John McCain: Foreign Policy Expert

So, Sen. McCain and VP Cheney traveled to Iraq this past weekend for a photo-op discussion with Iraqi leaders about a permanent military presence the state of that country after 5 years of war (both had to be sneaked in secretly, unlike their friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was given the red-carpet treatment last month). Many will remember McCain's now infamous 2007 trip to Iraq, in which he bragged that his stroll through a Baghdad marketplace proved the country was safe again... until it was revealed he was accompanied by "100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead". This time around? They couldn't even visit the market at all; it just was too dangerous.

But now with McCain's unwavering support for this war-- and other wars-- and his denunciation of the mere mention of an exit strategy as 'surrender', the LA Times takes a look back and notices that McCain used to be more pragmatic and realistic on foreign policy. Let's journey through the progression of John McCain, foreign policy expert-

The presumptive GOP nominee for president, McCain -- who leads a congressional delegation to Europe and the Middle East this week -- has adopted a surprising diversity of views on foreign policy issues during his 25 years in Congress. It is a pattern that brings uncertainty to the path he would take if elected...

...In 1983, McCain voted against a bill to extend Reagan's deployment of U.S. troops there. Reagan wanted more time to strengthen the fragile Lebanese government, but McCain worried that the American force was too small and that U.S. interests did not justify the risk.

In a similar vein, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, McCain initially wanted to limit the response to an air war.

"To start putting American troops into that kind of meat grinder I just don't think is a viable option," McCain said in a televised interview at the time. But he quickly changed his view, voting five months later to join an international effort to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

Three years later, after 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in an ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia, McCain decided that it was time to force a withdrawal of the troops, and he introduced an amendment to cut off funds. He wrote later that he regretted the step as an encroachment on the president's power and "as a retreat in the face of aggression from an inferior foe."

In 1993, McCain opposed the U.S. military intervention in Haiti. Like then- President Clinton, he initially was reluctant to intervene in Bosnia in 1993 and 1994. After the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, McCain supported the administration's plan to send U.S. peacekeepers into the region, with some reservations.

Growing bolder in his advocacy of U.S. deployments, McCain in 1999 favored American use of force -- even ground troops -- to halt the "ethnic cleansing" of ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo.

McCain was moving closer to the muscular interventionism advanced by analysts like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, friends and advisors who are generally considered neoconservatives. McCain began giving greater emphasis to the idea that the United States needed to assert itself abroad to promote its values, not just narrower national interests...

Contrary to the beginning, there seems to be no uncertainty here. The pattern is clear... the longer McCain has been in office, the more willing he has become to go home with any war that comes along and buys him a drink. He used to have standards (as did his travel buddy, Dick Cheney, once upon a time).

Asserting U.S. toughness, and securing U.S. business interests by force (a disturbing concept), is now reason enough for him to drop some bombs and/or occupy any country we want. Don't like it? Then you're a pussy. Sounds like we need to sic Jon Stewart on McCain again.

For the record, here is video of McCain in 1994 being a pussy explaining the need for withdrawal from Haiti-



Yes, I realize that 9/11 changed everything, but mostly by making these people much stupider.

[UPDATE: Need more proof that McCain knows nothing about foreign policy? Read what he said just today about Iran, Iraq, and al-Qaeda. This war is his main sales pitch and he's so ignorant of the basic facts, that Joe Lieberman had to whisper in his ear and correct him while reporters were watching. This is not a man any sane person would trust to be Commander-in-Chief.]