Sep 21 2006
What kind of Senator McCain is
There’s an old joke that goes: Woman: “What kind of lady do you think I am?” Man: “I thought we had settled that and were just dickering over the price.” Well, we settled what sort of Senator McCain was when he voted for Abramoff, knowing that Abramoff condoned torture- and now we see that Bush has met McCain’s price.
I comment, for those of you who might still be thinking that this might not be exactly what it looks like- a bill to permit torture and violations of the Geneva Convention, I’d like to point out that Bush doesn’t need a new law to follow the Geneva Convention. It’s been signed by the President and passed by Congress, the Geneva Convention is (was) the law of the land already. A new law is needed to violate the Geneva Convention, legally. At least here in the US- in Nuremburg it’s a different question.
But it doesn’t matter, anyways. We settled what sort of country we were when we saw graphic depictions of torture being done in Gitmo and in Iraq, and we didn’t care. When we invaded another soverign country that hadn’t attacked us. We’ve declared ourselves an outlaw nation. The only reason no one has called us on it yet is that we posses the world’s largest military (and one almost as expensive as all the other militaries combined) as well as probably the worlds largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction of all stripes- certainly in the top two. That doesn’t mean we won’t face a reckoning, as Nazi Germany did before us. It just means the reckoning won’t be military.
My bet is that the reckoning, when it comes, will be economic in nature. We’re the first country to try for world domination on credit. The deal, ever since Korea, has been simple: the goverment could go and attack anything, so long as the American people didn’t have to pay the price. In World War Two, the nation sacrificed much. Gasoline rationing, meatless, wheatless, and sweetless days, a draft, tens of thousands dead, vastly increased taxes (the top tax bracket hit 90%- today it’s more like 27%). “Sacrifice” for the war in Iraq has been somewhat higher gas prices (but not even exceptionally high- adjusted for inflation, gas was more expensive in 1981).
So we do our wars of empire and conquest on credit. But that way is doomed to fail- because it means we can not, ever, attack our creditors. Because if you do, the first thing they do is yank their credit. At which point we will sacrifice more than our grandparents ever feared. There won’t be any Marshall Plan to look forward to after we’ve taken our lumps, pumping money into the country to rebuild. We’ve already used that up- this time the Marshall Plan came before the war, not after. Heck, even a FDR-like New New Deal would be much more difficult. With FDR, we still had the factories, they just weren’t running. We’ve packed our factories up and shipped them to China, India, Mexico, etc. Say hello to America: third world country.
I don’t know if it’s too late to prevent this. I think not- but the thing about windows of opportunity is that they close. And you generally don’t notice that they’ve closed until much too late. A warning sign that this window of opportunity is closing is that minor nations like Venezuela lose all fear of your military and stand before the UN calling your leader “the devil”. Why? Because we already failed to overthrow him once already, and we would be seriously hurt the Venezuela taking it’s oil off the market. The American people might actually have to sacrifice, and that breaks the deal.
But what I do know is that McCain is standing with Bush now- which means that if Bush ever stands trial in Nuremburg for his crime, McCain will be standing with him still. McCain could have stopped this, could have spoken up. The fact that doing so would cost him his presidential ambitions will matter not one whit to that tribunal. Nor to me, for that matter.
Popularity: 2% [?]
I’m really astounded that you can manage to get in a tizzy over this article.
* McCain has been a long-term supporter going to War in Iraq — he has been since day one. So it’s no surprise that McCain is still a supporter of the war.
* Without details on the agreement that McCain, Graham, and Warner reached with the President, it’s hard to tell what’s really going on. McCain, at least, has a nice soundbite about the integrity of the Geneva Convention being preserved.
* I don’t think that McCain’s political clout would have been hurt at all if he drug his feet forever: distancing and disagreeing with Bush improves your political stance right now, no matter what the issue is you’re distancing from and disagreeing on. Even if the rest of the Republicans managed to somehow pull together and stomp on these “rebels” in a floor vote, McCain’s political clout would just continue to rise — after all, look how much clout the Democrats are generating by pretending to be stomped on.
* Yes, we need to get a warmonger president out of office and put someone in who isn’t going to piss the world off. We need to get off oil — foreign or otherwise — and pull in more international forces in Afghanistan. I think Iraq is deeply screwed, and I’m not sure what the exit strategy is. It seems like we’re going to be forced to make a deal with the devils sooner or later and get Iraq’s neighbors involved: we’ll either do that intentionally or by consequence of abandoning the country in a mess.
We know an agreement has been reached- and we know a new law is needed. What’s in doubt is how bad the situation is- are we talking about small violations of the Geneva Convention, or gross ones? Violating the Geneva Convention is a given, however- because otherwise they wouldn’t need a new law. THe cynic in me, however, is betting the latter and not the former, based on past behavior of this administration. Yeah, I know- past behavior is no gaurentee of future performance, but is the way to bet.
Yes. But my point is that McCain is not that man. He may be marginally better than Bush on some issues- I’d be less worried about McCain nuking Tehran than I am about Bush doing so. But do you think McCain would get us off oil? Do something about global warming? Balance the budget? If so, think again. He’s a Republican. Heck, most Democrats won’t do all of the above (and yeah, that’s a problem). He may not be Adolf Hitler- but then again, neither were Mussolini or Franco.
And the analogy is apt- McCain is no more a “rebel” against Bush than Mussolini was against Hitler. Especially as Mussolini was one of the few to actually oppose Hitler’s designs on Austria, unlike France, England, etc., but Mussolini and Hitler later came to an “agreement”.
Grr. Messed up formatting again- forgot an </BLOCKQUOTE> in that last message, right after “disagreeing on”. I wish comments had a preview mode, or some what I could go back and edit them, to fix these problems.
I don’t like the idea of President McCain right now — I think he was better than anything the Republicans managed to scrape up in 2000. I would have liked to see a President Dean, but…well…you know how that went down.
On the other hand, I do like Senator McCain. He’s probably the last paleoconservative kicking around with any clout. While he’s more hawkish than I care for, he’s earned the right to be so.
I think this exercise had more to do with “clarifying” for the Bush administration what are and are not acceptable forms of interrogation. McCain’s not really a “rebel” (except by Republican-lockstep-standards) — he’s just an independently-minded Republican. Dean was a rebel: he approached the Democratic party and the political world from the outside. McCain, on the other side, works from within the Republican party, and he’s fairly loyal to it.
Because of that, I think that this entire maneuver was because Bush scares McCain as much (if not more) than he scares the rest of us. And McCain knows that bitching at Bush about torture isn’t going to stop it from happening — on the other hand, nailing him down to an agreement on “interpretation” will define what is or is not acceptable. Bush has consistantly “interpeted” himself right outside of laws, and so nailing down what Bush can and can’t do in an agreement is the only way to actually stop torture from happening.
McCain is no paleocon. He’s just another degenerate Beltway hack with a good PR spin as a “maverick”. REAL paleocons like Pat Buchanan were against the war in Iraq all along. The uniformity of Beltway GOP opinion on Iraq doesn’t mean paleocons went along with it - it means that they no longer have any voice whatsoever in the GOP.
As for earning the right to be hawkish… what are you talking about? Vietnam? That’s long over. What matters is his Senate career. And in the Senate, he’s pissed away any “right” to be hawkish through his consistent and ongoing support for the disastrous war in Iraq, and his brown-nosing support for Bush’s disremembering of Osama bin Laden. He doesn’t get a RIGHT to be incompetent and put partisanship over the safety of the troops and the nation, whether he was a Vietnam POW or not!
As I’ve said ever since Iraq started going obviously sour, there’s NO excuse for senators and congresspeople supporting the war, even in 2002, much less today! I’m just an ordinary concerned citizen, with no military experience, no security clearance, and no authority to hold congressional hearings, but even I knew that we were not prepared to occupy and rebuild a shattered Iraq. The only thing I didn’t know was just how flagrantly they deceived the public… even I was surprised to find NO evidence of any sort of WMD whatsoever. I was shocked to find out that torture became a widespread and official practice. But I knew that this war would be a humiliating, disgraceful failure! It wasn’t rocket science, or even political science - just common friggin’ sense.
As you say, McCain is perceived as an independent, “maverick” Republican, hawkish, and highly respectable on military matters. What that says to me is that McCain could have prevented the invasion of Iraq. He had the political and moral authority to do so, and the access to information needed to prove his case - and disprove Bush’s case. His defection would have provided cover for timid Democrats who went along with the war, along with other wavering Republicans. This whole disgrace could have been prevented if McCain had only been the senator you say he is - smart and independent. But no, he’s just a partisan hack.
Which leads us back to torture. All McCain accomplished was to give a congressional stamp of approval - and legal cover for war crimes charges - to what Bush has been doing all along, which is violating the Constitution and our American values in a quest to create an imperial presidency. I think Krugman got it exactly right… Bush is torturing BECAUSE it is unlawful, because it flies in the face of American values. He’s raising the bar on presidential power, not defending America. And here’s McCain, helping him along.
Pathetic. This is why I hold McCain in deeper contempt than any other Republican senator, even Santorum and Brownback - at least they don’t pretend to be anything but partisan hacks.
My point is that at this point, McCain is no more a paleocon than Hillary is a liberal- and holding on to the hope that McCain will rediscover his inner paleocon after being elected is every bit as delusional as thinking Hillary will rediscover her inner liberal.
And let’s take a look at McCain’s reputation as being a maverick. Where does this come from? From the same people who told us that Bush was honest, Al Gore has “truth problems”, Kerry was a flip flopper, Dean was insane and/or unelectable, Hillary is a liberal, etc. The media image of someone is almost uniformly wrong.