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Funny stuff:

On a less amusing, but more substantive note, it's worth understanding that these out-of-context snatches of McCainiana really do fit into the broader context of his career. They're not random gaffes and they're not primary season rhetoric aimed at ingratiating himself to the GOP base. McCain was arguing in favor of a much more aggressive American military posture when it was unfashionable from 1999-2001, he was in favor of it when it was wildly popular in 2003, and he continued to argue for it when it became a narrowcast message appealing only to hardcore Republicans by 2006-2007. This is more-or-less what he thinks.

Back in 1999, for example, he broke with much of his party's leadership not to support the Clinton administration's policy in the Balkans, but to criticize it as both insufficiently forceful and insufficiently ambitious. Rather than a bombing campaign against Serbia with limited objectives, McCain wanted a full-scale ground invasion, arguing on hardball that we ought to "do everything necessary to gain victory" and heartily assenting to Chris Matthews' invitation to define "victory" as "not to go to the negotiating table with some guy and beg him for a deal, but to tell him what to do." I think it was clear then and continues to be clear now that launching a land war aimed at Slobodan Milosevic's unconditional surrender would have shattered NATO, stripped the war of its tenuous international legal legitimacy, and likely gotten us bogged down in a very messy post-war situation in Serbia proper. But McCain wasn't chastened by the success of a more limited venture in the former Yugoslavia and he wasn't chastened by the failure of a more grandiose venture in Iraq. This is just what he thinks.

Comments

Items like this are what will be used against McCain.

More wars, fewer jobs.

Posted by Tom Enever | February 29, 2008 10:52 AM

From this and the many similar bits you've done on McCain over the last month, it seems pretty clear that you think that reminding Americans of McCain's Maximal Militarism will somehow hurt his chances at the polls. I wish I knew where you got your optimism from.

Posted by Doctor Memory | February 29, 2008 11:12 AM

But the good news is that the more wars we have, the fewer people we will have needing jobs, so the fewer jobs part won't hurt as much.

Posted by Curtis | February 29, 2008 11:15 AM

Can we get a re-up of the LBJ/Little Girl/A-Bomb ad?

Things like that are gonna kill McCain's candidacy.

If Obama doesn't overwhelm him first...

Posted by Jimmy James | February 29, 2008 12:02 PM

Ordinarily I'd agree with Doctor Memory, but this is one of the few instances where circumstances sway most voters in the other direction. I think people are tired of Iraq and just want it to be finished. The prospect of more Iraq isn't appealing at the moment.

Posted by Kurzbein | February 29, 2008 12:04 PM

I read this blog for insightful foreign policy posts like these.

Posted by Neil L. | February 29, 2008 12:14 PM

My father, an Air Force officer was a single issue voter. Who ever promised the most military spending was his guy. Didn't care about party or poltics. Just defending his country(family) against any and all enemy's. That's what McCain's got going for him and it won't be enough. Not these days.

Posted by Judson | February 29, 2008 12:29 PM

Barack Obama's first official act should be to appoint John McCain Secretary of Defense. Give him everything he asks for and task him with winning the war. By 2012, it'll look like a win-win pretty much no matter what.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 29, 2008 12:51 PM

WHERE did they find that final clip? God, that's ... alarming.

McCain's got to have had, what, at least 20 "Dean Scream" moments over the last decade? And the STE trireme just keeps rollin' on across the waves, with the media manning the oars to McCain's drumbeat.

Posted by The Confidence Man | February 29, 2008 12:55 PM

Doctor Memory,

Americans want their empire, but they want it on the cheap; moreover, I suspect that the Iraq fiasco has likely dampened their enthusiasm for more war for the time being.

Obama's message, while from my anti-interventionist perspective problematic on a number of grounds, seems to be exactly what the public wants right now - strong America, no rollback of the empire, yet less confrontational, more diplomacy, less war. I'm not saying it's necessarily a realisitc vision, but I do think it's one that resonates well with the current public mood.

Of course, another major terrorist attack could change that dynamic very quickly.

Posted by LarryM | February 29, 2008 1:22 PM

I was going to try to make a joke about how his always being in favor of more war just shows that McCain is principled, not swayed by public opinion, etc., but honestly I can't think of any way his campaign can spin this particular brand of consistency as a good thing.

Posted by bobbo | February 29, 2008 1:27 PM

I'm so glad Matt brought this up. McCain, in fact, said flatly that Clinton's aerial bombing of Kosovo and Serbia could never succeed in getting the Serbs to withdraw. He was quite clear on this-- and turned out to be totally wrong. As far as I know, he has never been held accountable.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 29, 2008 2:25 PM

Mr. Yglesias, you made a statement in the last paragraph of your blog that any type of land invasion would have been terrible for both the NATO hegemony, Int'l legitimacy, and created a messy post-war situation. I guess, I'm don't think it is a clear as you would state. What makes it so clear?

I recall, perhaps improperly, that the Kosovo intervention was never clearly embraced as wizened policy. Questions existed then, and now, regarding the futility of change and the lack of strategic value to the location. However, I do recall many thought it beneficial to point to U.S. intervention on behalf of an Islamic culture.

In addition, the assumption the blog makes that we are not bogged down in a messy post-war situation in Serbia proper is, I believe, erroneous. I worked in Kosovo for 2 years as a translator (Russian and Serbian) from 2001 to 2003, and I can tell you that I left there more convinced that we had made no difference. The premises upon which we built our basis for intervening was wrong (there still exists no evidence of mass murder in Kosovo). The cultural-ethnic conflict remains a smoldering morass, waiting to burst into conflagration anew. And economically, nothing has advanced but Kosovo has become, rather, a service economy dependent on the UN existence.

It could well be that Mr. McCain was correct then that had we forcefully brought about resolution we could have dictated conditions, and not just to Serbia. I guess your post leaves me wanting more.

Posted by M. Welch | February 29, 2008 2:34 PM

I don't disagree with the thrust of the post. But Clinton's decision essentially to take ground troops off the table in Kosovo from the beginning helped lead to the massacre by the Serbs.

Posted by Chunche | February 29, 2008 3:32 PM

Btw, just to get people worked up into a good old fashion O'Hanlon bashing mood, the sentiment expressed in my last comment mirrors the thesis of O'Hanlon's book "Winning Ugly" about Kosovo.

Posted by Chunche | February 29, 2008 3:53 PM

"The prospect of more Iraq isn't appealing at the moment."

Yes, but it's not clear that the prospect of more war in Afghanistan, Pakistan (that's where bin Laden is), and Iran aren't appealing, at least to the thirty percent of the US population who are certified morons still supporting George Bush.

If McCain can make the case that we need to "double down" in all these places, as well as Iraq, in order to "make Iraq worth while" and "win the war on terrorism" (insanity, but there it is), he might have a chance.

Personally, I would say a very slim chance, but it's not impossible.

The problem is that he comes off looking like the aggressive alpha male chimpanzees want leading the troop, and the Democratic candidate is reduced to imitating him but unconvincingly since that candidate is either black or female.

This is what doomed Kerry - he was "George Bush lite" on Iraq.

This is also what doomed Giuliani and the rest of the Republican freaks this season - they might have been foaming at the mouth for war, but they didn't have the military background to make the stance appealing.

McCain does - however pointless it is because he was just a frickin' Air Force pilot who knows zip about ground war, let alone 4th Gen War. The electorate doesn't know anything about that, either, so the fact that McCain is utterly wrong will be lost on them.

I'm not saying McCain can or can't do it, I'm just saying he has a shot.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 29, 2008 11:59 PM