John McCain and Lindsay Graham
On the Mad Mutterings of Murderous Old Men
True to his campaign promises, Donald Trump is proving “unpredictable” in foreign relations; especially in the deployment of US armed forces. The covert movement of troops into the Mid-East region and the sudden attack on Syria, which contradicts other often stated positions by Trump decrying US military intervention in that country and the Middle-East generally, is the essence of unpredictability.
From the outset these actions seemed unconnected to any stated policy or discernable strategy. Now we have been told by Donnie’s Son Eric that his father decided to bomb Syria after daddy’s girl Ivanka expressed her outrage at Assad. The fact that this attack may have been ordered up by a clueless Barbie from the rag trade is shocking! It leaves no doubt that the attack on Syria was an impulsive action whose consequences were not thought through, and thus it could well turn out to be a fool’s errand.
Nevertheless, Trumps assault on Syria is being enthusiastically applauded on both sides of the aisle. The leading ladies of the Democratic Party – Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi – who normally find The Donald unfit for polite company, were dancing in the alise over Donnie’s demonstration of his manly prowess by going upside Assad’s head with a missile smack down.
Yet none of this hoopla has been more enthusiastic than the ringing endorsement from those two pillars of the Senate Republican establishment: John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both former military officers. As the Senators from Arizona and South Carolina they represent gun totin constituencies for whom military conflict represents a kind of pornography that beguiles them the way sexual pornography bewitches the sex fiend. These people seem bored with even the possibility of a protracted peace.
Right after the bombing of a Syrian airfield was made public the two Senators released a public statement clearly stating their support. It begins with the declaration “We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonight’s strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin’s Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs”
To the careful observer there is much to be alarmed about in this paragraph, especially the passage praising Trump for sending “an important message” that “The United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin’s Russia” slaughters the Syrian people. The obvious question is what do they mean by this? Is it all blow and no go; or does this signal a radical change of policy where the US will now take on an active military role in the Syrian Civil War?
While what Trump is thinking on the matter remains a deep mystery, since he has chosen to be unpredictable, the Senators are clear on what direction they think American policy in Syria should take.
“Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. Building on tonight’s credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria. The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assad’s air force—which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people—completely out of the fight.”
Reading this, the thoughtful observer of international relations and the laws that govern them, is forced to wonder by what rights does the US justify such acts of war against a nation that has committed no act of aggression against the US? From all appearances one gets the impression that this would be a divinely ordained mission in which God has chosen America to set things aright. This will be the second time a Republican President has decided to attack a Muslim country that has done us no harm, and there is abundant reason to believe that the conflict in Syria could turn out to be worse mess than Iraq, in terms of further inflaming and destabilizing the Middle-East by stimulating the militant jihadist movement.
Hence an expanding American military involvement in Syria could prove a bottomless sinkhole for American blood and treasure. Yet despite their admonition that we should “learn from the lessons of history,” based on their policy proposals they appear to be ignoring them. For instance, they propose that the US government “must also bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establish safe zones to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. As we do, we can and must continue the campaign to achieve ISIS’s lasting defeat.”
While this may sound good, these proposals are not supported by the lessons of US history in the Middle East. Since John McCain has long advocated arming something called “The Free Syrian Army” – a motley collection of Syrians that oppose the Assad regime, and could well contain as many potential villains as heroes – we can reasonably assume that is what they are alluding to when they say we “must bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition.”
Yet if there is any lasting lesson history teaches us about intervening in Middle-East conflicts, it is that there is no reliable method of “vetting” forces engaged in these armed conflicts. And that is because we are interlopers widely despised by militants from all sides. Look at what happened in Afghanistan, where we armed and trained both the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their fight against Russia, only to end up with them using those weapons and training against us. It was from this very country that the devastating 9/11 attack was organized and launched!
Furthermore, the attack was ordered by a Osama bin Laden, a rich Saudi Arabian civil engineer who was trained in terrorist tactics by the CIA, and carried out by citizens of Saudi Arabi and Egypt, America’s closest “allies” in the Arab world. And the weapons that ISIS – which was created by the ill-fated and unnecessary American invasion of Iraq – uses to wreak havoc were originally given to “friendly forces” of the Iraqi government. While these truths should be self-evident to any reasonably intelligent person who has been paying attention, it escapes members of Congress from both parties.
John Delaney, a democratic Congressman from Maryland, is a poignant example of this refusal to learn the lessons that history can teach us. In an interview on MSNBC on Saturday morning he was asked about the statement by Tulsi Gabbard – a Congresswoman from Hawaii and former combat officer in Afghanistan – warning that expanded American military involvement in Syria could lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia. To my shock and dismay, Congressman Delaney argued that establishing American “leadership” in the Syrian quagmire is worth the risk of a military conflict with Russia.
Amaingly, this kind of jingoistic nonsense has been echoed throughout the broadcast press,with FOX “News” being the worst. Listening to the fawning fiddle faddle of their commentators creaming in their jeans over Donnie’s derring-doo in Syria, I am reminded that the ranks of American journalism are to be found saints and charlatans. However my response is that either this Congressman is a madman obsessed with the dangerous delusion of “American Exceptionalism,” or an ignoramus with no real understanding of the danger a nuclear war with Russia poses to the survival of mankind. Nothing that could happen in Syria would justify a war with Russia!
Since Delaney is balding, I suspect that he came of age at the apex of the American empire; which after the fall of the Russian Communist Party, the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pack – a military alliance among communist countries that served as a counter weight to NATO – resembled something akin to a Pax-America, where the US was the sole super power in a unipolar world. This kind of thinking reflects a 21st century version of what the late Senator William Fulbright aptly called “The Arrogance of Power.”
It is a view of the world largely promulgated by deluded old heads like McCain, Lindsay and Trump: intellectually pugnacious Geezers gone wild that could get us all killed as we follow their lead into a mass grave. Which will be a short walk if Trump heeds Lindsay Graham’s advice to set up a no-fly one in Syria and if Russian planes fly into that space we should “shoot them down!”
Alas, giving a clueless, megalomaniacal, pugnacious, impulsive old man like Trump the idea that it is okay for him to attack other countries that have committed no offense against us, and pushing him to become more aggressive against a nuclear superpower like Russia, is the first step down that dangerous road to doomsday.
This is where we are headed….
……If we don’t change course
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Playthell G. Benjamin
Harlem, New York
April 8, 2017
General Clark is Right about McCain
Posted in On Foreign Affairs, On John McCain, Playthell on politics with tags Clark, Commentaries, John McCain, Old Fool, Playthell, Unqualified, wesley on November 25, 2008 by playthellA Deluded Old Fool or a Willful Charlatan?
John McCain is not qualified to be Commander-In-Chief
Now that the Democratic and Republican conventions are over, with the general election soon to follow, Barack Obama is steadily losing ground to John McCain; his once commanding lead has dwindled down to the point where they are in a dead heat! Should the junior Senator from Illinois lose this historic contest for the presidency, the historical record will show that the main cause of his defeat – aside from whatever role race plays in the outcome – was his ill advised decision to repudiate General Wesley Clark’s candid evaluation of the bogus claim made by the McCain camp, and mindlessly echoed in the media, that Senator McCain’s military experience better qualifies him for the role of Commander-In-Chief.
It is a point of view that persists in spite of McCain’s myriad factual blunders, at home and abroad, and his transparently flawed analysis of the progress of the war in Iraq, dangerous saber rattling and verbal provocations directed at the powerful Russian bear! The seriousness of the threat to Barack’s chances of occupying the White House because of McCain’s claim that his military experience better suits him to direct the fate of the nation in war time is verified by the numbers.
Recent polls that found 53% of all Americans believe that the nation would be safer if John McCain was in the white house. Hence Barack’s chastisement of the General is bad strategy on several counts. First, General Clark is not only right about McCain – as the Senator’s speech on foreign affairs and national security on 7/15 /08, along with his recent statements on the military crisis in Georgia and the protracted insurgency in Iraq clearly demonstrates – but Barack desperately needs the General to make this point and defuse what is a definite advantage for McCain in the mind of the electorate.
Secondly, by rejecting General Clark’s analysis Barack comes across as spineless and wishy washy to many of the people who have supported him from the git go – like this writer for instance! Bill Mhar, host of Politically Incorrect – also pointed this out in a recent interview with Larry King. Barack has been poorly served by the Nervous Nellies among his advisors in this instance; for it is an axiom of political practice that you do not sacrifice a bird in the hand for the bird in the bush.
In other words, in his attempt to win Republican leaning or so-called “undecided voters,” Barrack could lose the support of many people in groups like Move On and other anti-war activists. What the Illinois Senator should have said is “General Clark is far better qualified to make an assessment of the qualifications of a junior officer than me. But I remind you that it is senator McCain who has made his military record an issue in this election.” And then he should have remained mum on the issue and let the general do his thing!
Instead, the silly and transparently opportunistic apologia offered up by Barack gave credibility to the bogus charge made by the hero worshiping chicken hawks in talk radio and the Fox News crowd – who are cut from the same mould – that have purposely misrepresented the general’s remarks as an attack on McCain’s military record. It was no such thing, and Barack should have shown a little balls and said so!
By his refusal to support General Clarke’s attack on the McCain myth Barack enabled McCain to shamelessly exploit his military service to great political advantage during his acceptance speech, which was televised to a captive audience around the world. If Barack had supported the General, McCain would have looked like a rank opportunist – assuming he had the nerve to go through with that charade at all.
This way Barack would have slaughtered two turkeys with one swing: nullify McCain’s military myth, and also come across as a man who is willing to stand on principle even when the political waters get a little rough. Alas, his choice make him look like a spineless pooty-pop whose allegiance is dictated by expedience. Not good.
What makes Barack’s position so indefensible to those of us who know better is that General Wesley Clark is clearly right in his assessment of McCain. A Four Star General who graduated first in his class at West Point and also holds a Doctorate in politics and Philosophy from Oxford, Clarke was the Commander of NATO forces during the Bosnian war, a military action I supported and wrote a 3,000 word commentary titled “Bombs Away!” explaining my position on the conflict.
General Wesley Clark
The Real Deal!
He also has a chest full of battle ribbons and medals. Who is Barack Obama to contradict his assessment of McCain anyway? To this ex-soldier he looks more than silly, he is ridiculous, especially since Barack desperately needs General Clark to offer this critique of McCain’s claims precisely because he has no credibility in military matters – not that this is a requirement for a Commander-In-Chief.
Although military experience is not a requirement for a President – that’s why we have a professional military establishment – too many Americans know too little about the Constitutional requirement that the Commander-In-Chief be a civilian, and they understand even less about the thinking that underlie that decision. Hence they believe that McCain’s military experience makes him a superior thinker on matters of national security and foreign policy.
The fact that most Americans are, as Harold Cruse thoughtfully pointed out in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, “anti-historical and anti-intellectual” means that few citizens recognize the fact that our two greatest war time presidents – Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt – had no military experience just like Barack!
Yet these Presidents led the nation through perilous times when our national existence was at stake. If the Illinois Senator had shown a little spunk and stood on truth and principle instead of wimping out and running for cover, he could have used the occasion to teach Americans what the architects of the Constitution intended when they placed the nation’s armed forces under the command of a civilian.
After all, he is a former professor of constitutional law and is well versed about the intentions of the founding Fathers on this issue. Hence he should once again turn the nation into a vast classroom without walls and instruct us on the intent of the framers of the Constitution in setting up the chain of command with a civilian in charge the same way he enlightened the nation on the issue of race in American history.
Alas he chose instead to take the path of least resistance, and has remained mum on this all-important issue while John McCain is slowly whipping his ass in the polls, where he is slowly but surely wiping out Obama’s lead! If Barack wants to play “Nobel Othello” while McCain increasingly plays treacherous Iyago and systematically poisons his name, Barack will go down in flames. And if the Obama camp didn’t understand this before, they certainly should see it now after the way McCain used his military experience at the convention.
General Clarke was simply setting the record straight about McCain’s grandiose claims. This becomes abundantly clear if we carefully consider what the general actually said. Speaking on the venerable CBS news and public affairs program Face The Nation, which airs on Sunday mornings, Clark’s remarks in no way disparaged Senator McCain’s military service. If that were his goal he could have pointed out that by McCain’s own admission he sang like a canary when he was captured by Vietnamese soldiers after he was shot down.
The Unified Code of Military Justice, which is the law that governs the actions of members of the US armed forces, states that when captured by the enemy American military personnel are to give their name, rank and serial number. That’s all folks! John McCain however gave his captors a lot more than that. He told them the number of planes in his squadron, and even the coordinates of their bombing targets!
Thus McCain could have been brought up on charges, court marshaled, and dishonorably discharged: would anybody have called him “a hero” then? Just asking. But the general was mum on these embarrassing issues; which is compelling evidence that his intention was not to besmirch McCain’s “heroism.”
General Clark’s remarks specifically addressed the question of whether John McCain’s military experience gave him special qualifications to be president. And his answer was a resounding no! But he took great care in acknowledging the senator’s military service in his critique of McCain’s pretensions to the Oval Office. “I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.”
This was manna from heaven for Barack, because he desperately needed somebody above McCain’s rank and pay grade to deflate his claim that Barack was unfit to be president because his lack of military experience meant that the nation would be gambling with our survival. This is McCain’s strongest argument for his pretentions to the Oval Office, but it is a bogus claim that is not supported by history, as the presidential historians constantly point out.
Yet even as Jon Soltz, an Iraq Veteran and Chairman of the anti-war organization VoteVets.org, and Lt. General Robert Gard Jr. rushed to Clark’s defense, Barack ducked his head in the sand instead of standing up like a man. Somebody needs to tell him that this strategy is a mistake, and if he continues down that winding road he will lose this historic election.
As the controversy around General Clark’s completely reasonable and accurate remarks raged, fueled by rightwing blowhards like that lying fat dope fiend Rush Limbaugh – who always reminds me of Porky Pig – and that greasy headed opportunist Sean Hannity, the General went on television with Dan Abrahams, who along with Keith Oberman and Chris Matthews is one of the fairest and wisest voices in the commercial media, and clarified his views. Accustomed to maintaining his cool under real fire, the General was unfazed by the hysterical misrepresentations of his views repeated ad nauseum by the air head idiocracy on the right like a Greek chorus.
“There are many important issues in this Presidential election,” the General said, “clearly one of the most important issues is national security and keeping the American people safe. In my opinion, protecting the American people is the most important duty of our next President. I have made comments in the past about John McCain’s service and I want to reiterate them in order be crystal clear. As I have said before I honor John McCain’s service as a prisoner of war and a Vietnam Veteran. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. I would never dishonor the service of someone who chose to wear the uniform for our nation.”
But he went on to point out: “”John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country – but it doesn’t include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions. And in this area his judgment has been flawed – he not only supported going into a war we didn’t have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America. But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn’t have sound judgment when it comes to our nation’s most critical issues.” What was Barack apologizing for? This is a completely accurate statement!
Then, in spite of Barack’s cowardice in throwing him under the bus when he sought to lend him a much needed helping hand – as all the polls regarding whom Americans trust to protect the security of the nation show – the general reiterated his support for Barack’s candidacy for President.
“”I honor John McCain’s character…he’s been on of my heroes for a long time. He’s been over to my house. This is about the qualifications to be president. It is also about the nature of politics today that a comment can be taken out of context so much to create a hullaboo… I think anybody who serves in uniform who serves their country in wartime and has gone through the hardships like John McCain should be honored for their character and courage,” said Clark.
“I think people look for character and courage in their president,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ have to have been at war to have shown character and courage. I think you can see that in other candidates. I think you can see that in Barack Obama’s life.”
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Playthell G, Benjamin
November 2008
Harlem, New York
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