John McCain: Military Expert (Pt. II)

Both Sens. McCain and Clinton-- as part of their strategy to sound exactly the same in how they take on Obama-- are playing the 'Commander-in-Chief' card on the campaign trail. This issue came up in last night's debate. This disturbs me because it perpetuates the Bush-era mindset that we're electing a Commander-in-Chief who also happens to be the President, when it's supposed to be the other way around.

Sen. McCain, earlier this week, ripped into Obama's "naïve" foreign policy worldview-

In Ohio, Mr. McCain sharpened his attacks on Mr. Obama, accusing him of wanting to bomb Pakistan and of announcing it ahead of time to the rest of the world.

"That's naïve," Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Columbus. "The first thing that you do is you make your plans and you carry out your operations as necessary for America's national security interests. You don't broadcast that you are going to bomb a country that is a sovereign nation."

Yes, that's John 'Bomb Bomb Iran' McCain, the official candidate of the neoconservative movement, lecturing Sen. Obama for considering the possible use of military force. Oh, and he also wants you to know that you're making too much of his '100 years in Iraq' comments, and seriously please stop mentioning it.

Glenn Greenwald compiles numerous McCain statements on military force-- agitating for war against Iraq in 2002; agitating for war against Iran now-- to put the punctuation mark on this. Greenwald concludes-

"Among the Serious foreign policy analysts -- as well as in John McCain's uniquely war-loving mind -- it's perfectly permissible for the U.S. to threaten, bomb and invade any Arab or Muslim country that strikes our fancy, except for the one that is actually harboring those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. ... The 9/11 attacks justify every conceivable American military action except for ones aimed at the people who actually did it."

Bingo. The neocons have long made clear that they don't really care about terrorism... it's just an excuse to engage in the wars they've long sought. Neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer blew off Afghanistan last year as "a geographically marginal backwater" while defending our occupation of Iraq, because "its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region." Take that, terrorism!

And it's important to clarify what Obama actually said about Pakistan. He never said he would invade Pakistan, never said he'd overthrow its government, never said he'd shock and awe the place with bombing campaigns, etc. What he said was that if-- in the very specific circumstance-- we had actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or other top al Qaeda officials, we would use targeted military strikes to take them out. Which, unless I'm mistaken, is existing U.S. policy anyway. The sticking point seems to be that he said he'd do so even if President Musharraf-- who's on thin political ice now anyway-- disagreed (Bush response: when it's a dictator I like, yes we need a permission slip). It was clear that he means this as a last resort, in a very specific case. And after years of a celebrated war culture in America, now that is going too far?

A later Obama statement on Pakistan-- responding to a question by stating he would never use nuclear weapons to take out terrorist bases-- was also lambasted as a 'gaffe' (?!) by the Clinton campaign and the media. Yikes.

So let's review, shall we? Going after the al Qaeda terrorists we are supposed to fear so much = Bad. Invading and occupying sovereign nations and threatening to use nuclear weapons against tiny nations = Serious foreign policy. Okay, I'm really glad that we cleared that up.