For McCain, the war is the only real issue
By Terry McDermott
April 11,
2007
Los Angeles Times
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.
