"Well, they would impeach a president that would run out, wouldn't they? ...I haven't got the nerve to do it, and I don't see any other way out of it," Johnson said.
"It doesn't make sense to do it," Russell said. "It's one of these things where heads I win, tails you lose."
One can argue long and hard about the roots of the Iraq War, but in the end one must tease out a set of realist compulsions (centrally concerned with the restoration of American credibility and American deterrent power) and idealist aspirations (shaped around the so-called Democratic Domino effect). The realist case was well summarized, once again, by Henry Kissinger, who, when asked by a Bush speechwriter why he supported the Iraq War, replied: "Because Afghanistan wasn't enough." In the conflict with radical Islam, he went on, "They want to humiliate us and we have to humiliate them." The Iraq war was essential in order to make the point that "we're not going to live in the world that they want for us."
Ron Suskind, in his fine book The One Percent Doctrine, puts what is essentially the same point in "geostrategic" terms, reporting that, in meetings of the National Security Council in the months after the 9/11 attacks, the main concern "was to make an example of [Saddam] Hussein, to create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States."
Set alongside this was the "democratic tsunami" that was to follow the shock-and-awe triumph over Saddam. It would sweep through the Middle East from Iraq to Iran and thence to Syria and Palestine. ("The road to Jerusalem" -- so ran the neoconservative gospel at the time -- "runs through Baghdad.")
Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.
Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”
For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?
Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.
Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson's troops invaded Spanish Florida.
From 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west. The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons. They wanted to appease the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment.
Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war.
--Sen. John McCain, March 26, 2008
Uh huh.