John McCain's mind is stubborn, as is his sense of honor.
But his honor is brittle stuff indeed.
Honor, which I understand to be an adherence to some perceived set of universal principles of righteous conduct whether by a person or a nation, has a deontological logic to it. But it is blind, as is McCain, to the perverse consequences of its application to policy.
This brittle honor allows McCain to insist we stay in Iraq, while sending more troops to Afghanistan, and at the same time suggesting that genocide should not be permitted by the United States. This unthinking honor cannot acknowledge the resource constraints we face as a nation and the demands to choose amongst priorities.
On the campaign trail, McCain's language of honor effaces these distinctions amongst priorities and the need to choose; in the real world the failure to distinguish among and prioritize objectives has stymied, and will continue to, the multiple conflicting aims we propose to achieve. It has brought ignominy and shame, rather than honor, to our country as we fail at all our goals.
McCain's honor would leave us mired in Iraq's deserts till when? What is the definition of victory? When can our troops come home with the honor he constantly talks about? When will they be permitted to go to Afghanistan out of necessity? It seems we must wait until every terrorist or terrorist accomplice in Iraq is dead--or the last drop of oil extracted?--before our last soldier leaves (to return to a triumphal parade?) but how will we know?
John McCain wrote in 1973
As you may know, back in 1954, the North Vietnamese had a big hand in toppling the French Government in Paris because the French voters had no more stomach for the Vietnam war their Government was waging at the time. That was the way the North Vietnamese won in 1954-they didn't win in Vietnam.
...
I'm convinced that Hanoi hoped to win in our case by undermining morale among the people at home in America. They had to marshal world opinion on their side. I remember in 1968 or '69 (North Vietnam Premier] Pham Van Dong's speech to the National Assembly, because we were blasted with these things on the loud-speakers. The title of his address was, "The Whole World Supports Us," not, "We Have Defeated the U. S. Aggressors, or anything like that.
National honor demands a will to victory of the whole people, and that will to victory, if it exists, cannot be denied.
Once started, in the stubborn minds of men like McCain, a war has its own inner logic of honor that creates a path that must be followed until the enemy's utter defeat and ruin. Nothing less is acceptable, and nothing less is possible for a nation like ours (or France?) committed to honor's cause.
But rather than seeing this as an excellent reason to avoid wars, the minds of men like McCain see this as but another motivation for the great preoccupation of their marshall souls. The drumbeat for another war, on top of the two we've already started and are remain engaged in, reflects this. After all, honor is not well served by diplomacy. To make concessions to another power (are we afraid fo them or something?) when the opportunity to overpower them seems to exist in our mighty fleets and armies, smacks of dishonorable cowardice.
The catch-22 for those of us who reject these principled, but disastrous appeals, is to oppose them without being seen as denying the aspirational value of the principles themselves, as folks on the left are often accused of doing. It is to admit of the value of honor as an idea without resorting to it as a frame for policy out of an unwilligness, or an inability, to think throught its consequences.
In the immediate case, the challenge is to make clear that our belief in Iraqis' deserved freedom is no less strong because we are not willing to pour endless lives, money, and blown opportunities to improve our geopolitical situation and advance the cause of liberty elsewhere in the world.
The challenge is to make clear that McCain's honor based discourse is a fool's gold, which can attract an untested eye, but quickly scratches when first tested by the abrasive reality of the world.
This shouldn't be impossible. However, we must clothe our appeals for a rational allocation of national resources in the same language of honor that politicians like McCain cloak their irrational ideas. We must also demand of men like McCain an accounting of how they reconcile their sense of honor with reality, and demand to know of them the value of the honor they hold up as their hgihest vlaue when it brings nothing but misery to the world we actually inhabit.
If both these goals can be accomplished, and I think Obama could be more aggressive in trying to accomplish them, we would be close to vitory in this election, and this country's policy would be improved.