporting them are waging against America will end with a retreat from Iraq? Or does he understand how our withdrawal from Beirut in 1984 and our retreat from Somalia emboldened our enemies? Has he read any of bin Laden’s or Zawahiri’s screeds bragging of how Islam defeated America in those instances?

Gee, I don't know....did Gerald Ford really believe that world hunger would end with a retreat from Vietnam? No, he didn't. But he withdrew anyway. The rhetoric above is a quite sloppy way of conflating two things that have nothing to do with each other. Has Obama ever said that leaving Iraq will make all terrorists give up? No. Does it then follow that we stay there until the end of time? No. Waiting for an utter lack of risk of negative consequence before taking an action is an ironclad reason to do nothing.

The author points to withdrawal from Beirut and Somalia. Yes, we withdrew. We withdrew because our "interests" there were so indirect and opaque that they simply weren't worth a loss of American life. So Reagan and Clinton, to their credit, withdrew.

Note what the author does: he adopts bin Laden's talking points as his own, blaming those withdrawals for showing American weakness. Interesting that he co opts bin Laden's reasoning there. As for the reasoning that bin Laden cited regarding the American military presence in the broader Middle East.....well, that's different.

When bin Laden says that American militarism in the Middle East causes hatred among Muslims, it is treated as delusional ranting. When he says that the withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia emboldened him, he is treated as a sober and credible statesman. Interesting.

Is there anyone who really believes that al-Qaeda attacked us because we withdrew from Lebanon? That they have not attacked us since we invaded Iraq because they are scared of us? That if we withdrew from Iraq they would stop being scared and renew their assault?

Well, one person believes that. His name is John McCain. Good thing he "knows what he's doing."