Full Metal McCain [Source]

The outbreak of war in the Caucuses offers a disturbing and somewhat surreal taste of what to expect from John McCain should he become our nation’s Commander in Chief.

As the centuries-old ethnic animosities between Georgia and Ossetia boiled over into another armed conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia, McCain issued a stark-raving statement from Des Moines.

It's disturbingly reminiscent of the language used in the lead-up to NATO’s war against Yugoslavia in 1999, a war McCain zealously pushed for:

“We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation,” McCain said.

Calling on NATO to “stabilize this dangerous situation” is not going down well with Russia, where images of dead Russian peacekeepers and of frightened Ossetian refugees streaming across its borders have put the country in a very vengeful mood.

It’s hard to imagine what measures NATO could take under a McCain presidency, but in the mind of a man who thinks US troops should stay in Iraq for 100 years, and who runs around singing “Bomb Bomb Iran!” it’s not hard to guess–and even harder not to be horrified by what it may mean come January 2009, should he win.

McCain’s call to NATO-ize the war is not only frightening, it’s also delusional: both NATO and US forces are already stretched beyond the breaking point, even by Joint Chief of Staff chairman Michael Millen’s own recent assessment.

But McCain’s brain remains undeterred by reality, a fact that became painfully clear today in Des Moines when he also demanded, “The US should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course.”

The problem with McCain’s bold demand about going to the UN is that Russia already tried doing exactly what McCain called for–and got rejected by McCain’s neocon pals in the Bush Administration.

last Friday morning, Russia convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council, calling on both sides to immediately cease hostilities, return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force–but the last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili refused to do.

The Bush Administration showed that it too has no patience with crunchy “renounce the use of force” resolutions. According to a Reuters report from earlier in the day:

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a Russian-drafted statement.

The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the United States, Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides “to renounce the use of force,” council diplomats said.

The meaning of this is clear: the United States and Britain were backing Saakashvili’s invasion.

Why would we back Saakashvili’s reckless war, when last year even Bush was denouncing the Pinochet-wannabe’s violent attack on his own people during a peaceful opposition protest in Georgia’s capital, as well as shutting down the opposition media and exiling of political opponents?

That would be a brain-teaser if the last seven years hadn’t answered this question so many painful times already.

But with McCain, answering this is a little trickier. When he issued the Des Moines statement calling for Russia to do what Russia already did a few hours earlier, you have to ask yourself: e

Either McCain’s short-term memory is totally shot, encased in an impenetrable tomb of aluminum-zirconium plaque… or worse, McCain simply doesn’t give a damn about reality, he just wants to get Georgia’s war on, as badly as Saakashvili does.

The awful truth is probably a combination of the two, which is the worst of all worlds, considering McCain’s raving Russophobia, and his campaign team’s financial and ideological ties to Saakashvili. As has been reported, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor, neocon Randy Scheunemann, has a long financial relationship with Saakashvili to lobby his interests in the United States.

The Cold Warmonger [Source]

Aides to Republican Sen. John McCain were scrambling last Thursday morning even as his plane was descending into Des Moines. Russia had escalated its aggression in the bordering Republic of Georgia, they told reporters, and McCain wanted to seize the moment.

On the ground in Iowa, advance men raced to erect a podium on the tarmac, just feet from McCain's plane.

The Republican nominee strode to the microphone for the first of several blistering statements condemning Russia's moves, delivering his comments well before President Bush spoke publicly about the incident.

"Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory," he said, interrupted by the sound of jets taking off.

Since then, McCain's rhetoric has become increasingly sharp. On Tuesday, he called Russia an unrepentant combatant against a "brave little nation" and compared Russian "killing" in the "tiny little democracy" to Soviet aggression during the Cold War era.

"We've seen this movie before in Prague and Budapest," McCain said on Fox News. "And I'm not saying we are reigniting the Cold War, but, this is an act of aggression in which we didn't think we'd see in the 21st century. "

For McCain's team, it has become the latest incarnation of what Sen. Hillary Clinton once called the "3 a.m. moment," an opportunity to showcase for voters his longstanding skepticism about Russian leader Vladimir Putin while emphasizing Sen. Barack Obama's lack of experience dealing with foreign affairs.

"You got a guy who is ready to be president on Day 1 who understands the world for what it is," said McCain ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, echoing another Clinton line.

"The thing about Sen. Obama, he's playing catch-up here. His initial statements, quite frankly, didn't appreciate how bold a move this was from Russia."

McCain's public statements have highlighted his differences with the Bush Administration, which Graham said "has miscalculated the Russian threat" to its former republics, and are also designed to show off his predictions about Russian aggression.

"Sen. McCain has talked for years about the dangers of Russian policies in the way they conduct themselves and undermine the sovereignty of their neighbors," said Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, who noted that McCain has known Georgian President Saakashvili since 1997, when Saakashvili was a graduate student.

"There is a depth of knowledge, a breadth of knowledge and an extent of historical experience" that is greater than that of his rival, Scheunemann said.

Obama adviser Susan Rice, appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" Tuesday night, accused McCain of responding irresponsibly. "Barack Obama, the administration and the NATO allies took a measured, reasoned approach," she said.

"We were dealing with the facts as we knew them. John McCain shot from the hip, very aggressive, belligerent statement. He may or may not have complicated the situation."

Obama has confronted the crisis in Georgia in more modulated tones, initially sounding closer to Bush than McCain, but later condemning the Russian aggression in strong terms, saying there was "no possible justification" for it.

Unlike McCain, he has also taken note of Georgia's military actions in the breakaway region known as South Ossetia.

He supports Georgia's candidacy for NATO and has called for a review of Russia's application to join the World Trade Organization, but has not followed McCain in threatening to expel Russia from the G-8.

"Russian peacekeeping troops should be replaced by a genuine international peacekeeping force, Georgia should refrain from using force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and a political settlement must be reached that addresses the status of these disputed regions," Obama said during a break from his vacation in Hawaii on Monday.

Obama's advisers argue that he, too, has been prescient about the region's potential for conflict.

In April, the Democratic nominee condemned Russian provocations in the contested Georgian provinces, and in July he urged Georgia not to be tempted into military action and called for an international peacekeeping force in the region.

Since becoming a candidate, he has warned that the U.S. preoccupation with Iraq has distracted policymakers.

They said Obama's response in the last several days has been suited to the events on the ground. Obama's first statement calling for a ceasefire by both Russia and Georgia came when Georgian troops were still attacking targets in South Ossetia.

As Georgia pulled back and Russia invaded Georgia proper, Obama's condemnation grew stronger and focused on Russia, his advisers note.

"He was not calling for equivalence [between Russia and Georgia], he was calling for a ceasefire to stop the violence . . . After Russia invaded, it was a totally different order of magnitude," said Stanford University professor Michael McFaul, the campaign's chief adviser on Russia.

Richard Holbrooke, an ambassador to the U.N. in the Clinton administration and an Obama supporter, objected to the suggestion that Obama had been late in coming to a tough condemnation of Russia. Obama and McCain are now more or less on the same page in decrying the aggression, he said.

"It is based on an exaggerated and deliberately misleading perception of Senator Obama's initial statement, which was issued early, while the crisis was unfolding," he said.

"This is an attempt by people supporting Senator McCain to politicize a great international tragedy and it's not worthy of the dimensions of the problem, especially when both candidates have roughly the same position."

Obama's more nuanced tone may reflect the debate going on among his advisers, who say they must bear in mind the messy geopolitical reality that America relies on Russia on a host of issues, from Iran to nuclear proliferation to energy and climate change.

"Part of the reason we don't have leverage is that we don't have a U.S.-Russian relationship. It has been adrift," McFaul said. Referring to McCain, he added, "It's easy to say something belligerent about Russia.

"I'm no friend of Vladimir Putin, and cheap shots about tough talk are all well and fine. But what are you doing to actually make the situation better?"

Several Russia experts not affiliated with either campaign said they recognized that tough talk had become a political necessity on the campaign trail, but worry that U.S. credibility could suffer because the country does not have the leverage to follow through.

"This type of bluster is fairly counterproductive because it is a bluff, there's nothing we can do about this," said Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution.

But he noted that "it has become a race to be see who can be the tougher. I can't see anybody suddenly stepping back and becoming a voice of moderation and calling for calm."

tags: russia  georgia  mccain  warmonger  propaganda  

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