For McCain, the war is the only real issue
By Terry Mcdermott
April 11, 2007 in print edition A-1
John McCain has gotten himself stuck in an almost inescapable political dilemma. Formerly a keen critic of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, McCain finds himself lambasted for – and his presidential ambitions hostage to – his outspoken defense of the administration’s latest Iraq policy shift: the “surge.”
In the process, the Republican senator from Arizona has alienated almost everybody. And you know what? He doesn’t really care, certainly not enough to begin doubting his decisions.
Rather than run from the issue, McCain, characteristically, has put the war at the center of his campaign. He is scheduled to give what his campaign advertises as a major address reemphasizing that point this afternoon at the Virginia Military Institute.
In that sense, today will not be much different than any other in the campaign. He talks about the war at every stop. He often brings it up unbidden, when voters are asking about immigration or education or any of the other 1,001 issues that concern them. He won’t run from it and seems to insist that they not either. He refuses to allow failure as an option.
“I would be derelict if I did not talk to you about the issue that is taking American lives,” he said by way of introduction in a recent speech to a room full of Republicans in northern Iowa. “And we’re sacrificing so much, so much of America’s greatest treasure on behalf of somebody else’s freedom. All of us are frustrated, all of us are saddened, all of us are unhappy about what has happened in Iraq. I know that many of you know that many mistakes were made. You know that this war was mismanaged. But the fact is we are where we are.”
Getting the dead weight of those mistakes hung around his neck while trying to navigate the open water of a presidential campaign, he said later, “is the ultimate irony.”
Then he shrugged.
“First of all, I can’t let it worry me,” he said. “I can’t let it bother me because it’s too important. It’s a trite phrase, but I’d rather lose the campaign than lose the war. So I recognize what’s at stake, but I can’t worry about it. The second thing is, how can you really with a straight face walk into a town hall meeting and not talk about the issue that is costing American lives even as we speak?”
He mentioned seeing a news report that morning on the deaths of five American soldiers. “How can I not talk about it?” he asked. “You just have to. Kids are dying.”
Former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, one of McCain’s oldest friends in politics, said McCain’s critics completely misunderstood the man if they thought he would begin to backpedal any time soon – or ever.
“John has everything at stake, and he knows it,” Cohen said. “The politics has moved away from him on this. He looks as though he’s out of touch with reality when in fact he’s in touch with what he believes in to his core.”
That core, especially on matters of national security, is simple and so deep-seated that people who know him suggest it can’t be changed. It’s not about a political position McCain has taken. It’s about who he is.
McCain, a career Navy man before entering politics, has written fondly of learning to command big ships in tight quarters. In those terms, he’s back on the bridge again and has ordered all engines ahead full speed.
‘Go to the finish’
For as long as anyone who knows him can remember, John McCain was the cut-up, the impudent towel-snapper, a wiseacre who could command a room not by any sense of authority but with a wink and a nod and the practiced charm of a born salesman.
He seemed destined to be the underachieving son and grandson of Navy admirals. He followed them – more out of inertia than intent – into the service and became a carrier pilot. Carrier pilots are not notably contemplative people, and McCain seemed a good candidate to live a rambunctious life with no more seriousness, no more weight, than a feather.
Then he went to war, and his attack aircraft was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. He spent the next 5 1/2 years as a prisoner, often in horrifying circumstances. He was tortured repeatedly.
It was during those years, his early 30s, McCain later wrote, that he found a purpose beyond himself: “I fell in love with my country
The strapping young fighter jock returned home a crippled, emaciated man, but one with a new sense of purpose, which he eventually turned to politics.
Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart, an early McCain political mentor, said it was “typical that John would stick to his position on the Iraq war. He believes very strongly in consistency, in persistence. A lot of that has to do with his military upbringing and his experience in the war. He believes that once you go in, you go to win. And you go to the finish.”
Endurance, in fact, is the lone goal and signal triumph of a POW who survives captivity. It is a triumph of will, and it is hard to imagine that history not having an effect on McCain’s approach to Iraq.
Although he often brushes aside suggestions that his Vietnam War experience was formative, McCain has put it to work in his campaigns. Even when making light of his plight – “I managed to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane,” he says – he makes sure his listeners appreciate the seriousness with which it imbued him.
He tells campaign audiences, “I know at this difficult time when we face this incredible evil that wants to destroy everything we stand for and believe in, my friends, I have the knowledge, I have the experience, I have the background. I know the face of war, and I know the face of evil.”
McCain’s temperament tends toward impatience; he is a man of action, not retrospection. On the campaign trail, this can be problematic. Even sitting down, he gives a sense of wanting to move on. “C’mon, c’mon, give me what you got,” he’ll say to reporters, with a staccato drumming of his fingertips on a tabletop. His aides, more wary than he, watch. There is little they can do but avert their eyes from the scene of the crime – the crime being, of course, the mortal sin of politics: going off message, saying what you really think.
At a stop earlier this year in Seattle, a questioner suggested that McCain had been “sucking up to the religious right” and wondered when he might start “sucking up to the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party.”
You could see McCain knew better than to respond in kind, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m probably going to get in trouble,” he said, a grin spreading across his face, “but what’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?”
That was a blunter statement than his campaign advisors probably appreciated, but it seemed a fair summation of McCain’s broad early strategy to win the 2008 GOP nomination.
McCain’s basic political beliefs are very conservative, but on most issues he is more than ready to seek compromises in the interests of getting something done. Thus, he has worked on different issues with a succession of liberal Democrats, the mere mention of whose names are often laugh lines at other GOP candidates’ campaign rallies.
To allay the suspicion that he was some sort of closet liberal, McCain, in the last few years, reached out to critics on the religious right, looking for common ground there as well.
The result has been fusillades of criticism from all sides. Rather than placating everyone, he offended them all. And then came the war. National security issues are the exception to his general tendency to seek compromise. On those he is unyielding.
Believing the intelligence that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, McCain favored the invasion of Iraq but called for more troops almost from the beginning. He said repeatedly that until Americans provided genuine security for the population, there was little hope of rebuilding the structures of a peaceful, civil society. He has been fiercely critical of the conduct of the war, at one point calling Donald H. Rumsfeld the worst secretary of Defense in American history.
In an interview, he characterized his worldview as a combination of Wilsonian principles (the general notion that the United States has a special, benevolent role to play in world affairs) and realpolitik (the notion that the U.S. must recognize the difference between what is desirable and what is possible and choose the latter). McCain said there were often tensions between the two goals. That is a notable understatement in that the two ideals are nearly opposite one another.
‘It is the right road’
McCain says that like most military men he is often reluctant to commit American troops to war, but once you do, you go with all the force you can muster, and you stay until you win.
He reads history and writings about current affairs voraciously but gives little if any sign that the information he takes in ever yields contradictions. He says, for example, that Islamic extremism is the leading threat to American security, and he acknowledges that the threat has worsened because of the Iraq war but sees no reason because of this to rethink the rationale for the invasion or the argument for staying.
“Was [Iraq] at the beginning a part of the war on terror? I think you could make a strong argument that it was not, even though I think [Hussein] was a danger and a threat. But I think it now has become one, a central battlefield in the war on terror,” he said.
Cohen said it was not that McCain was unaware of complications. He is fully informed, but he fits everything into his broad conception of what is right and wrong. “He doesn’t want to engage in ambiguity at all,” he said.
McCain says Americans should know within months, not years, whether success is likely in Iraq, but if it is, it will take years, not months, to achieve. To stop short of that would be to embolden all of America’s enemies, he says.
In his speech today, according to a prepared text, McCain will ask for patience:
“I know the pain war causes. I understand the frustration caused by our mistakes in this war. I sympathize with the fatigue of the American people. And I regret sincerely the additional sacrifices imposed on the brave Americans who defend us. But I also know the toll a lost war takes on an army and a country. We, who are willing to support this new strategy and give [Army Gen. David H.] Petraeus the time and support he needs, have chosen a hard road. But it is the right road.”
He sees signs of significant progress. These include increased cooperation with tribal leaders in heavily Sunni Al Anbar province, and increased security for civilians in Baghdad. He says the U.S. has a chance to succeed, but success is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed, he says, are the consequences of failure – “chaos and genocide, and they will follow us home.”
“If you think things are bad now, if we withdraw, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he says.