The Real McCain.

Look out, folks - here comes the straight talk express, charging down the track straight toward you. For what seems like the twelfth time in as many months, John McCain has launched (or re-launched) his presidential bid, trying to trade on any of his former selves that the public will buy - Mister Independent, Mister Inevitable, Mister Iraq Victory, etc. Pick your favorite McCain... or collect all three! At this stage, the Arizona senator's flagging campaign appears to be centered on his dogged support for the Iraq project, albeit a "better managed" variant of that catastrophe. The calculation is a simple one - McCain supports the troop increase because he believes it's right, even though it's unpopular; a position that is supposed to lend him an aura of integrity and moral authority. Everyone else is playing politics with the war, but not McCain. That's his card, and he's playing it for all it's worth, equating troop withdrawals with "surrender" and any war funding conditions with abandonment of our troops (mainstream G.O.P. positions, in essence).

Okay - so here's my question. How is McCain's position any less "political" than anyone else's? He's just betting on "war futures" like all those who voted for this policy in the first place. If in nine months Iraq is even marginally more quiet, McCain can claim vindication. If things go even more septic and Congress forces even a partial withdrawal of the additional "surge" forces, he will be able to claim that the continuing disaster is the result of not following his sage counsel. And if the American project in Iraq ultimately succeeds (i.e. if a government congenial to U.S. influence and permanent military bases ever takes hold), it will be good news for McCain, though decidedly not for the U.S. troops and Iraqis who will have died in the meantime, not to mention the millions of Iraqis who will have had their national sovereignty compromised by a foreign power, and the millions of Americans who have been made demonstrably less safe because of this stupid war. In other words, no one benefits from "victory" except politicians like McCain.

McCain talks as though he has the right to speak for everyone in uniform. Frankly, I don't see why. He is not the only person who suffered during the Vietnam War, not by a long shot. Plenty of Americans had a rougher time of it than McCain, and something like 58,000 never came back at all. That's to say nothing of what the Vietnamese and other southeast Asians endured during that war. From what I've seen, I doubt very many of those incarcerated by the Saigon regime or the U.S. military / C.I.A. during those years are now trotting around the countryside angling for votes. (Most are in unmarked graves or sleeping with the fishes, as they say.) Just this week I ran across an article about how the enormous tonnage of high explosives we dropped on Cambodia in 1965 - 1973 was in fact a gross underestimate - a number now revised upwards to more than 2,756,941 tons. Needless to say, that relentless campaign of terror bombing did not lead to peace and prosperity, nor was it intended to. The same may be said of the conflict in Iraq.

War clearly has its uses. For some.

luv u,

jp