printMcCain was interviewed on Fox News practically pleading with Barack Obama to bring the matter of war in Libya to Congress. Why do you suppose McCain is craving congressional approval for America’s latest losing war? McMussolini’s just an old-fashioned neocon. He can’t wait for BHO to legitimize a war he’d like to take to the next level. (I’d provide a link if Fox New believed in the written word.)
George Will let’s McCain off lightly. He dubs him a “promiscuous interventionist”—rather than a serial killer by proxy.
Will has taken a long time to wake up. But better late than never: “Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war — and who think a decade of warfare in Afghanistan is enough — are isolationists. This is less a thought than a flight from thinking, which involves making sensible distinctions.
Last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” McCain warned that the GOP has always had “an isolation strain.” He calls it “the Pat Buchanan wing,” which he contrasts with “the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world. …Is Jim Webb an isolationist? Virginia’s Democratic senator, who was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Navy, discusses Libya with a trenchancy that befits a decorated Marine combat veteran (Vietnam) and that should shame reticent Republicans:
“Was our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere, as we did in the 1986 raids in Libya after American soldiers had been killed in a disco in Berlin? Were we rescuing Americans in distress, as we did in Grenada in 1983? No, we were not.”
McCain, however, says we must achieve regime change in Libya because if Gaddafi survives, he will try to “harm” America. This is always the last argument for pressing on with imprudent interventions (see Vietnam, circa 1969): We must continue fighting because we started fighting.
UPDATE (June 23): Here is the McCain interview with Hannity. He also said that bringing the troops home from Afghanistan will put them at risk. You can see where Meghaaaann gets her brains.
Joe Sobran once defined an isolationist as “an American who thinks America should behave like other countries.” So true, so true.
The last paragraph is devestating! In today’s urban youth language I’d say Will “massively owned” McCain.
The “Viet Nam Ace” for the North Vietnamese, continues to push for open borders, amnesty (until just before the election) and continues the drive to kill foreigners because it is America’s duty to assist the people in the other countries. Last count I had of the Libyan ‘protect the civilians’ effort was 840 civilians killed by NATO, while they were denying killing six more. They later admitted that, yes, they did bomb a civilian neighborhood.
It is absolutely hilarious to me that random conservative bloggers and commenters have NO CLUE that “isolationism” was a label created by Progressive New Dealers to defame conservatives of the Old Right and later adopted by neocons who are simply the descendants of the Old New Dealers.
Ah yes, good old McCain. It’s always nice to be reminded once in awhile of the wonderful other option the Republicans offered us the last time around.
The surface issue here traces back to the War Powers Act, which has thuroughly bastardized the way America goes to war. Unfortunately, I do not think the mangled procedure’s demise would do a blessed thing to stop the involvement in Libya and heaven knows where else, given the red-blue alliance on perpetual war. Therein lies another problem with the Buckleyites and their minions. This problem is much deeper than proper observance of procedure.
John McCain was and continues to be one of the Democrat’s favorite Republicans.
Ultimately, I think McCain is endlessly re-fighting his Lost War in Vietnam. Somewhere, somehow, “we” are going to win one for (him).