McCain believes he has all three of the aforementioned qualities and he cites his time in the Navy and as a member of congress with assignments on national security committees as bonifides. There is no doubt that the Arizona Senator does have a breadth of experience, but that in itself has not always led to informed judgements by the Republican. In fact, since becoming the Republican Presidential nominee, much of the highly sterling image and reputation that McCain has cultivated over the years, has now come under scrutiny and that image has crumbled some.
Tested Military Experience
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, whom both went on to become flag officers in the Navy, John McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He enjoyed a charmed existence at Annapolis and displayed the type of insubordination that would have gotten any other Midshipman kicked out, but McCain was untouchable. Upon graduating from the Naval Academy - 894th out of a class of 899 - in 1958, McCain started two and a half years of training at flight training in Pensacola to become a naval aviator, completing flight school in 1960.
McCain began as a sub-par flier who twice crashed planes and once collided with power lines. That should have been the end of McCain's flying career, but he had pull. His pull landed him a combat assignment when abysmal flying record did not warrant one. After a game of tennis with the undersecretary of the Navy, McCain was soon transferred to McCain Field in Meridian, Mississippi - named after his grandfather - to train for a post on the carrier USS Forrestal.
On July 29th, 1967 in the Gulf of Tonkin, the infamous Forrestal fire occurred, which killed 134 of the crew, injured another 161 and threatened to sink the ship. McCain heroically leapt from the nose of his ship through a wall of flame,before it exploded. However, while many other crew members fought the fire that raged through the night on the flight deck and areas below, McCain watched it all unfold on the ready room's closed-circuit television. The next day, when the ship was headed to the Philippines for repairs and while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies of dead crew members, McCain left the ship with reporters, who had come aboard to cover the incident. As the heroic crew mourned its fallen brothers, McCain was off to Saigon for some welcome R & R and some of his legendary cavorting. One of those reporters, the
late R.W. Apple, became a charter member of McCain's core of
admiring reporters that cultivated his 'straight Talk' reputation.
After some month's off McCain returned back to the Gulf of Tonkin aboard the carrier USS Oriskany. By all accounts, McCain performed adequately on the Oriskany. On October 25th, 1967, he bombed a pair of Soviet MiGs parked on an airfield outside Hanoi. The next day he was fatefully shot down on a dangerous bombing raid of a power plant in downtown Hanoi, and captured as a prisoner of war. To hear his supporters tell it, one would think John McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, serial number and the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. Now there is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam, but the subsequent tale of McCain's mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced in him have come
under scrutiny from
fellow POW's.
"John allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals. John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW." - Phillip Butler, Fellow POW.
To hear John McCain say it, his POW experience is his core rational in regards to military experience that makes him fit to be President. But there are even those in the military, who celebrate McCain's patriotism,
heroism and sacrifice, yet question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief.
"It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament." - Lawrence Wilkerson, Former State Department Official
There has even been some recent rumblings that John McCain has been
complicit in keeping information about many other servicemen once labeled as POW's but are now listed as MIA from becoming public.
Another pre-requisite McCain cites for Presidential fitness, is the fact that he commanded an air squadron. In 1974, McCain finally achieved the goal he had been working toward for years when he was installed as the commanding officer of the largest air squadron in the Navy, the Replacement Air Group based in Jacksonville, Florida charged with training carrier pilots. Contrary to popular belief and the candidates narrative, this was not a combat squadron. At this point in his career he was not at all embarrassed by his own nepotism resulting in promotions because he admits,
"I was not qualified." I guess that shoots down the argument.
Political Courage
McCain fancies himself as a maverick explaining that he has taken stands against his party on a variety of issues during his years serving Congress. That may be so on some pretty topics that would not hurt him politically. Generally he did not make many waves early in his career.
McCain's political philosophy early in his congressional years mirrored those of then President Ronald Reagan, whom McCain calls a hero and whom he said had the greatest political influence on him of anyone. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs and though he now marks it as one of his examples of his maverickness, McCain twice voted against campaign-finance reform. He did break with his party to override Reagan's veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which was really the only time as a congressman that he broke with ranks with his party.
In addition, McCain cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.
In 1986 McCain became a senator, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater. He was now firmly positioned to battle the entrenched interests in Washington should he choose to. He chose not to instead doing the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating. McCain and four other Senators would soon be known as the Keating Five, for their roles in the infamous Savings and Loans scandal of the late 80's. In the year before his Senate run, McCain championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. As a sitting senator in 1987, McCain and the other senators attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Keating's banks.
"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution. And it hasn't happened since." - Bill Black, Deputy Director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, at the time
McCain was given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment" in regards to Keating. However, any lessons McCain learned from the Keating scandal didn't affect his enthusiasm for deregulating the finance industry. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990,s McCain financial adviser Phil Gramm ushered in a wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the served as catalysts for the current Wall Street collapse. McCain also touts his passing of the McCain-Feingold act as a major bi-partisan accomplishment. However, the bill is generally considered to be flawed.
Strategic Clarity
Senator McCain says his experience in military matters trumps that of Senator Obama. He says he has been tested throughout the years and we should judge his record on national security issues. Well, dating back to 1967, McCain has an uneven record with regards to his strategic clarity.
While on his previously mentioned R&R after the Forrestal fire, McCain told R.W. Apple:
"Now that I've seen what the bombs and napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam." That statement would reek of some of the famous hypocrisy he now shows when after his captivity, he wrote a narrative for
U.S. News & World Report where he said: "It is difficult for me to understand . . . why people are still criticizing his foreign policy — for example, the bombing in Cambodia." It seems that as long as he was not going to be dropping them, bombing was OK. Not very clear.
Always a hawk, McCain served on the Board of the
World Anti-Communist League's U.S. Council for World Freedom, which was an international right-wing political organization founded with the aim of opposing Communist regimes around the world through
"unconventional" methods. He supported the foreign policy of the Reagan administration, including its hard line stance against the Soviet Union.
McCain did show somewhat of an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Citing his experience in Vietnam, he is on record saying he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, on the heels of the US Embassy in Beirut bombing, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon as part of a Multi Unilateral Peacekeeping Force. It was a courageous vote that proved prophetic after the catastrophic Beirut barracks bombing a month later. His stance caught the attention of the media once again and his reputation of a maverick began to emerge.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between McCain and the Washington press corps. He stated:
The media tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters. Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."
McCain supported Reagan's policy towards Central American conflicts, including the illegal U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua and in late 1985, McCain traveled to Chile and
met with its dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The visit came at a time when the U.S. Justice Department was seeking extraditions of two Pinochet associates for the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier on US soil. Unlike other congressional leaders who visited Chile at the time, McCain did not criticize the dictatorship or meet with its democratic opponents. Pinochet led a coup against a democratically elected socialist president and was also continuing to oppress those who wanted democracy, an American staple. Reporters were silent on this issue and its duplicity until the story broke last week.
John McCain supported the efforts of the Afghani Mujahadeen during the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. During the 1980's, CIA trained and recruited Muslim extremists from all over the world to receive training with the Afghan mujaheddin. One of the first non Afghan volunteers to join the mujaheddin was Osama bin Laden, a businessman from a wealthy Saudi family. Bin Laden would assist the mujaheddin by recruiting over 4,000 Saudi nationals and working closely with the CIA to raise money from private Saudi citizens starting the Maktab al-Khidamar, an organization that sent money arms and fighter to the mujaheddin.
Thus in funding and helping the ‘freedom fighters’, America actually created the Taliban who harbored Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the future 9/11 attacks. John McCain said,
“After we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters drive the Russians out of Afghanistan we washed our hands of the the region.” There was not much clarity in the strategy, but there was in his after assesment.
John McCain rightly supported President George H.W. Bush and his effort to rid Panama of former US ally Manuel Noriega in 1989 and he supported Bush in his decision to drive Saddam Hussein's Army from neighboring Kuwait in 1991. McCain, rightly, did not support the nation building efforts of Bill Clinton in Somalia in 1993. He later supported Clinton and NATO on the Kosovo issue stating his desire to end the ethnic cleansing campaign in the region.
After the attacks on 9/11, McCain was behind Current President Bush in sending the US armed forces into Afghanistan to find those responsible. However, when the US was is Afghanistan searching out Bin Laden, McCain became the leading voice to bring the fight back to Iraq. Now the US is been locked in an invasion and occupation of a country that did not have to do with the attacks on American soil. It is an occupation that has drained the nation fiscally and has cost the lives of nearly 5,000 US servicemen and women.
McCain has said he was not pleased with the strategy in Iraq and was a vocal proponent of the surge strategy, that he claims has made Iraq safer. Yet there seems no end in sight to America's occupation of Iraq, and now al Qaeda is now in the country, where they were not before the US invasion.
Interestingly enough, Al Qaeda recently endorsed John McCain. Perhaps it’s due to McCain's recently referring to the Afghani Mujaheddin as freedom fighters in two of the three presidential debates. It has the appearance of being a perfect match. Al Qaeda’s endorsement of McCain is significant in that both of them need each other for support. Al Qaeda needs McCain as the evil American to rally their jihad on and McCain needs Al Qaeda’s terrorist threat to keep America scared and submissive in order to promote more military posturing worldwide.
By referring to the mujaheddin as ‘freedom fighters,’ McCain exposes the root of his foreign policy: a misguided view on good and evil. Since the Russians were bad, the mujaheddin must be freedom fighters. Fact is the mujaheddin was mostly controlled by warlords who were fighting for their own land and power which the Soviets were threatening, not freedom and democracy at all. Meeting with Pinochet? In McCain's view, I gather he was good because he was against socialism, but suppressed democracy to do so. This parallels his policy in Iraq: since Al Qaeda is bad and Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi army fighting them, the Mahdi army must be good and we should fund them - a hidden part of the surge - creating one villain to fight another villain.
Despite being friendly with Senator McCain, the man most responsible for the strategy of driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, Charlie Wilson, expressed grave concerns with the Arizona Republicans approach to Iraq.
"I never heard of democracies being created at the barrel of the gun. People have got to want democracy. Perhaps the Germans and the Japanese, with their experiences with the harsh dictatorships they had, perhaps they wanted something else. But the Arabs, from my experience, is that they don't. My experience is that they prefer authoritarian governments."
Wilson admits there are parallels between that time period and the current U.S. involvement in Iraq.
"I think we need to have a certain military presence, but we don't need 160,000 soldiers to do it. I would like to see those resources put back into Afghanistan where the real terrorists were and are. And I think that if we had the type of military presence we had there before we took our eye off, I think we would have had bin Laden by now."
That could quite possibly be so if America kept its eye on the ball in Afghanistan. Now McCain wants to keep troops in Iraq, send some to Afghanistan and have some available if NATO needs them to stave off the Russians in the Ukraine. Problem is where will they come from?
McCain has been a fine leader for America in the past, but his way of thinking on foreign policy matters is not going to make America any safer and his judgement may do us more harm than good.
