McCain's Divided Loyalties?

The New York Times would like us to believe that though John McCain thought we should mount a land invasion of Serbia in 1999, argued for a policy of rogue-state rollback in 2000, chaperoned Ahmed Chalabi around town for years, began beating the drums for an invasion of Iraq in 2002, and has threatened war with North Korea and Iran that he's really torn between two factions of advisors -- hawkish neocons and more sensible realists.

One problem with this theory is McCain's record. As McCain likes to note, he has a lot of experience national security issues -- he's not some obscure governor being tutored by some eminences grises -- and his record shows that sometime in the 1990s he swung to become the most consistently aggressive hawk in the U.S. Senate. Another problem is that, as Justin Logan points out, all the "realists" and "pragmatists" the Times can find are Iraq War supporters just like their neocon antagonists.

I would add that a further problem is that, again, when you're talking about a guy like McCain who's been engaged with these issues a while it's worth looking beyond the circle of foreign policy dudes who've given McCain an official endorsement to seeing who he's actually hired. If you'll look, you'll find that McCain Senate and campaign staffs both contain a ton of people whose resumes include stints at The Weekly Standard and/or the Project for a New American Century -- that's the network he's tied into.

Comments

...contain a ton of people whose resumes include stints at The Weekly Standard and/or the Project for a New American Century...

McSame indeed. This needs to be hammered over and over and over. Not the "McSame" thing, mind you. Being general and sound-bitey like that gets you into trouble (see "100 years").

Obama needs to elaborate and draw a line between these guys and Bush, and how we should have known in 2000 that Bush was eyeballing Iraq because of his association with PNAC.

Posted by socctty | April 10, 2008 11:52 AM

"The New York Times would like us to believe..."

The most dysfunctional institution in America is the corporate media. The New York Times masssages all stories to fit its outlook, not just this story. Their treatment of the Iraq war, neoconservatism, Greenspan, voodoo Republican economic ideology and policy, McCain is disgraceful. We must issue a call for serious journalism, not the crap that comes out of the corporate media. Forget about Saddam's statue; topple the sick media.

Posted by della Rovere | April 10, 2008 11:53 AM

That all sounds very good, Matt, but I think you fail to account for the fact that he's a Maverick.

Posted by El Cid | April 10, 2008 11:57 AM

Warmonger!

Posted by neilrlca | April 10, 2008 12:04 PM

Matthew Yglesias proves that doves, too, bury their heads in the sand.
3 April 2008

Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Matthew Yglesias (John Wiley & Sons, 272 pp., $25. 95)

A retrospective obsession, married to an indifference to Iraq’s prospects, characterizes Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias, one of the most popular liberal writers on the Internet. Heads in the Sand is but the latest in a barrage of books condemning the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Where Yglesias tries to distinguish himself is by attacking a class to which he once belonged, however briefly: Democratic politicians and left-of-center commentators who supported the Iraq War. Many of these “liberal hawks” have since recanted in the face of the war’s bloody aftermath. Others have claimed that it was not the war itself that was mistaken but its execution, a qualification that Yglesias condemns as the “incompetence dodge.” For Yglesias, invading Iraq—along with the broader effort to promote democracy in the Middle East through the policy of regime change—was a fool’s errand from the start.

In Yglesias’s estimation, the terrorist attacks of September 11 have not changed the world scene appreciably; thus, the U.S. should return to the foreign policy approach it took during the Clinton years. He asserts that this brand of foreign policy—a “liberal internationalism” that places its hopes in multilateralism, international institutions, and a restrained role for the United States in international affairs —“was working well in the 1990s.” Never mind that NATO’s war against Serbia (which Yglesias says he supported) had to be undertaken without the blessing of the United Nations, or that most Democrats in Congress opposed the Persian Gulf War despite the large international coalition that waged it. Nor does Yglesias mention the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day slaughter of nearly a million people that the U.N. did nothing to prevent. Moreover, Yglesias does not grapple with the problems presented by an important “liberal internationalist” institution of the nineties: the post–Gulf War sanctions regime in Iraq, which took an enormous toll on the Iraqi people while simultaneously being undermined by Saddam Hussein. Avoiding arguments that weaken his case, Yglesias alleges that those who oppose his brand of liberal internationalism wish to transform the United States into an “imperial superpower that seeks to use its national strength to dominate the world and needlessly heighten conflicts.”

If only Yglesias were as tough on America’s mortal enemies as he is with his own intellectual adversaries. While acknowledging that “many liberal hawks took note of the near-total absence of international backing for [the Iraq] war,” he attacks them for not recognizing “the reason that Bush’s position had so little support,” without bothering to consider whether liberal hawks might have had a point in assuming that China, Russia, and France were not pure of motive in their opposition to the invasion. He echoes Osama bin Laden when he argues that Islamist anger against the West is a justified response to foreign powers that “occupy Muslim land.” This is a bold assertion, and yet Yglesias doesn’t care to explore why Iran and Syria—countries where foreign soldiers haven’t set foot for decades—continue to be the two most active state sponsors of international terrorism. In fact, he urges the United States to engage Iran and Syrian in diplomatic talks about the future of Iraq so that all three can “work together to secure their common interests in that country.” What “common interest” supporters of a democratic, federal, and secular Iraq might share with the ayatollahs and Assads is left unsaid.

While charitable toward religious fascists and tyrants, Yglesias is suspicious of Western attempts to combat them. To argue against the usefulness of military force in eliminating terrorist groups, Yglesias points to Israel’s experience with organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, “which, obviously, the Jewish state had been trying to eliminate for quite some time with what one could only call limited success.” But one reason why Israel has not eradicated the threat from terrorist groups is that people like Yglesias keep demanding that Israel negotiate with, and thus legitimize, them. He writes, for instance, that Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon in response to a series of PLO terrorist attacks represented a “policy of stubbornness.” Further, Yglesias admonishes any Democrat who refuses to rule out military action against Iranian nuclear sites. Indeed, he advocates a “grand bargain” with the mullahs in which we somehow convince them—without threatening force, of course—that constructing a nuclear bomb and making annihilationist threats against Jews are not in their interest. And while Israel was right to be worried about its security in the mid-twentieth century, when hostile neighbors surrounded it, it can now rest assured that “that threat no longer exists.” Why does Yglesias express such serenity when it comes to the malicious threats of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yet become apoplectic upon hearing the statements of Joe Lieberman? He writes as if his policy prescriptions were painfully obvious; those who believe otherwise are either bloodthirsty warmongers (conservatives) or soulless cynics (liberal hawks).

Yglesias cites careerism as the sole motive for liberals’ support for the Iraq War. Democrats in Congress, he writes, supported the invasion because “it was useful from a careerist perspective,” in light of President Bush’s high approval ratings at the time. As for liberal commentators, they got in line behind Bush for the simple reason that “the writer’s life is more interesting and more important if the challenge of al-Qaeda is world-historical in scale.” He thus ignores the raft of Democratic politicians, liberal journalists, and Clinton-administration national security officials who, throughout the nineties and well into the administration of George W. Bush, believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction programs and unhesitatingly supported military action against him in 2003.

Though Yglesias is at pains to distinguish his views from those of a hard leftist, he nonetheless ends up sounding like one. He sees no distinction between Saddam’s “aggressive warfare” against Kuwait in 1991 and America’s “aggressive warfare” against Saddam in 2003. Saddam’s campaign against the Kurds, by the way, was only “quasi-genocidal” (perhaps because Saddam did not kill every last Kurd?). He applauds the ridiculous Dennis Kucinich, who “was admirable in his ability to articulate a clear and coherent theory of foreign affairs” during the 2004 presidential election. He believes that rogue states and peaceful states should be treated the same, and lambastes the neoconservatives for adhering to a “two-tiered system of sovereignty” that deals with a country like Luxembourg differently than, say, Sudan. He also argues that no international action can be “legitimate” unless it has Russia’s and China’s support.

Ultimately, however, Yglesias is a partisan political commentator, not a foreign-policy analyst, and it is through the lens of politics that his arguments should be judged. But even on those terms he is unconvincing. His policy recommendations would not resonate with the electorate because Americans do not support the full-bore neutering of American power that he advocates. The trifecta of allegedly radical principles of the Bush Doctrine—preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony—are all, as historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, traditional elements in American foreign policy, and in some form are instinctively supported by the majority of Americans, who rightly view the alternative to American global supremacy as a frightening prospect.

Though Yglesias tries to frame his argument around the concept of national self-interest, he reveals himself as an unwitting apologist for terrorists and authoritarians. He attacks the Bush administration for supporting the Philippines and Thailand over Islamist insurgents; he defends the Islamic Courts Movement, which overthrew Somalia’s internationally recognized government; he argues that Democrats shouldn’t have held hearings with General David Petraeus last year because his “testimony would be so hostile to their political strategy.” There are many words that one might use to describe Yglesias’s political outlook. “Liberal” and “internationalist” are not among them.

Posted by MY | April 10, 2008 12:04 PM

The scant variety in Republican foreign policy sounds a lot like the bit on Seinfeld where George was dressing to go to Los Angeles. Bombing Iran? That would be "Morning Mist".

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 10, 2008 12:10 PM

The New York Times masssages all stories to fit its outlook, not just this story. Their treatment of the Iraq war,...

"You know. Like those left-wing stories they printed by Judith Miller! Oh, wait. Never mind."

-- della Rovere

Posted by LFC | April 10, 2008 12:15 PM

I'm still confused how John McCain is continually labeled a maverick centrist. Bill Mahr interviewed Arlen Spector the other night and asked him how he got his "maverick" title. Sen. Spector told Bill that it was because McCain's views arent' always on the side of the administration and the Republicans. When Bill asked the Senator to name what views were so radically different, he named two, one of which was campaign reform and I don't remember the other. The only other one that comes to my mind is immigration, of which he's made no mention of lately.

I guess my issue with McCain is that on most of the issues people really think are important, the war, the economy, and healthcare, he's as neocon as Bush & Co. That maverick title needs to be dropped and fast. It's become quite obsolete, unless it's maverick to run to the right.

Posted by SMN | April 10, 2008 12:37 PM

SMN, he was originally against the Bush tax cuts ... before he was for them. He was also originally against torture ... before he qualified that. And he felt that Jerry Falwell was a radical nutjob ... before he cozied up to him.

He's dumped most of his "maverick" positions to get the nomination.

Posted by LFC | April 10, 2008 12:54 PM

The divided loyalty of McCain's that I fear is that to his warrior family's honor. Like aWol, who lacks the stature of his ancestors, McCain needs to commit successful war.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | April 10, 2008 12:54 PM

The divided loyalty of McCain's that I fear is that to his warrior family's honor. Like aWol, who lacks the stature of his ancestors, McCain needs to commit successful war.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | April 10, 2008 1:09 PM

SMN -

While ideologically he's no maverick, he's been a thorn in Bush's side at times (condemning the Swift Boat attacks, initially opposing the Bush tax cuts, being stridently against torture... for a while anyway, acknowledgment of global warming, stated support for ANWR, support for stem cell research, support for affirmative action, etc.), and irritated the base to a degree, so the press interprets that as being a "maverick".

As far as foreign policy and the economy (admittedly not his strong-suit), he's the same as Bush and the neocons.

Posted by socctty | April 10, 2008 3:14 PM

Although Yglesias is surely right on the merits of how conflicted McCain actually is, the NYTimes article makes him look like he's dithering . . . and that ain't all bad.

Posted by southpaw | April 10, 2008 5:20 PM

en. Spector told Bill that it was because McCain's views arent' always on the side of the administration and the Republicans. When Bill asked the Senator to name what views were so radically different, he named two, one of which was campaign reform and I don't remember the other. The only other one that comes to my mind is immigration, of which he's made no mention of lately.

Well, his immigration position is exactly on the side of the President (and on the side of the majority of Congressional and Senate Republicans, until the grassroots rose up against it), even not if on the side of the GOP rank-and-file. As for campaign finance reform, Bush signed it into law. These two issues really are not as maverick as people would like to think.

Posted by glaivester | April 10, 2008 8:33 PM

"Heads in the Sand is but the latest in a barrage of books condemning the foreign policy of George W. Bush."

That's the main quibble I have with Matt's book - he's late to the game.

And from what I've heard about the book, I don't see anything radically new that would compel me to buy it.

Meanwhile, the "review" above is complete bullshit - the sort of crap we get from most of the right wing trolls on this blog.

"The trifecta of allegedly radical principles of the Bush Doctrine—preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony—are all, as historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, traditional elements in American foreign policy, and in some form are instinctively supported by the majority of Americans, who rightly view the alternative to American global supremacy as a frightening prospect."

An excellent argument for destroying this country, as Americans are clearly too stupid and belligerent to live.

Makes you want to support Skynet.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 11, 2008 5:42 AM