By touting the surge as he does, McCain fails as a military thinker. Like Bush, McCain seems to have forgotten that the enemy has a voice in the war's outcome. After all, the war in Iraq is hardly over. Yet, McCain has readily admitted that there is no Plan B. Said McCain, "It's so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can't make the next step. [Welch, p. 172] Consequently, as Frank Rich recently observed, McCain "offers voters no tangible exit strategy."
Thus, the paradox: "Even though the Iraq War is hugely unpopular among the press (as it is with the rest of the population) the man with no backup plan is still treated as a foreign policy sage." [p. 172]
All of which seems to ratify Mr. Scheuer's view of McCain. During testimony to the House of Representatives on April 17, 2007, Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt told Scheuer, "You know, you are really tough on Senator McCain. You said he is 'a little man with mediocre intelligence, a taste for bullying, and an appalling temper who thinks the presidency is his birthright,'" Scheuer responded by asserting, "Sir, he is a perfect example of a man who is tremendously courageous and patriotic, but that does not necessarily correlate with brain power."
One might also question whether anyone can ever humanely talk about the "success" of the surge in Iraq, - given that the war was based upon errors and lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda, given that nearly 4,000 American soldiers have been killed and at least another 10,000 severely wounded for those errors and lies, and given that least 250,000 (if not more than a million) Iraqi civilians died needlessly and some 4.5 million Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes and neighborhoods. What kind of "success" could ever justify such costs?
But, Mr. Scheuer makes an even starker assessment. Talk about success in Iraq at this late date should be dismissed immediately, because "the damage done to the United States was done when the invasion's first air strike hit and the first armored unit crossed the start line from Kuwait." [Scheuer, p. 129]
According to Mr. Scheuer, we've already lost in Iraq (and Afghanistan) because our invasion transformed "bin Laden and al-Qaeda from a man and an organization into a philosophy and a world-wide movement." [p. 123]
"The unwinnable insurgencies we now face in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rock-solid hatred of U.S. foreign policy among a huge majority of Muslims and many non-Muslims as well, the flood of heroin entering the West from Southwest Asia, the rising tide of militancy across the Islamic world, surely none of these were the intentions or expectations of U.S. policymakers. Only madmen and perhaps a few neoconservatives and Israel-firsters would have sought these consequences, but anyone with an average knowledge of history could have foreseen most of them." [Ibid, p. xv]
Unfortunately, were John McCain to be elected President, the militaristic mad bomber ("Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"), would only add to madness. First, by keeping American forces in Iraq, without a Plan B, which would only advance the war aims of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda by bleeding America to bankruptcy and to spreading out its military and intelligence forces. [p. 188]
Second, and far worse, is McCain's "interventionist approach, which is considerably more hawkish than anything George W. Bush has ever practiced." [Welch, p. xxv] According to Mr. Welch, "Interventionist hegemony has been literally seared into McCain's skull." [p. xxv]
Thus, as long as the mainstream news media continue to fawn over John McCain and portray his interventionism "not as the radicalism it is, but as evidence of 'strong credibility on national security,'" [Ibid] they enhance his chances of becoming President. Thus, they enhance the probability that many more Americans are going to die needlessly on foreign soil.
Consequently, rather than considering his words a mere banality, Americans should be worried when McCain warns: "There's going to be more wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
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