Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7274/1/

John McCain: General Patton or General Buck Turgidson?

By Norman Markowitz
Archives - Dates and Topics 2008 – online July – August 2008 Aug. 1 – Aug. 31, 2008 click here for related stories: peace/antiwar

8-18-08, 10:05 am


The Republican Right and their many friends and allies in the media are attacking Barack Obama for saying little about the Russia-Georgia conflict. Obama made an initial statement, which was strongly critical of Russia, but called for a United Nations role and made no direct threats. McCain, meanwhile, has tried to reenact George C. Scott's role as General Patton by shouting empty threats at the Russians and providing military band cheerleading for Saakashivili's U.S. influenced Georgian government but has managed little more than replaying George C. Scott's role as General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.

First, let me say I hold no brief for the Russian government, which I regard as a government seeking to develop a state capitalist path for the Russian federation – one that would consolidate the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and strengthen the "new class" of state connected capitalists, running both public and private industries on capitalist profit maximization principles. I don't regard it in any way as "worse" than the Georgian government, however. Georgia is led by a man who in essence comes from the US, has identified strongly with both Georgian national chauvinism and the Reagan-Bush "free market" capitalist ideology, which has led to disaster everywhere. Also, he rose to power in Georgia in an election that was by many accounts more suspicious than the election of either Putin or his successor Medvedev.

We should also remember that there is also a North Ossetia in Russia, that the separatist regions of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, have there own issues and have acted independently since the dismemberment of the Soviet Union (which in effect, made conflicts like this pretty much inevitable), and that the Georgian regime's attempt to regain control over these regions was the trigger for the Russian military action.

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But, while I may have some disagreements with Senator Obama's statement, I understand it. More importantly, I applaud him for doing what an American president should do in a situation like this: avoid, as much as possible, empty threats that do little more than intensify conflict with Russia, which remains, because of its nuclear arsenals, the second greatest military power on earth.

Obama's actions are a clear example of a president who will move away from Bush's isolating and destructive military unilateralism.

It brings to mind previous presidents with serious military backgrounds, like President Eisenhower in the 1950s, who, as a professional military commander, understood that generals like Patton were useful in specific combat situations, but should never be allowed to make policy. Eisenhower, to take another example, might have tried to use the CIA to overthrow Saddam, but, if he were around after the 9/11 attacks, would not have ordered an invasion of Iraq, because it made no strategic or tactical sense, except to those who wished to weaken the US.

McCain, however, makes no such distinctions. As Eisenhower's son, John, said of his father, "he was never a military fanatic." McCain always has been, however, and that is a very good reason why even some of those who have no interest in the deepening economic crisis in the US, its effects on health care, housing, basic infrastructure, should think twice about voting for John McCain. He could conceivably get them, along with the rest of us, killed over Iraq, Iran, or even South Ossetia.

An article in the New York Times this week presents an outline of McCain's record on calling for military strikes against country's he deems our enemy. The record shows how McCain, without any assistance from now infamous "neoconservative" advisers, has out-Bushed Bush when it comes to calling for military intervention since the September 11 attacks.

The article shows that McCain flew off the handle and began to call for military attacks against a whole group of countries, Syria, Iraq, and Iran along with Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. (Interestingly, he didn't say anything about Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, the points of origin of most of the 9/11 hijackers).

McCain publicly focused on Iraq as the country to attack by October 2001, well before the Bush administration made the decision to launch a public relations effort to justify war there. On January 2, 2002, on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, McCain, shouted to the sailors: "next up, Baghdad."

If Eisenhower were around, and McCain had any military command, the historical record suggests that Eisenhower would have immediately removed him from that command. You make that sort of belligerent statement in Hollywood movies, not in reality.

McCain's actions also show, for those not lost in a world of Hollywood war movies and History Channel sendups of battle, that he really is a fool, with no strategic sense of anything. The countries he listed as enemies had no real connection of any kind with Al Qaeda and, whatever else they were, were enemies of what Al Qaeda is. History shows that responding to crises by making military action the first resort and seeking to expand military action in terms of the number of enemies you have leads most of the time to defeat.

The article also quotes McCain addressing a NATO conference in Munich in 2002 pushing for action against Iraq and stating of the September 11 attacks, "a better world is already emerging from the rubble."

Really. A better world, meaning more militarism, more intervention? If Bush had listened to McCain, the war against Iraq might have become even worse than it is today, a general regional war involving Iran, Syria, Israel, and who knows who else.

But has McCain learned anything from the last five years? Does he regret anything? Like other reactionaries, he learns nothing and forgets nothing. He blames any "errors" he may have made on the Iraqi government's actions and statements which "misled" him. In a moment really worthy of General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove, McCain wrote, an email last week on the September 11 attacks, which still claimed that the Saddam Hussein "demonstrated the grave threat posed by a hostile regime, possessing weapons of mass destruction, and with reported ties to terrorists...he [Hussein] posed a threat we had to take seriously...." The September 11 attacks show the necessity of action, McCain postured, "to prevent outlaw states, like Iran today, from developing weapons of mass destruction."

Think about the breathtaking and sinister ignorance of that statement. In McCain's view, the US was threatened by a regime that all serious intelligence showed possessed NO "weapons of mass destruction," with years of UN inspection to prove it. On the claim of "reported ties to terrorists," US intelligence knew at the time, and everyone now knows, were fabrications created by those who wanted war and were ready to reject anything that stood in their way. What we can learn from all of this, McCain seems to be suggesting, is the necessity of using the same methods to launch military action against Iran.

The article goes on to reveal McCain to be more like Buck Turgidson than Patton. For those who believe that McCain will somehow break with Bush's Strangelovian "neoconservative" advisers, the Times article shows that he has identified with the neoconservatives and their foreign policy platform since 1997, while Bush was still governor of Texas. In fact, McCain anticipated many neoconservative themes by labeling Iran, Iraq, and Serbia as enemies and by attacking the Clinton administration for its failures to act against these governments during the 2000 Republican primary campaign. All of this, while Bush campaigned ironically on de-emphasizing foreign policy issues.

All that McCain's advisers can say is that he didn't go along with the "neocons" entirely. In an effort to break with Bush, they insist that he supported "indirect" US action to fund the overthrow of these regimes. These are incredibly hollow statements from advisers who now criticize Obama for not supporting or pursuing the same policies that produced the disaster in Iraq.

John McCain doesn't understand that those who profit the most from wars are those who do the least fighting. He doesn't understand that there is both a social economic foundation to the conditions that lead to wars and that there are diplomatic policies and solutions that have and can prevent war. It is John McCain who has learned nothing from his military experiences, except to do it all over again but do it better this time.

Although it is clear that Dwight Eisenhower was no progressive on domestic issues, I will go far out on a limb and say that if he were around he would (with no public endorsement) vote for Barack Obama over John McCain. He would do so because he would, as a lifelong professional soldier, realize how dangerous someone with McCain's mindset would be to the country and to to world peace and stability. As president he always pulled such people back both in the Pentagon and in Congress. If John McCain reaches the White House, no one will be able to pull him back.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.


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