I am one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Hath so incensed that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world. --Macbeth
In typical, duplicitous fashion, John McCain's republican convention has decided to define itself with a lie. "Country First" is the improbable theme of McCain's republican coronation as his republican boosters work to obscure his obsession with almost every other country's affairs than our own.
If there is one theme which has dominated McCain's terminally negative campaign against his Democratic rival, it's his repeated promises to push the nations of the world (even further than Bush's imperialistic meddling abroad) to bend to his career-long campaign to dominate them and assuage his paranoia of their sovereignty and independence by waving the heavy hand of the U.S. military.
From Iraq to Russia, from Afghanistan to Iran, McCain is determined to continue and perpetuate the unbridled militarism of the Bush administration and commit our nation and its defenders to more of the same paternalistic bullying which has fostered and escalated the animosity around the world to Bush's arrogant aggression that he's exercised and supported across sovereign borders, with impunity.
"Reckless" is how the Obama camp described McCain's militaristic bluster today in a conference call. TPM reported it this way: (
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/obama_campaign_mccain_is_a_rec.php)
On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice argued that there is "a pattern here of recklessness" when it comes to McCain's approach to various national security issues. She pointed out that McCain reacted too quickly with "aggressive and bellicose" rhetoric on the Russia-Georgia crisis, and contrasted that with Obama's measured response to the dust-up.
"There's something to be said for letting facts drive judgment," Rice said, also referring to McCain's desire to target Iraq right after 9/11.
Obama adviser (and former Bush administration National Security Adviser) Richard Clarke, was also in on the call and described McCain as "
reckless, trigger happy, and discredited."
from Politicususa.com:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/Clarke-McCain-Reckless “When I look at all this it is a little surprising and amazing to me. If you just take the name John McCain off and describe him and what he said, and if I don’t tell you it’s John McCain and if you look at what he said consistently over the last 8 or 9 years and most of us would impartially say that person who I just described in terms of their views was reckless, trigger happy, was discredited was part of the group that got us into the war,” Clarke said.
Clarke said that McCain wanted a war with Iraq before 9/11,“He was before 9/11 calling for doing something militarily about Iraq. Right after 9/11 when the issue was still up in the air when the Bush administration had not yet decided what to do about Iraq. He was part of the group that was pushing the Bush administration hard to go to war in Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11…They were pushing for Ahmed Chalabi to be put in charge of Iraq, even though the CIA was telling anybody would listen that Ahmed Chalabi was a trickster.”
He also said that McCain was wrong on Afghanistan, “The fact of the matter is his judgment which is clearly documented on the record about what to do in Iraq was wrong, and it was wrong when he said that we would have a fairly easy victory in Iraq, and linked to that he was wrong about Afghanistan. He says today that Obama is opposed to the surge that will succeed in Afghanistan. Excuse me. It was Obama who suggested that we put more troops into Afghanistan, and he did that on August 7th not of this year, but of last year, and McCain didn’t come around to that view until rather recently. In fact, McCain had the exact opposite view. He said in 2003, “Nobody in Afghanistan threatens the United States.” Is that the judgment of a foreign policy expert? Is that the record of somebody who has good judgment on these issues?”
Clarke characterized McCain as somebody who is always looking to react with military force, “I think he has consistently been quick draw McCain. On every issue his first instinct is to rattle sabers and look for a military solution. That’s just not somebody who should be questioning anybody’s judgment on national security in my view.”
Indeed, McCain has made no secret of his willingness to threaten countries he disagrees with or fears by posturing as if our nation's military and our nation's defenders were at his disposal to flail around the globe at his mere whim and initiative. During the height of Bush's own bullying of Iraq's neighbors, McCain chose to sing 'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,' to the tune of Barbara Ann for the press and public, as if to underscore the blithe way he regards the consequences of America's opportunistic military aggression abroad.
Out-bullying Bush in his failed 2000 run for the presidency, McCain touted his plans for a "rogue-state rollback" in which he outlined his nation-building ambitions for America. McCain's plan was to establish an 'international' coalition of like-interests which would bypass the objections of the United Nations (which McCain once insisted
didn't exist), and conduct their own military crusades without the consent of rival nations who might object to 'international' initiatives and coercion based solely on whatever the U.S. decides is in their interests. McCain's "League of Democracies" would strike out with their own assembled mercenaries to intimidate and roll over anyone who stood in the way of their decidedly unilateral agenda.
McCain's plans actually resemble what Bush has done on his own as he's taken advantage of Congress' timidity in confronting and limiting his unpopular military expansionism and is well in line with the ultimate approval the UN eventually acceded to Bush's invasion and occupation which the UN General Secretary Annan had called illegal at its inception.
What McCain wants -- and what will be the result of a McCain presidency -- is a U.S. posture which re-assumes the adversarial attitudes which marked America's Cold War maneuvering and completely disregards all of the lessons about the limits of American power and influence abroad and the consequences of treating the nations of the world as mere pawns in whatever dominating scheme he U.S. presidency aspires to.
In the most intractable and counter-productive military blunder by America in this century, in Iraq, McCain is convinced that the territory the U.S. military has seized and now occupies is enough of a validation of the escalation of force he advocated and supported to justify continuing and perpetuating that recklessness for a century or more, no matter what those sovereign nations in the way of his heavy-hand might proscribe for their own citizens.
Moreover, the manner in which McCain has committed our military and our nation to his plan of military aggression in his proposals and in the attacks on his Democratic rival in this campaign and made that aggression the only qualifier of his claim of 'experience and judgment' makes a mockery of the nationalistic theme of his convention act. McCain needs to tell Americans who (and what) he intends to sacrifice to defend our nation and our interests as the world, predictably, responds to his aggression and manipulation with force and initiative of their own.
The world isn't going to just genuflect before another belligerent American autocrat, especially if the military he intends to intimidate them with is still bogged down, nation-building into infinity in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, McCain is posturing as if blundering further forward is it's own success and justification, all wrapped together as one. What becomes of the will and sovereignty of those nation's McCain so zealously covets in his domination scheme? Will they be allowed to exercise those basic rights without fear of retribution at the point of McCain's smothering doctrine?
Iraqis are devastated from the consequences of Bush's nation-building scheme, promoted and prosecuted under the ruse of "spreading democracy." Apart from a privileged few in power and authority in Iraq, there is none of the desire or ambition among the countrymen there for any lasting U.S. presence, or any of the military meddling and manipulations McCain is selling in this campaign. Certainly, there isn't any overarching national security interest in Iraq which would justify any permanent military presence that McCain insists we need and should support.
In response to the Obama campaign's criticisms today, the McCain camp complained about their advocating withdrawing from Iraq "before victory in Iraq, even now with victory in sight."
Without defining, in any concrete terms for Americans, what "victory" would look like through McCain's myopic lens which sees military aggression and escalation as the end all, beat all. Bush and McCain have taken every advantage (of Iraqis and Americans, as well) as they've prosecuted their Iraq coup behind the sacrifices of lives, limbs, and livelihoods of our nation's defenders.
From their theft and manipulation of Iraq's oil revenue and assets -- to their insistence that Iraq should be their battleground against the specter of the original 9-11 terror suspects they've let run free in Afghanistan -- Bush and McCain have demonstrated a reckless disregard of those who they expect to prosecute their opportunistic agenda, and of those who they claim to be defending with their unbridled and reflexive militarism. That is a character and attitude which beleaguered and shell-shocked Americans should not enable into office again.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Bush-and-McCain-s-Reckless-by-Ron-Fullwood-080821-252.html
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