Category: National Security

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National Security The War on Terrorism

Bush’s Counterterrorism Strategy: Winning Through Losing

[digg-reddit-me]Who knew the Bush administration actually had a strategy in fighting Al Qaeda?

Robert Grenier, who according to Joby Warrick of the Washington Post is “a former top CIA counterterrorism official who is now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm” explained that we were now winning the fight against Al Qaeda after losing so many battles because:

One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaeda is its own worst enemy. Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves.

And you didn’t think Bush had a strategy. ((To be clear – I do think the recent successes are real, and that Al Qaeda is losing support, etcetera.  But I think Bush’s strategy has been largely counter-productive – and in fact put off this recent intra-extremist fight because he refused to distinguish between these opposing groups – the most egregious example being the invasion of Iraq in response to 9/11.))

It’s the old “invade-two-countries-and-use-heavy-handed- tactics-to-rile-up-the-extremists- so-that- they- initially- have- public- support- but-then- pretend -to-have -an-incompetent- strategy- to-combat- the-extremists- so-that-they- succeed- which-will- then-lead- to-the- public- turning -on- them- because- they-are- evil- doers -after-all.” One of Sun Tzu’s classic stratagems.

And apparently one which is having some success – as Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank suggest in their important piece in The New Republic, “The Unraveling.” Bergen and Cruickshank attribute the ideological rifts within the Muslim extremist community to Al Qaeda’s strategic blunders – but they do not give Bush enough credit for his secret plan to let Al Qaeda succeed so that their empty ideology could be exposed for what it is by fellow extremists.

Bush’s secret plan to win the War on Terrorism bears a strong resemblance to Ronald Reagan’s plan to defeat the Communist Soviet Union. By convincing the public and most of his administration that the USSR had taken a significant lead in all sorts of military areas, he increased America’s military spending exponentially. As the Soviet Union tried to keep up, it eventually collapsed exposing it’s system’s hidden flaws. Although the CIA was caught by surprise by this development during George H. W. Bush’s first term, conservatives quickly confirmed that this was all part of Reagan’s secret plan to end the destroy the Soviet Union by spending like a drunken sailor in America.

George W. Bush – whose wisdom, like Reagan’s is often compared to that of the mythical hedgehog of Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay – has been blessed with authentically evil enemies. Even if he allows them to win, within their winning are the seeds of their destruction.

It is a cunning strategy.

Now we just have to make sure we don’t choose a president who screws it all up by going after Al Qaeda in a competent fashion – a competence that might even distinguish between the Muslim extremist groups that are fighting with one another. It might look like Al Qaeda’s recent troubles happened despite, rather than because of, Bush’s ingenious strategy. But that’s only because we didn’t give enough credit to Bush and John McCain for having this secret strategy.

Now that we know, it’s important to support the right American candidate for this American presidency in this American election against all those anti-Americans out there. Vote for the Bush-McCain Super-Secret Counterterrorism Strategy: Winning the War on Terrorism by Losing Every Battle and Letting Al Qaeda Defeat Itself!

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Questions about McCain’s Foreign Policy

Relating to my previous post evaluating McCain’s foreign policy as a “realistic idealist”, here are two of my remaining questions:

  • Are you seeking to defend the current international system? To reform it? To undermine it? To create a new system?
    Some of your allies on the right claim that you are seeking to undermine the international system – which they see as constraining American power. Your tone is clearly conciliatory – enraging your enemies on the right such as Rush Limbaugh. Charles Krauthammer described one of the “hidden agendas” of your foreign policy as “killing the UN.” …
  • And a question from George Will:

    You say you are not “ready to go to war with Iran,” but you also say the “one thing worse” than “exercising the military option” is “a nuclear-armed Iran.” Because strenuous diplomacy has not dented Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is not a vote for you a vote for war with Iran?

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Evaluating McCain’s ‘realistic idealism’


[Photo courtesy of christhedunn.]

[digg-reddit-me]In an article in the New York Times evaluating John McCain’s foreign policy vision, Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state under the first President George Bush, described a fight currently being waged within the Republican party over the potential direction of McCain’s foreign policy: “It may be too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain’s soul. But … there is at least going to be an attempt.” Eagleburger was referring to was the foreign policy chasm between the Republican party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan ((One could argue that Ronald Reagan was not a pragmatist, but many of his administration were, and his foreign policy was essentially pragmatism wedded to extreme rhetoric.)) , and George H. W. Bush and the Republican party of George W. Bush; between the realists and the idealists; between the paleo-cons and the neo-cons.

John McCain been playing both sides of this intra-Republican war since George W. Bush took office. In his most prominent speech on foreign policy, he described himself as a “realistic idealist.” He explained that his particular approach to the world came from his idealistic core being tempered by “hard experience.” He claims to bridge the chasm between these two approaches, and through his career he has mainly managed to assuage both sides. On the most prominent issue in recent years, Iraq, most of the pragmatists questioned, and often publicly opposed, the decision to launch a preemptive war in the Middle East; the neo-cons were the main proponents of the war. McCain managed to placate both sides by criticizing the execution of the war and the tactical decisions of the Bush administration while defending the overall strategy strongly. In this, McCain was essentially taking the neo-con side in the long-term, but allying himself for the short-term with the realists.

Though this approach has worked well for McCain as a senator, it would be impossible to continue as president because McCain would then have responsibility for both the overall strategy of the War on Terrorism and the tactics used.

For the moment, both the realist camps and the neo-conservative camps believe McCain is on their side at heart. But he can’t be on both sides. If we are to try to figure out what a McCain foreign policy would look like, it is unhelpful to list the specific policies and attitudes he has stated he will adopt towards particular nations. Foreign policy is a constantly shifting, adjusting use of power – and the single area of policy most directly and completely within the control of the executive. What is useful in trying to figure out what a McCain foreign policy would look like is an understanding of the basic assumptions McCain has about foreign policy.

  1. A focus, first and foremost, on the overriding and existential threat of “radical Islamist extremism.”
    McCain considers problems such as China’s rise, Russia’s increasing belligerence, and global climate change as far less important than the defining “national security challenge of our time.” I posited in an earlier post that it is because of the importance of the fight against Islamist extremism that McCain has flip-flopped on so many other domestic and national security issues: “After September 11, McCain had found a new enemy that was greater than the corruption of the political process and he was willing to put aside all of his domestic agenda to focus on the new enemy.”
  2. A demand for moral clarity.
    McCain has, throughout his career, sought enemies to fight. His personal sense of his self seems to demand that he be the white knight and those opposing him be the forces of evil itself. This is an exaggeration certainly ((Hopefully.)) , but this demand for absolute clarity leads to a poor understanding of the world, especially of our enemies. For example, McCain does not merely lack an understanding of the Muslim world; his positions indicate he has imposed a particular ideological framework on his understanding – a framework which does not allow for distinctions among radical groups. ((As his comments in Iraq made clear. Those who would defend McCain as having “mis-spoke” can look to at least three instances when he expressed the same idea.)) While many on the right praise McCain’s moral clarity for condemning radical Islamist extremists as the evil-doers they are, it seems an unquestionably poor strategy in a War on Terrorism to unite our enemies instead of attempting to divide them. It is notable that McCain does not mention the clear and tactically vital divisions among our enemies and among our allies in the Middle East. The words “Sunni” or “Shia” are not mentioned in either of McCain’s two attempts to lay out his entire foreign policy. In this way, McCain is continuing the tradition of George W. Bush.
  3. Iraq as the central front in the War on Terrorism.
    McCain cites Al Qaeda as proof that Iraq is a central front in the War on Terrorism. But Sun Tzu, ancient and wise author of The Art of War, has said that one of the first steps to winning a war is to choose the battlefield that gives you the most advantages. Al Qaeda apparently feels that Iraq plays to their advantages. In many ways, they are right. In an extraordinary article in The New Republic, Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank write of the “jihadist revolt against Bin Laden.” They cite a range of Muslim religious leaders, former and current terrorists, and a man described the “the ideological father of Al Qaeda” who were sympathetic to Bin Laden, even after September 11, who have all publicly broken from Al Qaeda in the past several years ((Most since 2005.)) . Bergen and Cruickshank caution that:

    Most of these clerics and former militants, of course, have not suddenly switched to particularly progressive forms of Islam or fallen in love with the United States (all those we talked to saw the Iraqi insurgency as a defensive jihad)

    But Bergen and Cruickshank still believe that the anti-Al Qaeda positions of these radicals are making Americans safer. John McCain refuses to differentiate between the insurgency and the forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq – an enormous tactical blunder. And it is mainly because of this confusion that he has declared that Iraq is the central front of the War on Terrorism, when in fact, it is one of the few areas that unite jihadists opposed to Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda itself. ((The distinction here should be a bit more subtle as the jihadists referenced by Bergen and Cruickshank oppose Al Qaeda’s tactics in Iraq, so they are not totally united on that issue.))

  4. Premised on the exclusive power of nation-states.
    In contrast to Richard Haas, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, who believes we are in an age of non-polarity with non-state forces multiplying and state power dispersing, McCain premises his foreign policy on the power of nation-states – both America’s power and that of other nations – to affect virtually every area of policy. As McCain sets forth his foreign policy vision, he describes his policy country by country; for those issues he considered global, he describes how he will get other countries to act with us. While his aims here are clearly worthy, he seems to misunderstand how the world has been developing since the end of the Cold War. This assumption also underlies his focus on Iraq in the War on Terrorism. Even as Al Qaeda did much of the planning for it’s attacks in the lawless areas of Pakistan and within the free societies of Berlin, London, and New York City, McCain, like Bush, has focused on the role of states in assisting terrorism. Although this is certainly one component of any War Against Terrorism, it clearly should not be the main focus. One of the achievements of four years of a McCain presidency would be, according to a speech given by the candidate two weeks ago, that “There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven.” Certainly a worthy goal – but it is belied by the fact that Al Qaeda can function within the freedoms offered by a Western democracy. The theory underpinning this claim, this hope, of McCain’s is that Al Qaeda can only function with some form of state sponsorship – which does not seem to be a supportable assumption.
  5. Demonstrations of toughness.
    Since John F. Kennedy suffered through his meeting with Kruschev in Vienna ((And probably before.)) , presidents have been trying to prove their toughness to the world. The Cuban Missile Crisis was mainly a demonstration of toughness on the part of Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson pushed the line in Vietnam to show he was tough; Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada to demonstrate his toughness after retreating when attacked by Muslim extremists in Lebanon; Bill Clinton bombed countries to show his toughness; George W. Bush invaded Iraq and authorized torture. In the current campaign, each of the remaining candidates has tried to demonstrate their toughness in revealing ways. Hillary Clinton threatened to obliterate Iran; Barack Obama vowed to take out Bin Laden or a top Al Qaeda operative with or without Pakistan’s permission; John McCain has promised to continue the War in Iraq. The lesson I take from the historical examples is that “demonstrations of toughness” provide a boost domestically for a short time but rarely make the desired impression internationally, and are an exceptionally bad basis for a policy. McCain, by promising not to back down from Al Qaeda in Iraq, is buying into the Bush doctrine of replacing a genuine strategy to combat terrorism with “demonstrations of toughness”.
  6. Acting as “good global citizens.”
    This is the central difference between John McCain’s foreign policy vision and George W. Bush’s. He believes it is important that America act as a “good global citizen” and a good ally. For McCain, this means working internationally to combat global climate change, being open to persuasion by our allies, ending the policy of military torture of detainees ((Torture by the CIA is apparently still a deliberately gray area.)) , and numerous goodwill gestures. The Bush administration has begun to move in this direction in his second term already. McCain would be able to move further along, and could make genuine progress on global climate change.
  7. Inherent American exceptionalism.
    This idea is directly related to McCain’s demand for moral clarity. Just as he sees himself as essentially incorruptible, so he sees America. This idealization of America is what made his opposition to torture so inspiring. He was calling on the ideal conception of America to combat a corrupting evil which had been introduced into our system. In a similar way, he used his ideal conception of America to argue for the reform of our political process in his 2000 campaign. His foreign policy though demonstrates how this can be a very bad assumption to make. It is one thing to point to American history and to say that we have been an exceptional nation – as Obama regularly does. McCain implies an inherence to America’s goodness, one that exists irrespective of our actions. This assumption underlies McCain’s insistence that the decision to invade Iraq was right ((For if America is inherently good, it cannot be ill-motivated.)) ; that the Bush administration’s strategy in the War on Terrorism is essentially sound; that a change in tone is what is mainly needed to rally our allies; that we remain the world’s “only monument of human rights” in spite of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret prisons, torture, and Iraq; that we must still “protect and promote” democracy to the Middle East; and that America offers a “unique form of leadership – the antithesis of empire – [which] gives us moral credibility, which is more powerful than any show of arms ((One of McCain’s top foreign policy advisors, Niall Ferguson, wrote a book explaining that by virtually any definition, America is an empire.)) .” This is a dangerous idea in a large part because it is not shared by most of the world. For example, although we can declare we are the “antithesis of empire”, we will still be treated as one as long as we are projecting our military, economic, and political power around the world and occupying a sovereign nation.

Some questions remain about McCain’s basic views on foreign policy – many stemming from his triangulation between the neo-cons and realists for the past decade. I’ll be posting some of them later.

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It’s all Condi’ fault

The neoconservatives at The Weekly Standard have finally decided it is time to begin spinning the inevitable blame for the second term of Bush’s administration.  Stephen F. Hayes writes this week’s cover story on Condoleeza Rice:

In many ways, George W. Bush’s reluctant acceptance of bilateral talks with the North Koreans is the story of the latter half of his presidency.

Bush began his second term with the kind of bold, uncompromising vision that had characterized his first four years in office. The ultimate goal of U.S. policy, he proclaimed in his second inaugural address, is “ending tyranny in our world.” Bush said: “My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America’s resolve, and have found it firm.”

But that speech is better understood in retrospect as a coda to his first term than a bridge to the current one. In the second term, those who have chosen to test America’s resolve – the Iranians, the Syrians, the North Koreans – have often found it less than firm.

The problem with the Bush administration – Hayes maintains – is not that the Iraq war was a strategic blunder; or that their goals were too vague and too grand; or that the Bush administration committed tactical errors that alienated our friends and united our enemies; or that the administration deliberately deceived the American people; or even that it compromised basic American values in a kind of preemptive surrender that was summarized by Cheney’s “One Percent Doctrine”.  These were not the problems of the administration, but the glories.

Instead, Bush’s problems began in the second term as Condoleeza Rice took over the State Department when she persuaded him to try more pragmatic courses of action.  The problem wasn’t that Bush was too stubborn or too aggressive, but that he wasn’t stubborn or aggressive enough.

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Dunkin Donuts: The Coffee of Jihadists

[digg-reddit-me]Rachel Ray was outed as a terrorist sympathizer and Dunkin Donuts was declared the official coffee of Al Qaeda ((Munchkins were declared an essential part of the ideal pre-suicide bombing meal.)) as Michelle Malkin, super-heroine extraordinaire, protected Americans from the jihadist message hidden within a recent Dunkin Donut commercial.

We should all be thankful that Malkin is out there, patrolling our culture, and protecting us from this filth.

Thanks to Malkin’s heroically supersensitive ability to be extremely offended (and to get other people to follow her ((Or is it “sheeple”?)) ), Dunkin Donuts has finally renounced terrorism and removed this ad from circulation.

Some liberal pansies may ask when a scarf is just a scarf.  But what these liberals don’t get is that patriotism is not a function of “loving” one’s country; patriotism is not about wanting to make America a better place; and patriotism is certainly not about “independence.”  And treason does not include things like deceiving a nation to start a war of choice, or looting the government treasury, or allowing our sworn enemy to determine our foreign policy.  ((Oddly, as awful as all of these are, none of them necessarily fit the bill of “disloyalty to one’s nation.”))

What patriots like Michelle Malkin get is that patriotism and treason are not about intentions and actions, but about style.  I know Michelle Malkin is a patriot because she is always on the lookout for traitors (who all happen to be Democrats.)  She also talks about patriotism a lot, and I’m sure she wears a flag pin all the time (even though I could find a picture of her wearing one for this article.)  Rachel Ray is obviously a jihadist because she wore a scarf that looks kind of like a traditional Arab headdress.  That’s also how you can tell that Arabs hate America – because so many of them wear these keffiyehs.

That’s why everyone can see how ridiculous it is that presidential candidate (and super-secret Muslim) Barack Obama considers himself a patriot.  He said he stopped wearing flag pins because people used them as substitutes for “true patriotism.”  What he doesn’t get is that patriotism is only about the fashion statements.

And as for those jihadists at Dunkin Donuts who claimed to not know what a keffiyeh was, Malkin has a ready-made response:

Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.

We should all be thankful that Dunkin Donuts had the courage to back down after the threats of boycotting spooked it’s fearless leader.  And we should all be thankful that we live in a glorious liberal democracy where such bullying is possible.  What better way is there to use our freedoms than to boycott those who wear items of clothing that resemble items of clothing from other nations?

Some may call such fashion-policing xenophobic neo-McCarthyism.  But Malkin knows it is true patriotism.

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McCain: Puppies for everyone!

[digg-reddit-me]In February, John McCain observed that:

To encourage a country with only rhetoric…is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.

He has repeatedly criticized Senator Barack Obama for looking at the world with rose-colored lenses, for being naive, and for promising more than he could deliver

Let’s look McCain’s pie-in-the-sky projections released today:

After four years of a McCain administration, America will be more secure and working with its allies and partners around the world to make us safer. In 2013:

The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, violence is much reduced, and America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure.

There is a functioning League of Democracies that has effectively applied pressure on Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force to stop the genocide.

There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. An increase in actionable intelligence leads to the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants.

After four years of a McCain administration, the economy is stronger, Americans once again have confidence in their economic future and businesses are empowered to thrive. In 2013:

The economy is growing and Americans again have confidence in their economic future…

A top to bottom review of government and reforms yield great reductions in spending.

Public education is much improved due to measures that lead to increased competition, higher quality teachers, a revolution in teaching methods, higher graduation rates and higher test scores.

Health care is more accessible to more Americans than at any other time in history.

Medicare’s solvency has been extended and both parties have worked together to fix Social Security without reducing benefits to those near retirement.

The United States is on its way to independence from foreign sources of oil

Border state governors have certified and the American people recognize that after tremendous improvements, our southern border is now secure. Illegal immigration is under control, and the American people accept the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker program and deal humanely with illegal immigrants. [My emphases.]

McCain’s speech in Ohio is here. I’m not sure what the appropriate response is to this. All of these are fine goals, although most of them are significantly outside the control of the president. What McCain doesn’t do here is get into the specifics he so harshly criticized Obama for avoiding (unfairly I might add.)

McCain’s rosy projections are the very model of misleading rhetoric. Why else mention capturing or killing Bin Laden? Does he think that George W. Bush hasn’t tried? Or is he just assuring us that he will get lucky? And does he really think it will be that easy to “win” Iraq? Does “winning” require Iraq to become a democracy as he suggests once again here? Does he really think he’ll be able to stop the genocide in Darfur, secure the Mexican-American border, solve America’s entitlement crises, revolutionize education, and democratize Iraq all at the same time?

Barack Obama – for all of his soaring rhetoric – focuses on what he will do, and what we together can do. To his credit, Obama focuses on how he will change the processes and he promises to address the serious issues we face. But Obama has not shown that he has a messiah complex that would lead him to believe that, with his election, all the world’s problems would be fixed within four years.

And isn’t it planning for the best-case scenario that got us into the whole Iraq fiasco in the first place?

This whole episode reminds me of Al Gore’s SNL skit, except Gore was being ironic:

McCain clearly was not promising to accomplish all of these things. And we all know he (and the rest of the Right) would be attacking Obama for being naive and having a messiah complex if Obama had had the poor judgment to give a speech like this.

But the real problem is that he is making the case for his presidency here by assuming the best-case scenario in every single area of policy. That’s irresponsible. That’s naive. That’s empty rhetoric.

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Obama explains Hamas’s “endorsement”

Some of my readers will be interested in his exchange, this interview of Barack Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg:

BO: My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them. I’ve repeatedly said, and I mean what I say: since they are a terrorist organization, we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements.

JG: Were you flummoxed by it?

BO: I wasn’t flummoxed. I think what is going on there is the same reason why there are some suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.

When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.

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Confronting the architects of war

[digg-reddit-me]Jon Stewart to Douglas Feith:

Just because your intentions are good and noble and you believe it to be the right move for the country doesn’t make this honesty. And I’ll why i think why – because you remove the ability for the American public to make an informed decision.

And once you have removed that then you no longer have the authority, because what you have done is you have told us what part of the argument you think it is appropriate for us to know about.

(Begins at about the 5:55 mark in the video.)

Thank God for Jon Stewart. I’m not sure what other media outlet would broadcast such a respectful yet challenging interview with one of the architects of this war, this national nightmare.

I’m not sure if it should be so cathartic to see one of the planners of this misbegotten gamble scolded by a comedian. But it was.

Now what’s next?

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A Moderate Reputation: Explaining McCain’s Changes of Heart

McCain
Image by Wigwam Jones.

[digg-reddit-me]The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation.
That away,
Man are but gilded loam or painted clay.
-William Shakespeare

John McCain has a reputation as an independent, a moderate and a maverick. This reputation is his greatest asset – far more important than his speaking ability or war record or anything else. It is the reason he was the Republican best positioned to keep the White House with the political tide clearly favoring the Democrats.

He built this reputation over many years by repeatedly taking stands against his party in the 1990s – on campaign finance reform, on tobacco legislation, and on pork spending – and in the early years of the Bush administration – on torture, on tax cuts, and on immigration reform – and by then staking his presidential campaign on the issue of Iraq against the political zeitgeist. But since his political near-death experience this past summer, McCain has either softened his opposition to the Republican Party line or embraced it, potentially destroying this reputation. The famous aphorism states: “Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one.”

So, there is a great deal at stake when the question is asked: Why did he change his positions?

For those who do not wish to give McCain the benefit of the doubt, the answer is obvious: he is pandering to win an election. For those who do wish to give McCain that benefit, the answer is less clear. Generally, the defenses of these changes in position range from denying there has been a change to explaining in various ways how the change shows consistency to a whole hodge-podge of other excuses.

As someone who was an admirer of Mr. McCain’s in 2000 and through the early years of the Bush administration; as someone who talked to and emailed all of my friends asking them to support McCain in his primary fight in 2000 ((I also was a fan of Bill Bradley.)) ; as someone who believes that politicians are politicians even if their reputations are golden ((This includes Barack Obama – my favored candidate this go-round.)) – I see three plausible and non-exclusive explanations for McCain’s change that are consistent with his appeal, his reputation, and his career.

1. McCain’s Last Chance for Glory

Coming into the 2008 race as the establishment candidate, McCain saw his last chance to become president slipping through his fingers, because of his unorthodoxy.  He who had once described himself as the unrepentant champion of lost causes, decided to reconcile himself to the Republican base and reject these initial stands, these bases on which his reputation was built. This is the explanation that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have offered up:

“There was a time when some Republicans like John McCain agreed with me,” Obama said, of his calls to roll back Bush’s temporary tax cuts for the richest Americans instead of making those tax cuts permanent.

“There was a time when Senator McCain courageously defied the fiscal madness of massive tax cuts for the wealthy in the midst of a costly war,” Obama said.  “That was before he started running for the Republican nomination and fell in line.”

2. Unprincipled Moderation

McCain was never truly a conservative in the Burkean sense or a man of strong principles, but merely a political moderate who has been constantly seeking the center ground, no matter how far the center shifts. During the Reagan years, McCain comfortably held the right-center. After Bill Clinton’s election, McCain operated in the left center. In 2000, with a mainly pragmatic liberal consensus, McCain campaigned as a moderate liberal. As Bush pulled the country right, so McCain went – but this time with a bit of a lag. McCain’s response to Bush’s radicalism is to accommodate it. Now, running in a Republican primary, McCain has adapted – and running for president in the general, he will again. His “principled stands” were merely accidents of history, or perhaps occasionally orchestrated stands to enhance his reputation.

3. Manichaeism

McCain has always sought enemies in his career – and has organized all of his political positions by who he saw as the most serious enemy. The Soviet Union provided the first threat which ordered all of his political priorities, and so he entered Congress as a self-confessed ideologue, a “foot soldier” in the Reagan Revolution. He was a conservative Republican. With the fall of the U.S.S.R., he needed to find a new enemy. By the mid-1990s he settled on corruption in Washington. He backed campaign finance legislation to limit the influence of the lobbyists and big money contributors; he championed the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 to eliminate pork spending ((A victory which was overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1998.)) . Identifying another enemy he pushed to increase cigarette taxes to fund anti-smoking campaigns with the backing of the Clinton administration. When he launched his 2000 presidential campaign he said his goal was to “take our government back from the power brokers and special interests and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve.” In a perfect encapsulation of his fervent yet ironic crusade, he compared his campaign to Luke Skywalker attacking the Death Star of special interests (including the Religious Right and the Republican establishment.)

After September 11, McCain had found a new enemy that was greater than the corruption of the political process and he was willing to put aside all of his domestic agenda to focus on the new enemy. So, McCain’s changes in position reflect his changing ranking of enemies.  He is willing to compromise all of his past positions because they are insignificant in the face of islamist extremism.

Concluding Thoughts

These are the three explanations that I have come up with consistent with McCain’s career, his character, and his politics. In the end, I think each explanation plays a role – but the dominant explanation seems to be the final one. It most fully explains McCain’s appeal, his reputation, and the timing of his changes. And frankly, it is the reason why I would be most wary of a McCain presidency now, at this moment in history.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Political Philosophy Politics The War on Terrorism

Killing the United Nations

[digg-reddit-me]Comments like these by Charles Krauthammer on McCain’s plan to create a League of Democracies ((An idea which I believe could make a positive impact under certain circumstances.)) make you realize what is at stake in the coming election:

“What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda,” Krauthammer said March 27 on Fox News. “It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except the idea here, which McCain can’t say but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.”

It’s clear that McCain’s primary foreign policy instincts are Manichean, and that it seems likely that he would continue the worst of Bush’s policies, rather than following in the tradition of Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

It is only because of the contrast between the radical, ideological “conservatism” of the Bush administration that McCain’s policy positions appear reasonable today.

This “reality-based conservatism” of McCain’s led him to question the initial push to go into Iraq for a while; to stand against torture for a while; to reject Bush’s tax cuts in a time of war at first; to champion immigration reform for quite a while. But as he saw his last chance to become president slipping through his fingers, John McCain, who had once described himself as the unrepentant champion of lost causes, decided to reconcile himself to the Republican base and reject many of the principles he stood for.

Since his political near-death experience this summer, McCain has moderated his opposition to torture (refusing to extend its prohibition to the CIA), given up on immigration reform (focusing instead on cracking down on undocumented immigrants), stopped hinting to the press that he would withdraw from Iraq if there wasn’t sufficient progress (as was widely reported in the summer of 2007), embraced Bush’s tax cuts (after calling them irresponsible and regressive). Some have called this shifts part an indication of his conservatism in the tradition of Edmund Burke. But what these observers fail to understand is the radical nature of the Bush presidency.

Edmund Burke believed that we must balance accommodation to the reality of our times with our core values. He believed in gradual change and opposed sudden changes in policy – but he also stridently opposed the radicalism of the French Revolution which had a similar foreign policy to the Bush administration, seeking to export the values of liberty, fraternity, and equality through the force of arms ((As pseudoconservativewatch (an excellent Google find) explained:

Edmund Burke invented the articulate philosophy of modern conservatism on the very basis of his critique of the French Revolution (see his Reflections on the Revolution in France). And yet in twenty-first century America, many who call themselves “conservative” are advocating a foreign policy of spreading principles of liberty and freedom to foreign countries in a manner hardly distinguishable from radical French revolutionaries.))

The irony is that McCain’s defenders, including Jonathan Rauch, defend his accommodations to radicalism by invoking the immutable opponent of radicalism, Edmund Burke himself.

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