August 15, 2008 at 09:21:52

McCain and the Same Old Kneejerk Militarism

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By Ron Fullwood (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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It will not serve those American interests of national security, the promotion of democracy abroad, or cooperation in any global effort to stem the tide of terrorist acts for McCain to re-adopt the old imperialistic isolationism of the past. What McCain is asking of Americans is for us to reject the decades of progress which has been made in reforming relations between the 'Cold Warriors' of the past and resign ourselves to the notion that our nation can do little except to try and dominate and intimidate the world by flailing our soldiers and weaponry around the globe.

In an interview with HuffPo in June, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark offered his view of McCain's militarism:

"McCain's weakness is that he's always been for the use of force, force, and more force," Clark said. "In my experience, the only time to use force is as a last resort . . . When he talks about throwing Russia out of the G8 and makes ditties about bombing Iran, he betrays a respect for the office of the presidency."

I'd go even further than Gen. Clark has. McCain's promotion of his reflexive militarism in this campaign demonstrates a profound disrespect for American voters who, in the last election, rejected the open-ended military mission in Iraq that he and his White House mentors are trying to preserve by replacing the administration's defenders in Congress with Democrats pledged to end the occupation.

What a McCain presidency intends to do is to codify Bush's failed military missions abroad by deepening those commitments and holding our nation's defenders hostage to his insistence that there is something to be 'won' by compounding the tragically mistaken philosophy which Bush used to commit our forces to Iraq and uses as justification to keep them bogged down there. They believe that, if we just press forward with more force -- unrepentant in their sacrifice of even more lives, limbs, and resources -- that, somehow, we will prevail. That's as old and rejected a notion as has ever been presented as a platform for the future. It's as old as McCain himself.

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Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price

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