What Does John McCain Think?

Digby writes:

Hullabaloo: A reader sent me this link to the Cunningrealist from May 5 and I was surprised by what it contained. Were you aware that John McCain wrote the foreward to an edition of The Best And the Brightest? And were you aware that it said this?

It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

Will anyone ask him about this?

Comments

[Eric]

No, it's too scary.

[Eric]

No, it's too scary.

[Eric]

No, it's too scary.

[Monte Davis]

Sounds almost like one of those America-hating Winter Soldiers (pick your vintage).

[bigTom]

I don't see it as all that incongruous a statement. He essentially says he has a big problem with America entering a war whose price of victory is greater than the country is prepared to pay. Our response to this reasonable viewpoint, is to be sure the carefully evaluate the possible costs before committing, and once committed, to not to shy away from continually asking whether the expected future cost is worth the expected future gain. John McCain resolves the issue differently, once we are committed and have taken loses, it is the duty of the country to pay any price for victory. Both methods seek to avoid contradicting hid dictum. Only McCain's avoids the possibility of the responsibility for getting it wrong falling on the decision maker.

[RKKA]

"Since war is not a senseless act of passion, but is controlled by the political object, the value of the object must determine the sacrifice to be made for it, both in magnitude and also in duration. When the level of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow."

Needless to say, Karl von Clausewitz would agree with BigTom, and disagree with the good Senator. But what did he know of the relationship between war and policy, huh?

[Hedley Lamarr]

I don't know about you all, but I sure as hell lack the resolve for Iraq. It's a quagmire, dudes!

[bigTom]

Hedley: Not only is it a quagmire, but an illegal/immoral resource grab at gunpoint. It is currently out of the news because the security situation has temporarily improved. I say temporarily, because the security agreement we are (as we read this) trying to ram down their throats is a totally absurd abrogation of Iraqi sovereignty, which if we try to make stick will lead to rebellion. But our main stream media won't cover that, as it does not help sell cars nor beer.

[christofay]

bigTom: the big push is to shill for investment products whether internet gems like Pets.com or the mutual funds that load up on them or that perpetual California Gold Rush the appreciating single family home

cars specifically SUVs are the things that you park in the driveway of the increasingly appreciating asset the house

beer is the reward for borrowing all that money for the asset

[Doug]

RKKA, it's better in the original German, but the point holds.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

The Vietnam thing was really a bitch; I'm not going to recap what I've said elsewhere here.

But one morning I was on the bus from the LA red-eye, and the guy next to me was a junior officer back from 'Nam on the way to a Washington staff job.

Washington was largely in flames that month. Not a happy populace.

Your factoid du jour: the much maligned at that time essentially peckerwoood police force of DC did not spend most of their time putting down rioters: their major activity was putting up road blocks, particularly n the Maryland suburbs, to keep NRA and other weirdie groups from coming into town to do some gratuitous killing.

Just thought you'd like to know that...

-dlj