Who died and made Neocon war monger John McCain King of America? For someone who has no influence outside of the Beltway media villagers who still think he has something relevant to say — he does not — “Surge” McCain sure as hell has been making a lot of demands.
On Thursday, “Surge” McCain called for the wholesale resignation of president Obama’s national security team, and said to bring back the Bush team, in particular, “Saint” David Petraeus for whom McCain has a serious man-crush. McCain: Obama’s entire national security team should resign over Iraq.
Friday morning, Arizona’s angry old man was having a hissy fit with the hosts of Morning Joe when they pressed him on his definition of “victory,” i.e., occupation of Iraq in perpetuity. McCain gets testy on ‘Morning Joe’.
Later in the day, “Surge” McCain called on Secretary of State John Kerry to resign. McCain: Kerry should step down.
You know who needs to resign? This Neocon war monger who has blood on his hands for his role in lying this country into an unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq in pursuit of his Neocon wet dream of a Pax Americana Empire.
Steve Benen writes in ‘I’m sorry about your confusion’:
As matters of foreign policy and national security reclaim center stage, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has struggled badly, offering assessments that have been contradictory, incoherent, and occasionally both. The Republican senator has been far more invested in appearing in front of cameras than getting his facts straight.
* * *
What we’re left with is a fairly ridiculous dynamic. A discredited senator is strutting like a peacock, convinced of his own credibility despite horrific and deadly failures. Even now, John McCain is certain that he’s been right all along and only a fool would ignore his sound advice.
* * *
[McCain] made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.
What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.
Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.
He takes no responsibility for any of this.
* * *
The last few days have had a through-the-looking-glass quality. Those who helped create a nightmare scenario in Iraq are lecturing us – obnoxiously, without shame or humility – about what to do in Iraq. Because memories are short, and the Beltway is wired to assume discredited conservatives know what they’re talking about when it comes to foreign policy and national security, few stop to say, “Wait, this debate is headed in a blisteringly stupid direction.”
But if we pause to appreciate recent history, and we hold onto the belief that accountability still means something, then we will remember whose judgment still has value – and whose doesn’t.
I have used Oliver Cromwell’s dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653 with reference to John McCain many times: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
McCain, wrong on just about every foreign policy matter he has ever mentioned. Carpetbagging old coot who thinks bombing every country and group from Venezuela to Iraq to Somalia to Iran to Syria solves all problems. Then he criticizes Obama on the simple question of: How does bombing “X”(pick a country), advance America interests and assist in problem solving?
I absolutely agree with every colorful point addressed in this well written story or oped.
It can hardly be an oped when every bit of it is verifiably true.
What a conundrum. On one hand we have a full blown case of advanced neocon rabies manifested in a certifiable demented physcopath, who on the other hand keeps getting re – elected in his state which enables him to carry out this continuous assault on the senses and well being of saner rabies free Americans.
You know, it’s been quite a long time now, but I admit I had a grudging 60/40 favorable opinion of this feverishly demented demonic cyborg soldier serving his warlords of darkness thru perpetual wars of aggression which sees no limits, knows no bounds. I wouldn’t have voted for him in ’08 but I thought he had a few, a few, redeemable qualities (by the way John, THANKS ALOT for Sarah Barracuda). The last 5-6 yrs I consider McCain a total liability and a mortal enemy of the “people”.
McCain can go to hell, the sooner the better. Let’s hope that the political landscape becomes littered with scores of fired Dickweeds like the Un American Eric Cantor as a sign the voters are waking up before it’s too late. I want to believe.
I heard him described as POTSTS (President of the Sunday Talk Shows, or something to that effect.
I think the only people that pay attention to those shows any more are the same beltway people that pay attention to Politico.
They live in their own bubble – but McCain (and Meet the Press) are no longer credible news for most of us.