The Belgravia Dispatch: McCain's Debate

June 06, 2007

McCain's Debate

I fully agree with Andrew that this was McCain's night. The moment he differentiated himself from the pack was when he rose to his feet and responded to the woman who lost her brother to the carnage in Iraq (at current death rates, assuming they don't intensify further, we'll have lost over 6,000 soldiers by the time Bush's term ends, just in Iraq alone, so many families are grieving in this nation).

Problem is, despite McCain's courageous life, essential dignity, and basic honesty (I deeply respect him as a man), I believe he's wrong on the key issues facing us with the Iraq War. Which is to say, I believe he's wrong that the surge can succeed (in terms of securing something akin to "victory"), I believe that he's wrong that the (relatively few) foreign jihadists entering Iraq will 'follow us home' if we follow the Baker-Hamilton approach on Iraq, and I believe he would risk conflating Shi'a and Sunni extremism in a manner that would overly risk a conflagration with Iran. Nor am I persuaded he fully appreciates the criticality of restoring an American 'honest broker' role on the Arab-Israeli side of the equation, while having doubts too about the broad contours of a potential McCain policy towards Russia and China.

As for Giuliani, while his impassioned defense of (legal) immigration was heartening (how sad Tancredo's nativism even necessitated such a rebuttal), his foreign policy views are far too crudely simplistic, and I believe he'd be exceedingly dangerous to the foreign policy direction of this country. (Re: Romney, his hugely transparent clutching for the mantle of Reaganesque optimism very much showed. And after his "double Gitmo" comment in the last debate, how can one respect this man who will seemingly say anything he deems convenient at the moment? He's a great salesman, not much more, it would appear).

So, McCain's night, but I'm afraid his overall strategic posture on key foreign policy issues still has me ultimately believing we need to wholly clear out the rot of the neo-conservative excesses by bringing in fresh Democratic national security teams with fewer affiliations to a foreign policy community that has proven recklessly misguided, and perhaps just as important, unrepentantly so. (Knowing that McCain would probably reverse the CIA torture carve-out makes it even harder to not be able to support him, but there it is).

No, neither a Clinton nor an Obama Administration will necessarily solve all our foreign policy headaches, or prove heady exemplars of exceedingly competent statecraft (though a very hands on Secretary of State like Richard Holbrooke could prove a major improvement), but regardless, we need a full-blown re-calibration of our strategy, and one of the leading Democratic candidates will be far better positioned to pursue it. As the ISG said, more politely than the Winograd Commission, the situation we face today in Iraq (and, really, the region) is "grave and detiorating" (but yes, it's really more of a "severe failure", but the ISG was too establishment a group to so declare). The need for comprehensive and serious diplomatic initiatives (not to mention having them pursued non-grudgingly, and sans backroom Abrams/Wurmser/Hannah scuttling), accompanied by a gradual extrication of U.S. forces from what has essentially become a civil war in Iraq, have become the compelling issues we must confront full-bore so as to inject new oxygen, life and direction into American foreign policy, and thereby begin to restore our international position. Unfortunately, McCain doesn't get this, I fear, still believing some classic 'victory' can be secured. This is too serious an error in judgment in my view (though I can see how his years of military service have him hankering for a traditional battlefield triumph), and thus likely disqualifies him for the Presidency, at least in the humble opinion of this blogger.

P.S. I think this bit from Ron Paul at tonight's debate is worth highlighting too:

Congressman Paul, what’s the most pressing moral issue in the United States right now?
REP. PAUL: I think it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war. I do not believe that’s part of the American tradition. We in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or go to aid somebody, but now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity. And now, tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security! I mean, we have to come to our senses about this issue of war and preemption and go back to traditions and our Constitution and defend our liberties and defend our rights, but not to think that we can change the world by force of arms and to start wars. (Applause.)

Posted by Gregory at June 6, 2007 02:25 AM

Comments

I hear Sandy Berger has had some recent professional developments which have rendered him available for hire once more.......

Seriously, I cannot think of an election since I began voting where I had less enthusiasm for casting a ballot.

Posted by: Will Allen at June 6, 2007 03:18 AM | Permalink to this comment

Hard to vote for anyone. I had so much respect and admiration for McCain a few years ago and today I only see a shell of that man. Perhaps the old McCain is hiding deep inside in an effort to get himself elected but it is just to much of a gamble to make this assumption. I don't care much for the democrat candidates either. Looks like I will make a protest vote for Ron Paul in the primaries and take who ever the Demo's put up in the Race.

Posted by: tregen at June 6, 2007 03:51 AM | Permalink to this comment

In political terms McCain scored points on foreign policy and terrorism that he lost on the immigration issue.

Now, personally I think McCain is wrong in the first area and right on the second (with some reservations), and the whole subject is beside the point for me simply because I think he is too old to be President. The Republican voters being appealed to in tonight's forum, though, are agitated about immigration for various reasons, and by and large remain devoted to President Bush and his major cause, the war in Iraq. Strong GOP voters appreciate McCain loyalty to Bush on the issue identified with him, but despite Bush's support of the Senate immigration package the Republican base does not yet identify concepts like "amnesty," illegal immigration and Mexican lepers with him in the way they do with McCain (not unreasonably, since McCain is responsible for much of the Senate bill and Bush appears no more than generally acquainted with its provisions). So McCain is left spinning his wheels, at least for the moment, trying to appeal to Republican voters with an Iraq position similar to the other GOP candidates' while losing ground on an issue that started to arouse the base while the Bush administration had its attention elsewhere.

Posted by: Zathras at June 6, 2007 04:56 AM | Permalink to this comment

To be honest Greg, you were pretty late to the party in realizing Iraq was a mistake & an equally long time before getting really wound up about torture. I think McCain is right, finally the US has a Sec of D worth the name and a general in Iraq with more brains than ego. I do think they should be given a chance, if nothing else you were in favour of what was always a marginal at best adventure into Iraq, I think the least you can do is support the military when they finally have a decent approach.
I'm sure they would love a surge of real size, but the reality is the army has not got the troops, the best that can be done is try & induce enough stability that a relatively peaceful transition can occur & I am with Petraeus, it is to early & I just don't think the transition he's trying to make in strategy will work quickly.
Regarding the terrorists following the troops home comment, you are on the money there, I can't see McCain's credibility being enhanced by that statement.
For all that I disagree with you on McCain's position regarding the Gates/Petraeus strategy in Iraq, you're probably right about it needing a Democratic President to really change things, as much for the symbolism it would send democratically to the rest of the world.
As an aside, I think the current contretemps between Putin/Bush are actually more serious than Iraq, it's got the potential to get very ugly.

Posted by: Nigel at June 6, 2007 11:21 AM | Permalink to this comment

McCain's forthright response to that poor woman is the only sensible one left for people who still support this stupid occupation (please, let's not dignify it by calling it a war).

However, can anybody really believe that the end goal he suggests - a free Iraq - is ever going to happen? What if Iraq becomes a unified, thriving democracy that is also fiercely Arab nationalist, virulently anti-Israel and completely pro-Palestinian? Then would all this sacrifice have been worth it? That's one question I'd like to see asked.

Posted by: odradek at June 6, 2007 01:12 PM | Permalink to this comment

I think that any future Republican administration will hold over many people from the current administration -- it will take a long time to eliminate the Cheneyite neo-con influences from policy-developing positions. They are adept at directing an administration from outside the Oval Office, and managing upwards.

Only a Democratic administration will stand a chance to weed them out of power.

Posted by: Tom at June 6, 2007 01:46 PM | Permalink to this comment

Tom writes: "I think that any future Republican administration will hold over many people from the current administration -- it will take a long time to eliminate the Cheneyite neo-con influences from policy-developing positions. They are adept at directing an administration from outside the Oval Office, and managing upwards. Only a Democratic administration will stand a chance to weed them out of power."

I was trying to relay that very point in the main post, but Tom may have done it better.

Meantime Nigel, I'll grant you I was late on the Iraq issue, but how was I late on the torture issue, if you don't mind?

Posted by: Greg Djerejian at June 6, 2007 02:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

"The moment he differentiated himself from the pack was when he rose to his feet"

Yes, he towered over the other midgets at a strapping 4 ft 6".

He lost me mid 2004 when he started sucking on Bush's kneecaps.

Posted by: Semanticleo at June 6, 2007 03:31 PM | Permalink to this comment

Personally, and regretfully, because I once highly respected the man (now I just respect him, and more for what he did 35 or so years ago) I am not buying his response. It may be a little thing, but his hesitant interjection of the term "straight talk" was about as canned and cheesy as one could get. You could almost hear some spin meister reminding him right as he went on stage 'get the buzz words in John, get the buzz words in'.

And I don't respect the argument that is, essentially, 'others have to die so your brother's death has some meaning'.

Also Greg, I'm much less sanguine than you are regards a Dem (or Rep) in the White House. I don't see anyone, in either party, that is capable of being appointed to any position of power asking the following two questions:

1. Are we a version of a 21st Empire? 2. If yes, is that something we want to, or can, be?

These guys, and one gal, seemed hopelessly lock in a time warp. Its 1945-90 or so. Its not. The world has changed. Dramatically. But not the foreign policy community in the US.

I agree with you regards Paul's answer. Best thing I've heard this campaign season. He will be scorned and ridiculed for it.

Posted by: jonst at June 6, 2007 03:42 PM | Permalink to this comment

As far as Iran "doing no harm to us", well, that is the typical ahistorical nonsense that Paul indulges in, which isn't to say that some of his point does not have value. Paul is a welcome element to this campaign in many ways, but in the area of foreign policy he has his head jammed as firmly into the sand as nearly every other candidate from either party.

Lemme know when a candidate stands up and says that the U.S. is going to have a vital interest, for least a few more decades, in seeing that Persian Gul oil is sold on the world market in an orderly and uninterrupted fashion, and that means that all nonsense about not meddling in the internal politics of the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East is just that, nonsense. Lemme know when a candidate explicitly states that in order to end the vital nature of the orderly and uninterrupted sale of Persian Gulf oil on the world market, and thus make it possible for the United States to not meddle in Persian Gulf politics, the American voter is going to have to pay a helluva lot more to get 300 miles worth of transportation. Until then, everybody may as well be watching Entertainment Tonight or Sportscenter. Blah, blah, blah.

I'd never thought I'd say it, but I wish Al Gore was on t.v. more. Of course, if he really thought he had a chance again to be President, he probably would be speaking in a manner that would end that wish.

Posted by: Will Allen at June 6, 2007 04:26 PM | Permalink to this comment

I don't think Ron Paul has a prayer of getting anywhere near the nomination, but it is nice that his ideas are getting some positive attention and that people are beginning to realize that he's not a nutjob just because he doesn't sound like every other political hack out there. Is he right about everything? No. Do I agree with everything he says? No. But he's now more of a traditional Republican (like old school Republican) than any other pol in D.C. The reason people feel free to dismiss him as a crank is because he actually seems to have principles. He doesn't appear to be beholden to the Jesus freak wing of the party, and that makes him more fit to lead than everyone else up there on that stage, including McCain. Paul voted against the PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. It's always bugged me that other politicians can say things like "gay marriage threatens all marriage" or "the Internet is a series of tubes" and still be considered rational, but Paul says we should reduce the size of the enormous federal government and limit its power, and HE'S the nutjob. Again, I don't agree with everything he says or every vote he's cast, but compared to what we've got now, he looks like a freakin' genius. A low bar, for sure, but a step in the right direction, as opposed to the full-out run towards insanity that is the Bush administration and now, the Republican party.

Posted by: LL at June 6, 2007 05:45 PM | Permalink to this comment

LL:

Ron Paul isn't a nutjob because he sounds different than every other candidate out there. He's a nutjob because many of his positions on foreign policy are, well, nuts. Check this position statement from his campaign website:

So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.
The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor”s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned.

The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws, yet we still face trade wars. Today, France is threatening to have U.S. goods taxed throughout Europe. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs.

NAFTA”s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme.

And a free America, with limited, constitutional government, would be gone forever.

Let’s not forget the UN. It wants to impose a direct tax on us. I successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to tax us, we will need leadership from the White House.

We must withdraw from any organizations and trade deals that infringe upon the freedom and independence of the United States of America.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at June 6, 2007 06:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Hey Will,, leaving aside the hostage situation, which is a murky issue, what harm has Iran done to our nation? In so far as "harm" is defined as something worthy of being a provocation for military action?

Posted by: jonst at June 6, 2007 06:46 PM | Permalink to this comment

"I fully agree with Andrew that this was McCain's night."

Need I quote Warhol?

Sad to say, but McCain has become the GOP's Icarus; rarely has a favored politico fallen so quickly to the ground, once the election heat enveloped him.

In '04 he soared majestically, capturing dim but crucial echoes of the Reagan Right while still holding onto his maverick badge that had long won him the centre-moderates' applause. Also, he held an episodic dalliance with the independents and likely held the esteem of the Jacksonian (ah, Scoop) left that, in some now-parallel universe, once understood the words "pay any price, bear any burden."

Then Iraq came and all hell broke loose. In contemplating and discussing the topic, maybe McCain wrestles with his pow flashbacks, wherein the liminal darkness of men stood daily before him, and which now won't let go. I can only imagine that isolation and fear long known must never exit the psyche.

Can we tell him that his haunted past, whatever its affirmed merit, is distant from those ghosts that inhabit Iraq and that he sees with his jittery third eye? Maybe Greg can email him and let him know that today's enemy in Iraq wears a much different kind of face.

Much of it looks too much like us.

-resh

Posted by: reshufflex at June 6, 2007 09:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

Jonst, is that a kind of "Other than that, howd'ja' like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" question?

In any case, there is considerable evidence to suggest that there was Iranian participation in the Khobar Towers attack.

Posted by: Will Allen at June 6, 2007 09:27 PM | Permalink to this comment

RE Appalled Moderate: Eh, whaddya want? He represents Texas (though he wasn't born here). Compared to the other nutjobs from down here, he does indeed look sane. Hatred of the UN is one of the prices of admission into the Republican party now. If this is the most damning evidence of his nutjobbery, I'd say he still looks pretty good. Doesn't matter much to me, anyway. I don't vote in the Republican primaries, because I'm not a Republican. El Busho makes Ron Paul look like a foreign policy genius. Paul's position statement from his campaign website sounds a lot like the crap you'd read on any other campaign website.

Posted by: LL at June 6, 2007 11:31 PM | Permalink to this comment

In any case, there is considerable evidence to suggest that there was Iranian participation in the Khobar Towers attack.

All too true. Of course, there's heaps of evidence that the US engineered the overthrow of Mossadegh, propped up the Shah and his brutal Savak, gave substantial assistance to Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war and shot down an Iranian civilian airliner causing the deaths of nearly 300 people, including 66 children. But, hey, who's counting.

Lemme know when a US politician has the guts to stand up and say 'a wog by any other name is just a wog'.

Posted by: odradek at June 6, 2007 11:40 PM | Permalink to this comment

RE "Paul's position statement from his campaign website sounds a lot like the crap you'd read on any other campaign website."

Meaning, with hyperbole about American sovereignty, yadda yadda yadda. I said I didn't agree with everything, I just said that Ron Paul is not a nutjob.

Saying we shouldn't invade Iran because they haven't done anything to us isn't a crazy person talking. A crazy person would say something like "I am the government" (Tom DeLay) or "Lesbianism is so rampant in the high schools down here that they won't let the girls go to the restroom together" (paraphrasing Tom Coburn) or "Bernie Kerik should run Homeland Security" (Giuliani) or "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything" (Rick Santorum). So if Paul wants to rant about the UN, fine by me, as long as he doesn't want to waste the government's time making life more difficult for all the homosexuals or getting his criminal friends cushy government jobs.

Posted by: LL at June 6, 2007 11:45 PM | Permalink to this comment

odradek, I don't remember making any claims regarding U.S. actions, and it is awfully nice to have such perfect hindsight in order to tell when it was a good idea to counter possible Stalinist footholds, and when it was a bad idea. In any case, my point was only that it would be preferable if politicians didn't make nonsensical remarks at odds with historical events.

Posted by: Will Allen at June 7, 2007 01:21 AM | Permalink to this comment

. . . it is awfully nice to have such perfect hindsight in order to tell when it was a good idea to counter possible Stalinist footholds, and when it was a bad idea.

When it involves overthrowing a promising democratic development in favor of a murderous dictator, it might be a bad idea.

Posted by: David Tomlin at June 7, 2007 04:58 AM | Permalink to this comment

The more the GOP candidates talk, the more they sound completely insane. Paul's the only one who doesn't sound crazy - at least, in comparison to the rest. All they talk about is God and Fear (fear of terrorists, of immigrants, of sex.)

I just can't get over how much the GOP has self-destructed. It just gobsmacks me that those proudly ignorant, desperately pandering, fear-obsessed flopsweats in business suits are what the GOP is offering for its vision of the future.

Posted by: CaseyL at June 7, 2007 05:04 AM | Permalink to this comment

Hey, David? Let me know when you are tasked with the responsibility of managing the foreign policy of one of the world's two superpowers, in the recent wake of the largest conflict in world history, when the oither remaining superpower has a recent history of ruthless, titanic, murderous violence that is nearly unparalleled, and a longstanding goal of gaining control of warm water port, and such a warm water port exists in a country contiguous to that superpower, in a region where it is becoming clear that largest reserves of the world's most important mineral resource exist. Once you've done that, we'll see how well you stack up against that idiot Eisenhower.

Gosh, if only you had been in charge!

Posted by: Will Allen at June 7, 2007 05:43 AM | Permalink to this comment

LL et al:

Paul's paranoia about NAFTA and the WTO outdoes Bush by a factor of 10. I like the quote Greg exceprted -- I wish GOP candidates actually thought about first principles from time to time -- but even the lunatics have moments of rationality and eloquence.

Actually, a candidate's website is not where you usually find wierd stuff. It's where you find position papers that read like every other candidate's position papers. Paul's willingness to have such views attributed to him is not a good thing.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at June 7, 2007 02:13 PM | Permalink to this comment

K, fine, we'll have to agree to disagree on the extent of Paul's lunacy. I guess the last 15 years or so of Republican "leadership" have lowered my expectations as to the sanity of their candidates. When one of them DOESN'T yap endlessly about homos and abortion and Jesus and evolution, my reaction is, "Wow, what a breath of fresh air this guy is, he hasn't caught the crazy from the rest of them yet." I'll have to abandon my limited admiration for him when Peggy Noonan coughs up a column saluting his manliness and comparing him to Reagan.

Posted by: LL at June 7, 2007 04:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

Will,

You are correct. Since it is you I'm addressing I should have striven to be more precise. What harm has Iran caused us that would subject them to threat of a tactical nuclear attack ? And please don't respond with 'maybe they bombed the Khobar Towers' or some such thing. We are talking about men who are talking about a premeditated attack with nuclear weapons.

Posted by: jonst at June 7, 2007 05:33 PM | Permalink to this comment

Well, I can think of extremely few scenarios where a tactical nuclear attack would make sense, and no likely scenarios. My only objection was to people who run for President, then get on t.v., and say stupid things like Iran never having harmed the United States.

Gee, I wonder why I don't watch candidate debates? Perhaps because one's i.q. can be reduced by 20% with each exposure?

Posted by: Will Allen at June 7, 2007 07:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

Mr. Allen: Eisenhower made exactly the same mistake in Guatemala that he made in Iran. They're relatively forgivable mistakes, even given their horrendous consequences -- after all, both of them happened within a year of Stalin's death, at a time when we had no idea that his successors were going to soften their agressiveness even slightly -- but they were mistakes (and Dean Acheson had talked Truman out of committing exactly the same one in Guatamala earlier). Propping up pro-American dictators against less pro-American democrats has blown up in our faces in even the moderately long run with monotonous regularity.

Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at June 9, 2007 10:54 PM | Permalink to this comment

In that connection, by the way, the Ayatollah Khomeini detested Mossadegh at the time because he was (naturally) too secular.

Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at June 9, 2007 10:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

And as for Paul's general argument: He may have overemphasized the case that Iran has "done no harm to us directly", and he may also have overemphasized the argument that preeemptive war is ALWAYS a bad thing (one need only remember the Six-Day War) -- but when he denounces the tendency of the rest of the GOP field to talk downright EAGERLY about a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran, as though their fingers were itching for the Button, he's a lot closer to the correct position on one side than they are on the other. Granted, of course, that as soon as any of these characters actually gets the nomination (let alone wins the election), they're likely to trim back their Gen. Jack D. Ripper rhetoric sharply. But it can still do a considerable amount of unnecessary harm to our soft power right now.

Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at June 9, 2007 11:04 PM | Permalink to this comment

Mossadeq wasn't a democrat, he was a populist authoritarian.

Posted by: MlR at June 11, 2007 04:39 PM | Permalink to this comment