There is something that needs to be put on the table about John McCain that can't wait. The blow-up in Iraq has put that back in the front pages and we can expect to hear McCain talk about how this proves how correct he is that we need to fight there bigger and better to achieve the Victory our Troops Deserve.
For McCain this is all about Vietnam. This man truly believes that the only reason that we lost Vietnam was that the politicians in charge of things were not willing to fully unleash the US military -- in particular the Air Force. Take a look at this old article in The Nation from the 2000 campaign McCain's Vietnam by Robert Dreyfuss. The short version of Dreyfuss' assessment of McCain after traveling with him in New Hampshire is this:
Angry in temperament and pugnacious in style, McCain exhibits a swaggering readiness to avenge America's defeat in Vietnam. . . .
As we were reminded the other day by Obama in another context "the past in not dead and buried, in fact it is not even past". And for McCain the Vietnam war never ended. As he told a VFW gathering back in 1999
The memory of them, of what they bore for honor and country, causes me to look in every prospective conflict for the shadow of Vietnam
And what is the lesson of this shadow of Vietnam? Back in 1998 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary Tet Offensive McCain explained that
"Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable. I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed."
Some politicians might say this just to strike an heroic pose, but I think we have believe John McCain when he says this. And when he makes "bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran" jokes, and seems to conflate Salafi Sunni Arab al Qaeda and the Persian Shi'ia theocracy in Iran as a common enemy, what he is really doing is viewing Iraq and Iran as though they were South and North Vietnam and seeking to apply the remedy he came to believe was the right one during his long years of captivity and abuse at the hands of people he still calls "gooks".
And McCain has been consistent over the years in this stance. During the crisis in Kosovo McCain was bitterly criticized the Clinton administration for its "excessively restricted air campaign" and reluctance to commit large number of ground troops saying that
"These two mistakes were made in what almost seemed willful ignorance of every lesson we learned in Vietnam."
and in 1994 McCain was again beating the war drums
McCain recklessly accused President Clinton of "appeasement" of Pyongyang, warning, "The time for more forceful, coercive action is long overdue." McCain demanded that the United States increase its alert status; mobilize US troops; deploy aircraft carriers, more fighters and Apache helicopters; pre-position bombers and tankers; and announce the immediate application of economic sanctions--even while recognizing the strong possibility that such actions could lead to war on the Korean peninsula.
And likewise, back in 1999 this was his position on Iraq
And on Iraq, he says that "the only way to prevail is to strike disproportionate to the provocation," criticizing the White House for "the extremely limited scale" of bombing raids there.
As politically incorrect as it is to say such a thing about a distinguished veteran: McCain is a war mongering nut who has never gotten over the trauma of Vietnam and is itching for a chance to show the world how dangerous America and its Air Force really can be.
Put like that such a line probably would backfire but the fact is this is the truth about McCain and we need to get it out there on the table even if we have to find a more politic way to frame it. Do we really want to let this hot headed torture victim, still in the grip of PTSD, and obsessed with reliving the Vietnam war, waking up from his nightmares with that red phone next to his bed? Is that really going to keep our sleeping children safe? We can't let the sacrifice he made in the military make us ignore this stuff, the stakes are just too high.