McCain's instincts have always been almost entirely martial and combative, and his focus is nearly always on ways of increasing tensions instead of easing them.

This is the same guy who worked hard to normalize relations with Vietnam, i.e., the same people that held him in brutal captivity for 5+ years, right?

Kevin Drum earns a few more black marks on his Permanent Record from Boeing, Lockheed, TRW, Siemens and Halliburton. You are NEVER making it out of the third grade, young man!!!

McCain is right to stand up for Georgia - a country so much like our own. A democracy which resolves disputes by launching missiles right into civilian areas, followed by tanks and invasion, ignoring the advice of realists that doing so will be a first-rate disaster. If we don't stand up for a country so similar to ourselves - who WILL we stand up for?

"That's a pretty dangerous temperament for a president to have."

Perhaps, but having a such president may cause others to be more wary of provoking the US because of McCain's perceived willingness to use military power if pushed too far.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

This is the same guy who worked hard to normalize relations with Vietnam, i.e., the same people that held him in brutal captivity for 5+ years, right?

Yes, he was following the lead of your hero, John F. Kerry, who initiated the effort and recruited McCain.

SJRSM makes a point about Vietnam but ignores the overall context. McCain not only wanted a fight to the death over there, he STILL believes it weakened us by not winning. This toxic myth lies pretty close to the heart of the right-wing counterrevolution in America. The only problem is that it's not based on any evidence except that inside the warrior's heart.

We lost in Vietnam and McCain pragmatically acknowledges that reality. It was an irrelevant but costly battle for something deemed Very Serious at the time. Today, it's puzzling to think we could locate a cosmic enemy so far from the world's main geopolitical battlelines. But McCain didn't have a problem doing that then or now.

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Aug 13, 2008 10:43 EST

A C-17 aircraft with humanitarian supplies was on its way to Georgia, and in the following days the United States will use military aircraft and naval forces to deliver humanitarian and medical supplies, Bush said, flanked by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Great, now all that's needed is for Cheney to see to it that Russia (cough, cough) shoots down a U.S. aircraft and the party is on.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?
Posted by: Chicounsel

Obama will be tested straightaway, that's for sure. Same as Kennedy was.

Robert Sheer suggests that McCain's advisor Scheunemann, formerly in the pay of Georgia, may have encouraged Saak to make his stupid play for S. Ossetia to set up an international crisis that could make McCain seem relevant again.

Dunno. Scheunemann is PNAC, so anything's possible.
.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

I'm sure our enemies would prefer to face the aging moron who can't seem to remember what planet he's on.
.

Yes, he was following the lead of your hero, John F. Kerry, who initiated the effort and recruited McCain.

Yes, and then McCain followed Bush around like a little puppy. And now, they've had to take McCain's cellphone away, because he was too easily influenced by the last guy he talked to.

From Hanoi to Crawford, why does McCain always need to be somebody's bitch?
.

What Sullivan misses, and what you rightly point out, is that in the case of foreign policy, McCain's tone perfectly matches his content. He comes from generations of soldiers, his entire career is premised on his story as a war hero, and his worldview is shaped entirely by both the Cold War & the Vietnam War. If elected, he will be a war president. He doesn't know how to be anything else. And lest anyone has ideas that it's only namby-pamby liberals with concerns about this, your prototypical paleoconservative isn't very happy about the idea of a President McCain, either. As he's said before, McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi.

This is exactly the sort of personality type that is required for one to become a fighter pilot.

Fighter pilots should by definition never be allowed to become POTUS.

Without much effort, Paris Hilton calmly made McCain look like what he is: a wrinkly old loser. The US does not need that as a leader.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

Depends on the definition of "enemies." If you mean governments that hate us but would prefer to be left alone and unbombed over trifles, then Obama. If you mean governments with long-standing mutual animosities with us but who might want to work out some kind of improvement in relations diplomatically, then Obama. If you mean crazy terrorists in caves who want to provoke massive misguided retaliation so that large parts of the world become destabilized and breed more crazy terrorists in caves, sure then, McCain.

If a neocon starts ranting about his support for democracy and freedom and all that, just ask him who he would support in a confrontation between India and Pakistan started by the latter's provocation.

If we don't stand up for a country so similar to ourselves - who WILL we stand up for?

The question isn't, R Hanson, WHO will we stand up for, but HOW will we stand up for them? We are tied down in two wars in the ME, Russia know all too well that we have no battle in this fight. There is nothing we can do. All McCain's words can do is to further inflame the Russians, and extend a skirmish into an all-out war.

Bellicosity is not a foreign policy.

I am worried about McCain's recent rhetoric about Georgia, because he had repeatedly said that the lesson the U.S. should have learned from the Vietnam War was that we should have fought harder. Is McCain really willing to go to war with Russia over the fate of Abkazia and South Ossetia? It seems that the President of Georgia would like McCain to back his words with deeds, at any rate.

McCain clearly believes that a nasty spat in the Caucasus is somehow the defining struggle of the next generation.

Wait, wait, wait. Nobody gave me the latest GOP fearmongering meme! I thought that fighting the terroristic Muslim hordes was the defining struggle of the next generation and threat to our way of life? Dammit. It's so hard to keep up-to-date from under the bed.

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice.
What is John McCain made of?
Piss and vinegar and Irish semen.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

Seeing as our enemies' primary strategy over the past seven years has been to goad the US into wildly overreacting to provocation in a way that kills civilians and plays into the jihadist narrative that we're a neo-Crusading hegemon, they're probably praying everyday it's McCain.

Obama will be tested straightaway, that's for sure. Same as Kennedy was.

[sigh]Yes, because today's world is just like the 1960s cold war era. Look, Bush has failed every test thrown his way. McCain can't keep Sunni and Shia straight and is dangerously bellicose. Frankly, I'll take my chances with Obama.

Seeing as our enemies' primary strategy over the past seven years has been to goad the US into wildly overreacting to provocation in a way that kills civilians and plays into the jihadist narrative that we're a neo-Crusading hegemon, they're probably praying everyday it's McCain.
Posted by: jonas

Yep. Saddam Hussein was hoping we'd invade so he could get dragged out of a rathole and hung by the neck until dead. Al Qaeda was hoping they could make their stand in Iraq and get their ass handed to them by Marines and fellow Sunni Muslims while democratic elections are repeatedly held. UBL was hoping he'd have to spend out his days in a cave in Waziristan. Iran was hoping they'd be surrounded South, East and West by the US Military.

Here's a great "yard sign" illustrating McCain's foreign policy vision. Via "eclecticbrotha" in comments at The Jed Report.

Let's make a run with that "dangerous temperament" meme and hit him with it over and over...borrow these quotes...put them out there in ALL THE BLOGS...you know like the REPUG army does...

[sigh]Yes, because today's world is just like the 1960s cold war era. Look, Bush has failed every test thrown his way. McCain can't keep Sunni and Shia straight and is dangerously bellicose. Frankly, I'll take my chances with Obama.
Posted by: ckelly

I'm not saying Obama is going to be bad. I think he's really smart, hopefully "street smart" too. I'm just saying if you're Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Politburo and you've got a fairly young and (let's be frank here) very inexperienced President of the US of A, you are going to test him.

Pat Buchanan says that McCain makes Dick Cheney look like Gandhi.

America needs peace. We can't afford a military adventurer like McCain.

McCain's braindead campaign needs a warring cause.

From Juan Cole:

McCain Strategist Lobbyist for Georgia;
Bob Scheer: Did He Stage Provocation?

McCain's campaign strategist Randy Scheunemann was a lobbyist for Georgia until recently, and remained part of Orion Strategies until May 15. OS had signed a $2 mn. deal to provide "strategic advice" to the Georgian government.

Update: Bob Scheer entertains dark suspicions that Scheunemann, a leader of the Neoconservative Project for theNew American Century, put Saakashvili up to provoking Russia in hopes of providing the Republican Party with a foreign policy crisis to run on.

These necons are incapable of anything new and "creative"!

McCain embodies America's machismo ideology. Bullying bluster backed up by our huge military and nuclear forces, which should be used to bloody the nose of any antagonist to show them who is boss. It is quite a popular ideology, but no one ever calls it populist, despite being used by every demagogue who has ever run for political office.

Until America is sufficiently punished for its bullying, like Argentina was in the Eighties, or suffers an unconditional defeat, like Japan and Germany after WW II, it will continue to think it can and should bloody other nations' noses because they do not obey our demands. Americans have not had to adequately pay for the consequences of their past aggression, but sooner or later they will. When America's comeuppance occurs, will Americans accept the lesson or will they destroy everything to avoid learning it? I think the latter is most likely, which is why I support Sen. Obama for president. McCain would rather destroy America than admit our aggression was wrong.

Mike wrote: Saddam Hussein was hoping...

Whoa, dude, 2003 called, they wan their delusion back.

It's the stupid economy.
Obama should ignore McSame and talk about jobs.

The best response is to ask questions.
Is it wise for the US to butt into in a regional dispute between Russia and its next door neighbor? Do you think we should spend your tax dollars on this?

Is it wise to spend our tax dollars arming Russia's neighbors? What exactly are we arming them to do?

Chicounsel wrote: having a such president may cause others to be more wary of provoking the US because of McCain's perceived willingness to use military power if pushed too far.

How's that working out for, say, Iran?

Jackass.

R Hanson wrote: A democracy which resolves disputes by launching missiles right into civilian areas, followed by tanks and invasion, ignoring the advice of realists that doing so will be a first-rate disaster.

Considering Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon, Hanson may have a point here.

If we don't stand up for a country so similar to ourselves - who WILL we stand up for?

What do you mean, "stand up for"? "Stand up" how?

Enough of this hollow tough-talk rhetoric. Defenders of McCains bellicosity need to make one point absolutely clear: Are you advocating that the United States intervene militarily on Georgia's side against Russia?

John MCain? I thought at first it referred to William Kristol, who's got a thing on the wire equating Georgia 2008 with Georgia 1924, which will lead to Munich Every Year The Vulcans Want A Fight. (He asks if we remember how that lead to Great Britain standing alone against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Er, no.)

There's something mildly hilarious in the disconnect between his own personal pacifism and his public Rufus T. Firefly "Then it's WAR!", except that McCain seems to be doing more cut'n'paste. Given the rep of Wikipedia and/or Kristol for error, no fact stated by McCain can be taken as fact.

Red State Mike wrote: I'm just saying if you're Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Politburo and you've got a fairly young and (let's be frank here) very inexperienced President of the US of A, you are going to test him.

And if you're Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Politburo and you've got a fairly old and (let's be frank here) feeble and confused President of the US of A, you are going to test him too. Only, McCain's irrationality -- not to mention that the neocons see him as the last, best hope for insituting their dreams of Israeli^H^H^H^H^HAmerican hegemony -- you run a much greater -- indeed, unacceptable -- risk of McCain making the same kind of disastrous, costly mistakes that Bush did.

It's beyond bizarre that Red State Mike presents McCain's erratic hotheadedness as an asset. But then, as a Bush supporter, his apprehension of reality was always suspect.

If we don't stand up for a country so similar to ourselves - who WILL we stand up for?

What do you mean, "stand up for"? "Stand up" how?

That was clearly a sarcastic joke. Read the entire message again without the hair-trigger neocon-ass-ream setting. The commenter wasn't rattling a saber all manly like, he was being sarcastic and attacking recent US history of evildoing at the same time.

And if you're Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Politburo and you've got a fairly old and (let's be frank here) feeble and confused President of the US of A, you are going to test him too.
Posted by: Gregory

They see the election as Ronald Reagan versus Doogie Howser.

It's beyond bizarre that Red State Mike presents McCain's erratic hotheadedness as an asset.
Posted by: Gregory

It's beyond bizarre (but smack dead in the middle of la-la GregoryLand) how you can construe that.

Do we have to quote and link to Andrew Sullivan all the time?

Aren't there any voices out there that deserve a link and traffic directed to them more?

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

Easy, McCain. He's stupid and hot-headed, and therefore easy to manipulate.

Next question, please, but this time try to make it a little more challenging.

Who do you think enemies of the US would prefer to be dealing with for the next four years, McCain or Obama?

Why exactly should our electoral choices be swayed by what our enemies want? Why should they get a say?

If you're going to consider anyone, shouldn't the question be who are our friends and allies going to prefer dealing with?

They see the election as Ronald Reagan versus Doogie Howser.

If by Ronald Reagan you mean incipient senile dementia with a weak grasp of reality and facts, then yes, you are exactly right.

And I'm sure Iran is especially praying for another Reagan -- after all, he's the one who sold them advanced weaponry. Just think what McCain might give them!

... UBL was hoping he'd have to spend out his days in a cave in Waziristan. Iran was hoping they'd be surrounded South, East and West by the US Military.

Simply because your pea brain struggles to grasp the basics doesn't mean that there wasn't a larger strategy to the strikes of 9/11. It's been established, and it's pretty much indisputable, that one of bin Laden's primary goals was to draw the US military into a larger war in a Middle East country. Your boy, Shrub, was happy to oblige, and one of the results is a resurgent Iran, without the threat of a Taliban-led (& Sunni) Afghanistan to its east or Ba'athist Iraq to its west. Instead, Iran has had the distinct pleasure of watching the American military lose thousands of lives, spend untold hundreds of billions of dollars (with no end in sight), and squander its capability to present itself as a bulwark against legitimate threats to our (or our allies') interests anywhere else on the planet.

And yet you're cheered on by the prospects of a man to whom Pat Buchanan refers as "Bush on steroids." Why do you hate America?

I’ve read that McCain has said that “Paths of Glory� was his favorite film. I think he probably has a different take on the movie than most of us.

I think he identifies with the George Macready character – General Moreau who, when his men "fail him" because they were unable to take “The Anthill,� goes into an insane rage and wants the entire regiment shot for cowardice, finally agreeing to the execution of a token three men; this will at least “set an example� for the others.

McCain, should he become C-in-C, will be like General Moreau: He’s not going to let anyone interfere with the success of his glorious war – any candyass libruls, appeasers, French-speaking Europhiles, etc.

As Free Lover of Freedom and Free Liberty commented here on June 30,

“Bow to McCain. He may be compassionate when he smites you.�

Did Red State Mike just compare McCain with Reagan? Isn't that akin to blasphemy? Say twenty "Hail, W"s and think about how you made the baby Jesus weep, RSM!

They see the election as Ronald Reagan versus Doogie Howser.

You wish, Mike. But even then, Doogie Howser was unisually smart and comptetent and Reagan senile (and, let's not forget, ran like a rabbit from Lebanon), so it's hardly the unflattering comparison you'd like it to be.

It's beyond bizarre (but smack dead in the middle of la-la GregoryLand) how you can construe that.

It's amazing -- the Republican's decades-long branding effort as "strong on defense" has sunk under the weight of their own incompetence, and Mike doesn't get it. "La-la land," indeed.

You're warning about Obama being "tested," Mike, and conspicuously not mentioning McCain. It's more than fair to judge that you imply the bellicose McCain won't be "tested."

Of course, if he were tested, McCain is much more likely to make another Republican grand-scale mistake.

I know it sucks for you that the Republican party you carry water for is stuck with such a terrible candidate, Mike, but your postings here are even lamer than usual.

I think he identifies with the George Macready character – General Moreau who, when his men "fail him" because they were unable to take “The Anthill,� goes into an insane rage and wants the entire regiment shot for cowardice, finally agreeing to the execution of a token three men; this will at least “set an example� for the others.

Too, the Anthill is an impregnable fortification, while Moreau lives in an opulent chateau behind the lines.

One couldn't ask for a more perfect summation of the neocon mindset.

OBAMA, THE PEACENIK DOVE OR MCCAIN, THE HAWK!?

Of course there is zero evidence that Obama is this alleged "peacenik" nor any of the other unfounded labels lovingly attached to him by the GOP and it's surrogate, the Media. However, I will agree that all evidence points to McCain being a hawk, a rather erratic, error-prone, hawk.

They see the election as Ronald Reagan versus Doogie Howser.

And with that, RedState Mike jumps clear over the shark.

What's missing from the entire analysis is that Georgia is a massive foreign policy disaster that resulted from a chain of bad judgments on foreign policy that was the direct result of Republican ideology.

These guys are massive idiots - and don't even realize it.

Ten years ago Russia was at its nader and the United States was at a peak in history, not for itself, but for all countries for all history.

Ten years later, Russia marches into Georgia after the United States has basically bled itself to death struggling to defeat two third world countries. (That by the way is why soft power is so important - it's inexpensive to wield.)

The Neocons and Republicans are just power junkies with the cognitive ability of an adolescent on crack.

one of bin Laden's primary goals was to draw the US military into a larger war in a Middle East country.
Posted by: junebug

You left off the "and win it" part of his goal. Al Qaeda is being run out of Iraq on a rail by their Sunni brethren, which I guarantee you was not part of Bin Laden's plan. Unless his plan was to get his ass kicked.

Iran has had the distinct pleasure of watching the American military lose thousands of lives, spend untold hundreds of billions of dollars (with no end in sight), and squander its capability to present itself as a bulwark against legitimate threats to our (or our allies') interests anywhere else on the planet.

You're exercising Gregorian logic in assuming that our pain is their gain, pure zero sum. It ain't that simple.

I'm a realist. I expect Obama to be elected and I'm hopeful he'll be a good President. Saying he is going to be tested is not the same as saying he won't come through in flying colors (unless you apply Gregorian logic), so unbunch your panties.

What's missing from the entire analysis is that Georgia is a massive foreign policy disaster that resulted from a chain of bad judgments on foreign policy that was the direct result of Republican ideology.

Really? We've got good friends right there on Russia's border, an nascent democracy that only required some aid and TLC to support. No huge invasion required. Messy, of course. Sounds like soft power to me.

Our good friends are now occupied by Russians.

Russia could have been moved into the west in the 1990s. We should have sent then Marshall plan size aid, and sent them Korean and Japanese developmental policy experts, and encouraged greater integration with Europe.

Instead we sent them nothing but free trade Chicago School of Economics advisors, the result was Russian society cratered and was humiliated. Now, instead of developing as an economic and political partner, they developed as a reactionary regime sitting on huge piles of resources.

Of course, this is right up Conservative's meme. They need threatening enemies. If they don't have Soviet Dictators they invent them in Iraq.

Thanks to the Republicans, American's are in rapid descent.

In hindsight, this began in 1919 when Harding was elected. It was only interrupted by the liberal era of 1933-1980.

America as a super power was Roosevelt/Truman's creation. Republican policies have always drained that power. Now that we are in a conservative era, that reality is coming home - big time.

A McCain election might not be such a bad thing. America will soon no longer be a super power. Like Athens after Sparta defeated it, we can concentrate strictly upon quality of life issues for our citizens (which will eventually lead to either a banana republic or a plantation uprising on a national scale) and let wiser societies handle geopolitical issues.

what is truely ironic about the neocon philosophy of strong state power is that they simultaneously want a strong state abroad and a weak one domestically. the US government knows what is right for the people of one Georgia, but not what is right for the people of the other Georgia. Can you guess which is which?

Instead we sent them nothing but free trade Chicago School of Economics advisors, the result was Russian society cratered and was humiliated. - Bub

Uh oh, aren't most of Obama's financial weenies from the Chicago School of Economics?

McCain realizes that the USA needs an endless stream of "enemies" in order to justify spending well over half a trillion dollars per year on the military -- more than all other countries in the world combined, with most of that spending by US allies.

And of course, the USA also leads the world in arming the rest of the world.

Virtually all of that half-trillion dollars per year, and the billions more from selling weapons of mass destruction to other countries, goes directly into the coffers of the "industrial" sector of the military-industrial complex, which is to say, into the coffers of giant corporations owned by America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc.

Like CheneyBush's foreign policy, McCain's foreign policy is all about enriching his ultra-rich owners, and has nothing whatever to do with "protecting America" from actual enemies.

And indeed, its ongoing success utterly depends on making the world an ever more dangerous place, both in the minds of the American people and in reality, in order to justify constantly growing militarism and the massive transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich that military expenditures accomplish.

Whenever I contemplate the possibility of a McCain presidency, Martin Luther King's phrase about "a nation approaching spiritual death" comes to mind.

Uh oh, aren't most of Obama's financial weenies from the Chicago School of Economics?

2 of his 3 official advisers are Harvard economists. Goolsbee teaches at the U of C, which isn't the same thing as "the Chicago school."

What's with all the bunched panty references around here today? Thank god I'm commando.

Pat Buchanan, the wisest living American, says McCain "makes Cheney look like Ghandi."

You left off the "and win it" part of his goal. Al Qaeda is being run out of Iraq on a rail by their Sunni brethren, which I guarantee you was not part of Bin Laden's plan. Unless his plan was
to get his ass kicked.

Nervous as I am to go up against the Steven Seagal movie that runs through your peanut head, whatever "plan" bin Laden can be said to have had (and, for that matter still have) didn't involve defeating the military of the world's sole remaining superpower in one cataclysmic battle (any more than it did for the mujahedin with the Russians in Afghanistan). The point is to sap the Americans' morale while draining our finances, and if you've looked at what public opinion says about staying in Iraq (to say nothing about the respective conditions of our military infrastructure & economic outlook), you're hard pressed to argue that he hasn't gone to considerable ways towards achieving that goal. A President McCain would play right into bin Laden's hands by continuing the Iraqi folly, pursuing war with Iran, and simultaneously ratcheting up tensions with the Russians over, over, over -- what exactly? The inalienable right of Georgia to keep its unwilling ethnic minorities under its thumb?

You're exercising Gregorian logic in assuming that our pain is their gain, pure zero sum. It ain't that simple.

Maybe you can put that crayon to use and explain it in more than four words (one of which is "ain't").

Someone--please report more on McCain's so-called foreign policy advisor: this is more than scary

"...Before that, Scheunemann was on board with the Project for the New American Century, whose letter to Bush nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks pointed to Iraq as a possible link to the terrorists.

The letter said American forces must be prepared to support "by all means necessary" the U.S. government's commitment to opponents of Saddam Hussein.

Scheunemann was among the letter's 37 signers, a Who's Who of neoconservative luminaries including William Kristol and Richard Perle..."
from huff post

The point is to sap the Americans' morale while draining our finances

No.

His point was to establish a new caliphate in Iraq, ala the Taliban. Got off to a good start, but ended up failing. Let's go to wikipedia for a reference (their article has good citations)

In a July 2005 letter to al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Zarqawi outlined a four-stage plan to expand the Iraq War, which included expelling U.S. forces from Iraq, establishing an Islamic authority (caliphate), spreading the conflict to Iraq's secular neighbors and engaging in battle with Israel.[9] Consistent with their stated plan, the affiliated groups were linked to regional attacks outside Iraq, such as the Sharm al-Sheikh bombings in Egypt.

So far, so failure.

Maybe you can put that crayon to use and explain it in more than four words (one of which is "ain't").

We're stretched, causing our military pain and angst. We don't like it. They're surrounded on three sides by their arch enemy. They don't like it. There have been many, many wars where both sides have come out on the short end of the stick. Maybe one shorter than the other.

Zero sum implies my gain is your loss. Look it up. It ain't that hard to google on.