Reflexive Hostility Has Its Advantages
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McCain, though, went with his instinct and with a sense of moral clarity that seems to have been borne out by Russia’s widening campaign. ~Ben Smith
So now McCain is trying to claim that he foresaw what Russia is currently doing in Georgia, when the only reason McCain “knew” what Russia would do is that he always assumes that Russians have the very worst motives and goals and then declares himself prescient when Russia does something objectionable. At least Smith’s use of the word instinct is correct–McCain is viscerally opposed to Russia, and so instinctively lurches to whatever the anti-Russian position is on any given issue. The video Smith digs up includes (the videos are being circulated by McCain aides) shows how fanatically anti-Russian McCain has been for at least the last decade and includes one of the many Shevardnadze references that McCain made during the 1999-2000 campaign. Before he was the corrupt, dictatorial ruler who had to go (to make way for the reckless despotic one), Shevardnadze was, in McCain’s estimation, “one of the great men in the history of the world.” Seriously.
In the clip McCain imagines that the Second Chechen War was part of an agenda of reconquest aimed at former Soviet states, despite the rather important detail that Chechnya was within Russia’s borders all along and the war involved the suppression of a separatist movement that employed terrorist tactics. By all means, let’s track down every pro-Chechen and pro-Shevardnadze thing McCain has ever said and look over his record on Russia very carefully. Let’s remember how supportive of the Chechens he and those around him were, and how many excuses they used to make for anti-Russian terrorism. That will, or should, scare enough people that it might finally start to undermine the media’s acceptance that he has foreign policy expertise, and it should draw a good, useful contrast between the two candidates by showing one of them to be possessed of a strange hatred for Russia that ensures that all of his policy proposals concerning Russia are hostile and dangerous.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
2 Responses to “Reflexive Hostility Has Its Advantages”
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Must be tough to have to do this.
I’m unaware of any pro-Schevarnadze or pro-Chechen comments he’s made, but I did recently watch the re-air of the 1987 War Powers Act debate on the Senate Floor. This was the tanker war, U.S. Flags on Kuwaiti tankers, then the Vincennes incident.
He was quibbling about the difference to “make” and “declare” war and, in my not-so-humble-opinion, rewrote Madison’s August 17th, 1787 notes on the Constitutional Convention.
[...] If I Lived in a Swing State, I’d Vote for Obama August 11, 2008, 9:47 am Filed under: foreign affairs, politics, war Or at least that’s what the astonishing belligerence of John McCain – and his official campaign mouthpieces, of course – on the Russo-Georgian conflict is inclining me to think. As Bill Kristol’s latest stream of batshit insanity reminds us, there’s a deeply dangerous ideology behind the sort of rhetoric that excuses Saakashvili’s warmongering irredentism on the grounds of his ostensibly “democratic” election and his regime’s token support for the invasion of Iraq, and purging Washington of those politicians who have fallen under its spell is clearly the top priority for the present election cycle. And yes, I’m aware that recent events have made Russia into at least as deserving a target for American opprobrium as Georgia is, but that is no excuse for slinging the charge of false equivocation at anyone willing to point out the obvious need for mutual restraint. There is a desperate need to avoid this sort of needless provocation, and it is becoming clearer by the day that John McCain is all but incapable of doing that. [...]