[Rhodes22-list] The Irony of War (Political)

[Brad Haslett]

Herb,

Beautiful!  You had me hooked, for a while there I thought you had
just read "War and Decision".  Ironically, we hear a lot these days
about "war monger" Senator John McCain so I've included a brief
article about his history in the House and Senate.  The guy's a bit
difficult to pin down on some things.

Brad

------------------------


TWIN CITIES 2008: NATIONAL SECURITY
No Simple Answer From McCain On Military Force
Throughout John McCain's career, the former Navy pilot has been
difficult to pigeonhole on the crucial question of when to deploy U.S.
forces.

Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008
by Kirk Victor

In 1983, his first year in the House, John McCain felt he had to split
with President Reagan on a pressing national security issue. Reagan,
whom McCain greatly admired, was urging Congress to pass a resolution
to keep the Marines in Lebanon for 18 months as part of a
multinational peacekeeping force to back up a shaky government.

But the then-47-year-old lawmaker thought that peace could not hold in
Lebanon, given the ferocity of the warring factions inside the
country. The former Navy pilot concluded that Reagan's objectives were
simply unachievable, especially with the small force that the
president wanted to deploy: Marines would be lost and the United
States' reputation would suffer.

McCain's stance put him at odds with most other lawmakers and marked
the first time that he, as an elected official, wrestled with deciding
when it is appropriate to deploy U.S. military might. He took a
measured approach to the use of force--a trait that has been evident
throughout his career despite some critics' contention that as a
former military man, McCain would be too quick to pull the trigger in
international confrontations.

Judging from his 25 years on Capitol Hill and his writings, McCain
decides on a case-by-case basis whether U.S. national security must be
protected through military action. If so, he believes that the
military should proceed full bore. But, as shown by his position on
Lebanon, McCain does not believe that deciding against using force,
even when prevailing sentiment favors it, is a sign of weakness.

"The wrong caricature of McCain is that every problem is a nail and
every answer is a hammer," observed James Lindsay, director of the
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the
University of Texas. "The episode in '83 also speaks to the fact that
Senator McCain historically has been willing to speak his mind, even
when in a traditional sense it may not have been in his political
interests to do so."

Despite his conviction that the Lebanese mission was doomed, McCain
took no pleasure in bucking Reagan. His stance attracted more media
attention than a first-term lawmaker typically would get, because of
his fame for having withstood horrific treatment as a prisoner of war
in Vietnam for more than five years.

"A freshman Republican, particularly one who had been a professional
military officer, was expected to support the commander-in-chief in
all national security matters," McCain wrote in his 2002 book, Worth
the Fighting For. "And I did not then, nor would I now, object lightly
to any president's call to arms, especially from a president to whom I
felt personally loyal.... I would have much preferred giving the
president my support, had I thought his policy had a chance in hell of
being successful."

In a speech on the House floor, McCain explained his position. "The
longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave," he
said. "We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops
there in the first place.... I also recognize that our prestige may
suffer in the short term, but I am more concerned with our long-term
national interests."

Ultimately, the resolution easily passed 260-170, but less than a
month later two suicide bombers killed 241 U.S. marines and 58 French
soldiers. The marines soon "redeployed" out of Lebanon.

Fast-forward to today and McCain is quick to say he took another
political risk when he strongly advocated a troop surge in Iraq, again
putting him at odds for months with a president of his own
party--until President Bush embraced the tactic in the face of the
political cognoscenti. That decision rescued Iraq from "the abyss of
defeat" and "opened the way for something approaching normal political
and economic life for the average Iraqi," McCain contended in an April
speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

That stance was consistent with his position in Lebanon, said Carl M.
Smith, who flew jets with McCain in the Navy and supports him today.
"The question regarding the surge was not, should we go to war, but,
now that we are there should we fight and win this war? What he is
saying is, if you are going to deploy the military, do it right. Don't
do it halfhearted and don't give them missions that they are not
trained to perform."

Over his congressional career, McCain has supported force in some
instances and opposed it in others; his approach cannot be easily
pigeonholed. He backed the 1990 decision to expel Saddam Hussein from
Kuwait, for example. McCain later came to believe that President
George H.W. Bush made a serious mistake by not toppling Hussein,
though he acknowledges that he, too, had initially opposed such
action.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, McCain, like most
lawmakers, favored action in Afghanistan to take out the Taliban-led
government. A year later he supported Congress's use-of-force
resolution to oust Saddam from Iraq.

"In this new era, preventive action to target rogue regimes is not
only imaginable but necessary," he said in Senate debate.

Of his foreign-policy philosophy, the four-term senator has called
himself a "realistic idealist" and spoken in favor of multilateral
approaches. "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by
ourselves, and we do not want to," McCain said in March. "We need to
listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic
allies."

It was not a new theme. In Worth the Fighting For, McCain wrote: "As
powerful a nation as we are, as good a nation as we are, we are not
omnipotent, and we cannot impose our values by force of arms
everywhere they are threatened. But where both our values and our
security interests are at risk ... we are obliged to defend them by
whatever means necessary."

To that end, McCain opposed using force in Somalia in 1993. The first
President Bush had deployed troops there on a humanitarian mission to
ease the famine. But when that mission evolved under President Clinton
to include keeping peace among warring factions, McCain saw the
situation as ill-defined and risky.

In 1994, Clinton withdrew U.S. forces from Somalia after 18 troops
were killed and more than 70 wounded in a bloody firefight. McCain
suggests in his book that Clinton was loath to deploy ground troops
throughout the remainder of his presidency--a mind-set that the
Arizonan views as dangerous for a commander-in-chief.

"When the use of force was necessary to protect American interests,
[Clinton] would seldom consider any option other than cruise missile
strikes and a few inconsequential bombing runs," McCain wrote in Worth
the Fighting For. "I became more convinced that my early assessment of
the president's leadership as timorous and uncertain was, if anything,
understated."

That issue of optimal force level was at the forefront of the debate
when NATO responded to the Serbs' invasion of Kosovo in 1999. McCain
supported Clinton's decision to join NATO air strikes, but he
blistered the president for ruling out the use of ground forces.

In the Senate, McCain argued that by limiting the U.S. action to air
strikes, Clinton emboldened the murderous onslaught of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic. The president's "indefensible ruling out
of ground troops," McCain said, made Milosevic feel "safe enough to
... displace, rape, and murder more Kosovars more quickly than he
could have if he feared he might face the mightiest army on earth.
That is a fact of this war that is undeniable. And shame on the
president for creating it."

Ultimately, the NATO-led bombardment led Serb troops to withdraw.
Still, McCain wrote that Clinton's "spasmodic, irresolute, and
reactive approaches to international security problems" reflected
"self-doubt [and] a mystifying uncertainty of how to behave in a world
in which America was the only superpower."

McCain's sometimes harsh rhetoric strikes a different chord abroad
than it does at home, said Alton Frye, senior fellow emeritus at the
Council on Foreign Relations. "The senator's strong national security
credentials, his capacity for having shown courage and willingness to
make tough decisions reassures the domestic audience that this is a
man you can depend on to make firm decisions," Frye said. "But if you
look at it abroad, the perception from a number of friends, as well as
potential adversaries, is one of potential bellicosity. So he has a
balance to strike between reassurance at home and avoiding bellicosity
abroad, while establishing the necessary deterrent that is certainly
his first objective."

Most recently, McCain was quick--even faster than the Bush
administration--to blast Russia following its invasion of the former
Soviet republic of Georgia. He charged that Russia's military action
was designed to restore its old empire. Critics jumped on that early
tough talk as reflecting McCain's increasingly provocative stance
against Russia. He subsequently said that an independent,
international peacekeeping force should be deployed and that the U.S
must work with allies to persuade Russia to withdraw and to airlift
humanitarian aid to Georgia. After a few days, Democrat Barack Obama's
statements gradually began to echo McCain's mix of strong rhetoric and
multilateralism.

Of course, predicting how a candidate will make decisions as
commander-in-chief is hazardous. "We don't know how they are going to
view the world when, all of a sudden, they are no longer on the
sidelines telling people what to do but have to bear that burden
themselves," Lindsay said. "This is sort of the pig-in-a-poke quality
of all presidential elections."

Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, says that
those who worry that McCain will be too quick to send in the Marines
have the wrong impression. "The idea that Senator McCain, who
sacrificed so much for his country, would be anything less than
extremely circumspect in ordering our men and women in uniform
overseas is ridiculous," he said. "The use of military force is a last
resort--only when all other options have been exhausted and only if it
is warranted by what we hope to achieve and what interests are at
stake. Senator McCain has said repeatedly that he knows firsthand the
costs of war and that he hates war."


 NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.


On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Herb Parsons <hparsons at parsonsys.com> wrote:
> No one likes war. War is a horrific affair, bloody and expensive.
> Sending our men and women into battle to perhaps die or be maimed is an
> unconscionable thought.
>
>
> Yet some wars need to be waged, and someone needs to lead. The citizenry
> and Congress are often ambivalent or largely opposed to any given war.
> It's up to our leader to convince them. That's why we call the leader
> 'Commander in Chief.'
>
>
> George W.'s war was no different. There was lots of resistance to it.
> Many in Congress were vehemently against the idea. The Commander in
> Chief had to lobby for legislative approval.
>
>
> Along with supporters, George W. used the force of his convictions, the
> power of his title and every ounce of moral suasion he could muster to
> rally support. He had to assure Congress and the public that the war was
> morally justified, winnable and affordable. Congress eventually came
> around and voted overwhelmingly to wage war.
>
> George W. then lobbied foreign governments for support.  But in the end,
> only one European nation helped us. The rest of the world sat on its
> hands and watched.
>
>
> After a few quick victories, things started to go bad. There were many
> dark days when all the news was discouraging. Casualties began to mount.
> It became obvious that our forces were too small. Congress began to drag
> its feet about funding the effort.
>
> Many who had voted to support the war just a few years earlier were
> beginning to speak against it and accuse the Commander in Chief of
> misleading them. Many critics began to call him incompetent, an idiot
> and even a liar. Journalists joined the negative chorus with a vengeance.
>
>
> As the war entered its fourth year, the public began to grow weary of
> the conflict and the casualties. George W.'s popularity plummeted. Yet
> through it all, he stood firm, supporting the troops and endorsing the
> struggle.
>
>
> Without his unwavering support, the war would have surely ended, then
> and there, in overwhelming and total defeat.
> At this darkest of times, he began to make some changes. More troops
> were added and trained. Some advisers were shuffled, and new generals
> installed.
>
>
> Then, unexpectedly and gradually, things began to improve. Now it was
> the enemy that appeared to be growing weary of the lengthy conflict and
> losing support. Victories began to come, and hope returned.
>
>
> Many critics in Congress and the press said the improvements were just
> George W.'s good luck. The progress, they said, would be temporary. He
> knew, however, that in warfare good fortune counts.
>
>
> Then, in the unlikeliest of circumstances and perhaps the most historic
> example of military luck, the enemy blundered and was resoundingly
> defeated. After six long years of war, the Commander in Chief basked in
> a most hard-fought victory.
>
>
> So on that historic day, Oct. 19, 1781, in a place called Yorktown , a
> satisfied George Washington sat upon his beautiful white horse and
> accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, effectively ending
> the Revolutionary War.
>
>
> What?   Were you thinking of someone else?
>
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