It's Personal
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Iraq | John McCain | War — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I'm sure that someone, somewhere, is going to claim that John McCain's support of the reconstruction effort in Iraq is oh-so-convenient because, as a powerful Senator, he risks nothing personally by supporting the war. Sure, he may run a political risk thanks to his position as he seeks the Presidency, but what are political risks--after all, as a high and mighty politician, McCain surely can't understand the personal costs of the struggle, can he? Why even Kevin Drum has decided to simplify McCain's line of thinking for his audience by stating that "McCain is in love with war and the military."
One struggles to understand how it is that someone like John McCain, who was imprisoned and tortured under horrifically brutal conditions and who carries the severe physical limitations of that horrifically brutal torture could possibly be "in love with war." McCain--being a sane, intelligent and rational human being, as well as one who is conversant with war in ways few others could possibly be--likely hates and despises war and while he is certainly supportive of the military, he is seared and affected by his experience in Vietnam. He may view war as a sometimes tragically necessary tool of statecraft, but only a madman could love it and McCain is no madman.
But assume for a moment that it has been far too long a time since McCain's captivity for him to fully and vividly recall the horrors of war. Just out of curiosity, does this do enough to demonstrate to McCain's critics that he does not take the decision to press on in Iraq lightly?
And no, the reconstruction effort is not right merely because the McCains have flesh and blood staked in it. But neither is the Senator unaware or ignorant of the stakes. People should stop thinking that he is and they should stop reducing a terribly personal and emotional--as well as intellectually wrenching--decision to the simplistic "McCain is in love with war and the military" formulation that Drum and others appear to favor.
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Now they want to chickenhawk McCain.
Jimmy McCain, 19, who returned from Iraq in mid-February, is stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. Jack McCain, 21, is poised to graduate from the Naval Academy and could join the Marines as a second lieutenant.
At a time when Democrats are calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, McCain has refused to use his children’s experience to strengthen his arguments for keeping the U.S. military in the Middle Eastern country (emphasis mine)
I guess they just have to find some way to turn his strengths against him. If you have two candidates and neither has the slightest to recommend them you have to try political judo.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I'm not to sure why anyone would consider loving the military a bad thing but hey, what do I know.
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle
for longer than the Iraq war has gone on, but literally has skin (flesh and blood, genetic legacy, etc.) in the game, and Democrats belittle him. The fact that they belittle both Republican "chickenhawks" and Republican veterans, POWs, and parents of active military, says it all.
I have serious issues with McCain but again he is a giant among the pygmies of the MSM and Democrat party. It's funny how the loons on the left concentrate the mind.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
absentee