Straight Talk and Militarist Madness

In the New Hampshire primary, exit polls revealed that 38 percent of those voting in the Republican primary who “strongly disapprove” of the war in Iraq cast their ballot for John McCain. In Michigan, 35 percent of those strongly disapproving of the war cast their ballots for him. Somehow, McCain’s repeated indications that he would be more favorably inclined toward war than the current president haven’t broken through the fog of media adulation that surrounds the Arizona senator.

One of the first, most striking indications was McCain’s serenading an audience in South Carolina last April with a rendition of the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann” with the lyrics changed to “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” His campaign spokesman later spun the outburst as “adding levity to the discussion,” but his campaign kept up the theme, playing the real “Barbara Ann” at subsequent appearances. The mainstream media, of course, gave a pass to McCain--who is truly a press darling--but the video was posted on YouTube and other websites, and downloaded by millions of viewers across the world--many of whom probably didn’t find it funny.

Before the New Hampshire primary, McCain was at it again. Speaking to an audience in New Hampshire on January 3, one questioner remarked with concern that the current president has spoken about staying in Iraq for 50 years. How, the questioner wondered, did Senator McCain feel about this? Before the man had a chance to finish his question, McCain interrupted him, blurting out “make it 100 [years]! … That would be fine with me!”

It was a stunning, candid admission. If elected, McCain acknowledges that his policies would help ensure that when our grandchildren sign up for military service, some of them will deploy to Iraq. More broadly than Iraq, Senator McCain has a clear track record of supporting war and militarism, and if elected, there’s every reason--from his twitchy statements on the campaign trail to his actions in Congress--to believe that Senator McCain is the all-war-all-the-time candidate.

In the past decade, Senator McCain has supported unsheathing the saber against a variety of enemies from Serbia to Iraq, Iran, and Sudan. And in the present, as Matt Welch writes in his new book The Myth of a Maverick, the senator from Arizona “envisions a more militaristic foreign policy than any U.S. president in a century.”

In fact, Senator McCain has indicated that not only would he like to unleash the U.S. military on substantial portions of the rest of the world, as president, he would work to militarize American society. In a 2001 article in the Washington Monthly, after lamenting that it was “not currently politically practical to revive the draft,” McCain went on to praise and argue for the expansion of the National Civilian Community Corps, a federally-administered program where volunteers “wear uniforms, work in teams, learn public speaking skills, and gather together for daily calisthenics, often in highly public places such as in front of city hall.”

McCain glowed at the fact that the participants “not only wear uniforms and work in teams…but actually live together in barracks on former military bases.” There is already a place where young people wear federal uniforms, live in military barracks, and gather for calisthenics in front of government buildings: It’s called North Korea.

Getting back to Iraq, perhaps the best one can say is that Senator McCain has made his views plain: staying is victory, and leaving is defeat. While this may be a soothing idea for those like Senator McCain who urged us to start a war with Iraq in the first place, as a governing principle for our presence in the Middle East, it is extremely dangerous.

But give Senator McCain credit: he isn’t falsely marketing a “humble” foreign policy on the campaign trail. To the contrary, when voters go to the polls, there will be plenty of information available to indicate that a vote for McCain is a vote for perpetual war and occupation. Voters may even obtain that information—if the media could stop fawning over the deliciously "mavericky" Senator McCain and just reveal his platform for what it really is.