Woe is McCain: Bad Temper, Bad Foreign Policy

I couldn't help but be disturbed by this recent ten-page article in Rolling Stone called "Make Believe Maverick." It goes into John McCain's policy stances, but also his character, tracing forward from when he was young. It highlights the ways he has skated by because of his family name, from getting into college to keeping his Navy "wings" after multiple crashes. I'd encourage anyone who's thinking of voting his way Tuesday to read the entire article (you can also view a short video Rolling Stone did in conjunction with the article here). I wanted to paste the section on his foreign policy from the article below, but before I do, here are a few quick lines on his infamous temper:

"Over the years, John McCain has demonstrated a streak of anger so nasty that even his former flacks make no effort to spin it away. 'If I tried to convince you he does not have a temper, you should hang up on me and ridicule me in print,' says Dan Schnur, who served as McCain's press man during the 2000 campaign. Even McCain admits to an 'immature and unprofessional reaction to slights' that is 'little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy.'...

At least three of McCain's GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain's 'temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.' Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn't 'want this guy anywhere near a trigger.' And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that 'the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded.' "

Now, here's the pretty damning section on McCain's foreign policy stances over the years, though I believe it fairly discusses how he was more moderate in the past:

"The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.

'He's going to be Bush on steroids,' says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. 'His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun.'

McCain used to believe passionately in the limits of American military power. In 1993, he railed against Clinton's involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. The following year he blasted the idealistic aims of sending U.S. troops to Haiti, taking to the Senate floor to propose an immediate withdrawal. He even started out a fierce opponent of NATO air strikes on Serbia during the war in the Balkans.

But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against 'trading American blood for Iraqi blood' had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a 'sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity.' By 1999, McCain was championing what he called 'rogue state rollback.' First on the hit list: Iraq.

Privately, McCain brags that he was the 'original neocon.' And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. 'There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States,' he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. 'It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others.' A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that 'some other countries' — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.

A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that 'we'll do fine' in Afghanistan. He then added, unbidden, 'The second phase is Iraq. Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.'

Later that month on Larry King, McCain raised the specter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before he peddled what became Dick Cheney's favorite lie: 'The Czech government has revealed meetings, contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mohamed Atta. The evidence is very clear. . . . So we will have to act.' On Nightline, he again flogged the Czech story and cited Iraqi defectors to claim that 'there is no doubt as to [Saddam's] avid pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. That, coupled with his relations with terrorist organizations, I think, is a case that the administration will be making as we move step by step down this road.'

That December, just as U.S. forces were bearing down on Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, McCain joined with five senators in an open letter to the White House. 'In the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power,' they insisted, claiming that there was 'no doubt' that Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction 'against the United States and its allies.'

In January 2002, McCain made a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. While he was there, he dropped by a supercarrier stationed in the Arabian Sea that was dear to his heart: the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the giant floating pork project that he had driven through over President Carter's veto. On board the carrier, McCain called Iraq a 'clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America.' Standing on the flight bridge, he watched as fighter planes roared off, en route to Afghanistan — where Osama bin Laden had already slipped away. 'Next up, Baghdad!' McCain whooped.

Over the next 15 months leading up to the invasion, McCain continued to lead the rush to war. In November 2002, Scheunemann set up a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq at the same address as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The groups worked in such close concert that at one point they got their Websites crossed. The CLI was established with explicit White House backing to sell the public on the war. The honorary co-chair of the committee: John Sidney McCain III.

In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be 'fairly easy' with an 'overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.' On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, 'Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?'

McCain was emphatic: 'Absolutely. Absolutely.'

Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. 'The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach,' he said in August 2006, 'which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.' McCain also claims he urged Bush to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 'I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go,' he said in a January primary debate. Except that he didn't. Not once. As late as May 2004, in fact, McCain praised Rumsfeld for doing 'a fine job.'

Indeed, McCain's neocon makeover is so extreme that Republican generals like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have refused to endorse their party's nominee [After this article was written, Powell endorsed Obama]. 'The fact of the matter is his judgment about what to do in Iraq was wrong,' says Richard Clarke, who served as Bush's counterterrorism czar until 2003. 'He hung out with people like Ahmad Chalabi. He said Iraq was going to be easy, and he said we were going to war because of terrorism. We should have been fighting in Afghanistan with more troops to go after Al Qaeda. Instead we're at risk because of the mistaken judgment of people like John McCain.' "

Again, the full ten-page article can be read here.