John McCain's Bay of Pigs

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By Stephen Pizzo (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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Scheunemann relied almost entirely on his access to McCain for his work involving foreign clients. He and his partner reported 71 phone conversations and meetings with McCain and his top advisers since 2004 on behalf of foreign clients, including Georgia, according to forms they filed with the Justice Department.

The contacts focused on Georgia's aspirations to join NATO and on legislative proposals, including a measure co-sponsored by McCain that supported Georgia's position on South Ossetia.

The neoconservative reign of GW Bush has been a gold mine for those who believe in the shoot-first-negotiate-later, (if ever) Bush/Cheney foreign policy. It has also been a gold mine for companies like Northrop, Boeing, Halliburton, etc. These are companies that only really profit once the talking stops and the shooting gets underway.

With the neo-con's string beginning to run out in Iraq, these same forces had been queuing Iran up as the next patient needing a forced democracy enema. Trouble is, few of our former allies are anxious to follow the gang that can't shoot straight into another war in the Muslim world.

So neo-con forces turned their attentions back to more familiar territories; former eastern bloc Soviet satellites, like Georgia. Their case --- keeping Georgia in the west's camp is a national security issue because, 1) It's a democracy, and 2) a critical oil and gas pipeline feeding Europe runs through it.

Re-igniting the Cold War with Russia would suit neoconservatives just fine. The war on terror, while it's been profitable, has not required the kind of big-ticket weaponry that fed US arms companies so well during the Cold War ; bombers, nuclear subs, space weapons, anti-ballistic missile systems, aircraft carriers ... ah, those were the days.

Randy Scheunermann is now at the head of the table within the McCain campaign and, if he wins, he is likely to be tapped as National Security Adviser in a McCain administration. In the meantime Scheunermann and his crew of neo-cons have been preparing the ground for a new run of high-dollar, high-conflict years ahead. Randy and his boss, McCain, worked the little nation of Georgia like a high school boy in heat in the back seat on Lookout Point. "Come on... what are you waiting for? You love us don't you? We love you. Just do it. Of course we'll respect you in the morning. Then we'll be together forever."

We know that because it's part of the public record:

Campaign Dismisses Timing of Phone Call, Contract

Washington Post - August 13, 2008 -- Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic....The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

We don't know exactly what McCain told Georgia's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, during that April 17 phone call. But Georgians had repeatedly been assured by Scheunermann that McCain's views on Georgia's importance to the US mirrored those of the current occupant of the Oval Office. It was not an unreasonable assurance for the Georgians to accept. After all, the McCain campaign itself had boosted the very same, that when it came to spreading and protecting Georgia's emerging democracy, the US was four-square on their side.

Based on precisely those assurances Saakashvili figured he had a small window of opportunity, a window quickly closing with the likelihood Obama would be the next occupant of the Oval Office. If he was going to integrate Abkhazca and South Ossetia into Georgia once and for all, it had to be now while the Bush/McCain team still had control of US foreign policies. By August, it was clear to Saakashvilli that if the US was to be in any kind of posture to militarily support Georgia, it was now -- or maybe never.

And so Georgia's weak military marched against Russian forces in South Ossetia... a mouse roaring. And that's how the Georgians came to learn what it must have felt like, 47-years ago, on the blood-soaked beaches of Cuba's Bay of Pigs and the steamy death-trap of the Zapata swamps.

What does this episode say about John McCain's judgment? You know what liberals, like me, think. But how about conservative foreign policy experts:

When you are leader of the free world, you have to understand that your words have consequences. And here, Senator McCain failed.

Russia has been acting like the classic schoolyard bully, puffed up by the surge in oil prices. Senator McCain took the side of the 90-pound weakling: democratic Georgia with its heart in the right, pro-American, place, even if its claim to two separatist provinces is uncertain.

McCain's resolve was undoubtedly strengthened by his top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who was a paid lobbyist receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from Georgia until just three months ago. But if Senator McCain’s gut was right, his reading of the region, which was waiting to explode, was wrong.

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Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a (more...)

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