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, they enhance his chances of becoming President and, thus, the chances of more Americans perishing needlessly on foreign soil.

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Now that John McCain is the presumptive Republican candidate for President, Americans should insist that the mainstream news media cease its fawning coverage of the so-called straight talking maverick and produce unbiased reporting on the inside-the-beltway elitist from "third generation Navy royalty," whose "impeccable" national security credentials consist of little more than militarism and a willingness, indeed eagerness, to impose America's "exceptional" values on the rest of the world.

In his new book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq former CIA Osama bin Laden expert, Michael Scheuer, decries the price average Americans pay for their lack of interest in foreign affairs: "The most dangerous aspect of the division between the domestic focus of Americans and the international fixation of their elite…lies in the elite's easy willingness to sacrifice the lives of the former's sons and daughters in wars meant to install freedom and democracy in the Islamic world. These men and women have consciously made the decision that they will steadily spend the lives of our children to bring democracy, women's rights, parliamentary governments, human rights, and secularism to those who want no part of any of them in the Westernized form that is offered." [p. 253]

The elite's easy willingness to meddle in the Middle East is especially harmful to U.S. national security, because "Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S. interventionism more than any other factor." According the Mr. Scheuer, "The debate over which candidate is experienced enough to be commander in chief is farcial." Why? Because each of the three remaining "Clueless Candidates" is "an interventionist and will simply abide by the dogma kept in place by America's political class for 30-plus years."

Although he's certainly correct, he should have noted that Senator Obama did oppose Bush's military intervention in Iraq. Speaking in 2002, Mr. Obama noted: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." (Witness the needless American and Iraqi deaths, the insurgency, the civil war, Iran's regional ascendance, Turkey's recent invasion and the economic cost; 50-60 times more than Bush's people estimated and a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis, according to Joseph Stiglitz.) Moreover, during his campaign, Obama has asserted: "I want to end the mindset that got us into war." (It's a promising assertion that places his candidacy in stark contrast with Senator McCain's.)

Nevertheless, Mr. Scheuer properly excoriates the profound ignorance upon which the elite based its arguments for invading Iraq. "Not a lick of classified intelligence information was needed to know what repercussion the invasion of Iraq would cause: all that was needed was to read the words of our Islamist enemies, know a bit about Islam and its history, and ignore the advice of politically motivated experts like Bernard Lewis, Charles Krauthammer, Fareed Zakaria, Max Boot, Fawaz Gerges Reuel Marc Gerecht and the rest of the prowar lobby that helped sink U.S. interests in the sand of Iraq." [p. 129]

Unfortunately, America is entering a second round of crooked talk and thinking about Iraq, especially by Senator John McCain. And some Americans appear to be falling for it. Not only has McCain claimed that the "U.S. has succeeded in its war in Iraq," [Bill Ruthhart, INDYSTAR.COM Feb. 22, 2008] but he also has criticized both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for being wrong "when they said the surge would fail. And they were wrong when they said that the political process would not move forward." [VOA News, 25 Feb. 2008]

Yet, it was McCain (and Senator Clinton) who helped President George W. Bush drive "the bus into the ditch" (to quote Senator Obama) by voting to authorize his invasion Iraq. McCain not only failed to exercise sound national security judgment on America's most important national security issue of the 21st century, he also voted to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq without even reading the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

His lust for heroic foreign intervention is a family tradition, stretching back through McCain's father, John McCain Jr. (a Navy officer, who "rose to [the] rank of Commander in Chief, Pacific Command … from which he prosecuted the Vietnam War") to grandfather, John "Slew" McCain, the four-star admiral who "rode in Teddy Roosevelt's globe-spanning Great White Fleet" [Matt Welch, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, p. 209, p. 4]. But, to support Bush's intervention in Iraq without even reading the NIE was clearly irresponsible.

And it showed. McCain not only exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (he's "on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon," he also asserted that "regime change in Iraq" could result in a "demand for self-determination" throughout the Middle East.

In January 2003, the Arizona Senator with the supposedly impeccable national security credentials asserted: "I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks." In April, McCain claimed, "It's clear that the end is very much in sight." And in May 2003, a cheerleading McCain proclaimed, "the war in Iraq succeeded beyond the most optimistic expectations." That was almost five years ago!

In short, the Senator with the supposedly impeccable national security credentials has been wrong on Iraq since day one. Until recently, McCain said you should believe him when he claims the surge is working, but be prepared to stay in Iraq until America succeeds - whatever that means - even if we are there for a hundred years.

Recently, however -- apparently sensing that his "100 year thing" won't stand up against Obama's or Clinton's promise to get out of Iraq or impress the 60 percent of Americans who now believe the war was a mistake - the straight talker flip-flopped. Forget my words about "100 years." Instead: "My friends, the war will be over soon." I've been talking to my friend, Senator Lindsay Graham [another wrong-headed interventionist], who recently visited Baghdad. He says, "it's generally quiet" there.

Generally quiet? Senator McCain would do well to read the news reports from Baghdad by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail showing the surge to be an ongoing catastrophe for many Iraqis [See "Iraqis: 'Surge' Is a Catastrophe," antiwar.com, Feb. 23, 2008].

Should we believe McCain or the recent report from Baghdad by Nir Rosen ("The Myth of the Surge")? Mr. Rosen notes that the U.S. is arming both sides in the civil war and quotes Chas Freeman (former ambassador to Saudi Arabia): "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-à-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future."

Mr. Rosen ominously adds: "With American forces now arming both sides in the civil war, the violence in Iraq has once again started to escalate. In January, some 100 members of the new Sunni militias - whom the Americans have now taken to calling the 'Sons of Iraq' - were assassinated in Baghdad and other urban areas."

Moreover, it's Senator McCain who has been proven wrong again for accusing Senators Obama and Clinton for being "wrong when they said that the political process would not move forward." As McClatchy's Washington Bureau reported on February 27th, "Iraq's three-man presidency council Wednesday announced that it's vetoed legislation that U.S. officials [including McCain] two weeks ago hailed as significant progress." Thus, the New York Times hit the nail on the head when it reported, "the major steps toward political reconciliation that the troop increase was supposed to help usher in have not occurred."

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."

Authors Bio:
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).