Faith Of An Interventionist: McCain On The US Mission To The World

Text of McCain’s speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

It could’ve been Teddy Roosevelt talking. Or Woodrow Wilson. Or FDR. Or Harry Truman. Or JFK.

Jeez. A long, long list of globalist interventionists. When did we last have a president who promised peace, minding our own business, and strictly staying out of other people’s messes?

He says in his opening remarks that he detests war, but he is clearly lying. War is the biggest thing in his life. War is all he talks about. War is his one and only claim to “deserve to be President,” as Chris Matthews says he does.

And war is the topic of his next two paragraphs, appealing to idealism but also and more firmly to the by-now customary Republican argument from the Bomb, moving comfortably and without the slightest novelty from the Muslim terrorism for which we are no more than a minor, blowback side-show to the global war on terror and thence to the neocon agenda of invasion and conquest.

This could be Bush talking, or Cheney, or any one of several dozens of Republican office-holders or conservative pundits or speech-writers. Truly, this man is trying for Bush’s third term.

I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have.

Ah, yes. The future of mankind as seen by the globalists of Wall Street, Davos, and the Pentagon.

But . . . [w]e have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world’s most terrible weapons.

Got that? That’s the Bomb, if you missed it.

There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature.

Ah, here we have a natural place to pause to mention why they hate us: fifty years of aggressive Zionism coupled with political meddling and even repeated military interventions to make the oil fields of the Middle East safe - not for America (they would sell us the oil in any case), but for Western oil companies.

This is the central threat of our time . . .

Too bad for the military-industrial complex, but this is pretty much true.

The Cold War is long gone and it certainly looked, for a while there, like the people of America were going to start demanding that “peace dividend” there was so much talk of at the end of the 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s.

A widespread drawdown of the American military and national security budget seemed to be coming; of the size of our forces, of our R&D efforts, and of global system of bases and pre-deployed forces, trip-wire (as in Korea) or back-up (as in Okinawa).

For political reasons, a lot of people exaggerated this as a strong resurgence of the by-now, if not always, wholly fictitious “traditional American isolationism,” but the internationalists of both parties feared and opposed that and never let it get very far.

That, of course, included the country’s most ardent Zionists, who knew and know that American Zionism cannot be the only exception to a global policy of peaceful and anti-militaristic non-interventionism.

America’s commitment to Israel cannot be sold except as a necessary aspect of a military globalism necessitated in turn by a dire threat to America, itself. The wholly dependent client must appear as an invaluable ally in a common, but much larger, struggle.

Reminding us of the Democratic roots of America’s real tradition, not of isolationism – far from that! – but of internationalism and global interventionism, he appeals to one of Harry Truman’s most frightful stupidities, and does his best to transfer the size, scope, danger, sacrifice, and long duration of the Cold War to the global war on terror and the neocon agenda that piggy-backs upon it.

President Harry Truman once said of America, “God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.” In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn.

It’s going to be just that big. As big as the Cold War. They have told us that many times.

It has to be that big. How else can it provide the justification for keeping up America’s huge and world-wide military-industrial complex that no more wants to dry up and blow away now with the Cold War gone than it did in the late 40’s of the last century with the Second World War over and done with?

It failed once to make itself permanent after a global war when the Republican senate rejected the League of Nations and Wilson’s wretched Versailles Treaty. But it has not failed since, and does not want to fail again.

Again we get the sucker-bait quite traditional for America.

To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman’s day.

See? There is a central role in shaping the whole world that the US must play. We have no choice.

And we must lead the world, too. Humbly, no doubt. But there is no choice. This is not optional.

And it is not enough to continue and expand the existing institutions of internationalism built and expanded at every turn since the close of the Second World War such as the UN and NATO, though we will do that, as well. Oh, no.

In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States . . . must also lead . . . by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish.

Now, this may not be an easy sell. So he makes the customary appeal to our vanity.

Perhaps above all, leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.

Ah, yes. We are a great nation. Of course, we will accept and fulfill our responsibilities. How could we not?

Here comes the dropping shoe.

One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies — that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.

But he immediately sweetens it for the press and the liberals with a bit of the ole maverick smile and shuffle.

America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad.

We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured.

I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

No more torture! No more Gitmo! Yay!

But, wait! There’s more!

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders.

We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren.

We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty. . . . We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.

See? He’s reaching across the aisle. A hand stretched out from the globalist interventionism of the Republicans and the neocons to the globalist activism of the Democrats and the liberals.

As for those guys in Michigan and Ohio who were hoping for relief from the depredations of free trade, neoliberal McCain is not your man.

With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent . . . .

I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South.

Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.

Hmm. Did somebody say something about a Highway of the Americas, or some such thing?

Anyway, as for Europe, regarding things economic and military, and in case you thought with the end of the Cold War NATO could be allowed to lapse and Russia could be accepted as no longer a significant threat to the US, he said this.

Americans should welcome the rise of a strong, confident European Union as we continue to support a strong NATO.

The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.

I hardly dare to ask what that “institutionalizing” will look like. Not much like American sovereignty and not much like democracy, for that matter, I’ll wager. Despite all the sugar-tongued talk of “democracy promotion” and our common cultural values.

We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia.

Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.

Nuclear blackmail? Oh, right. Their reaction to us placing a new missile defense setup not just in Europe but on Russia’s very borders, in some of that whole slew of new members of the expanded and strengthened NATO that we needed to expand and strengthen because they got so irritated when we expanded and strengthened it.

Or something like that.

Oh, and mothers of America, whether you raised your boys to be soldiers or not, be warned McCain here is insisting on the American commitment, embodied in the NATO treaty, to get your sons killed and squander American treasure defending Estonia and even ex-Soviet republics against Russian arms.

Why does America always seem to be at war? Because we constantly set ourselves up for it.

And if you thought all that was surely plenty enough to keep us busy, think again.

We must strongly engage on a political, economic, and security level with friendly governments across Africa, but insist on improvements in transparency and the rule of law . . . . I will establish the goal of eradicating malaria on the continent — the number one killer of African children under the age of five.

Why in the name of Homer Simpson is that an American goal?

Oh. This must be it.

In addition to saving millions of lives in the world’s poorest regions, such a campaign would do much to add luster to America’s image in the world.

I can see those independents and humanitarian interventionists wavering in November, already, between Obama and McCain, out of love for mankind!

After a nod at non-proliferation presented as yet another reason – combined with its enmity toward Israel – for us to act against Iran, McCain returns for the entire remaining third or so of his speech to the theme of our global war against Islamofundamenalist, Islamofascist globonuclearterrorismo.

A last outburst of the argument from fear, and the argument from the Bomb.

[T]he threat of radical Islamic terrorism . . . is unique. They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves or to enhance their prestige or to give them a stronger hand in world affairs but to use against us wherever and whenever they can.

One absurd lucky hit in their on-again, off-again series of blowback attacks on America, and we need to conquer half the world, says McCain; and then adopt it and make it rich, democratic, peaceful, and happy.

Jeez. This is not going to be cheap. Lots and lots of work for the military-industrial complex and for many, many American contractors spending untold trillions on making life swell (after we blow them up) for hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world.

He’s going to do this with lower taxes? And there will be very little money left over for social democracy for Americans, I’m afraid.

Not that we would otherwise have expected much from a man whose every second or third word is "market." Every time he said it in this speech I could hear the hammers on the anvils in the background, forging newer, heavier, more permanent chains for the workers of the world.

Anyway, to return to his speech, we have to take over controlling interest in policing and shaping the future of the whole Muslim heartland. But, McCain assures us,

This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism.

Sure, it is.

It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.

If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia.

Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region. And whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well.

See? Like every internationalist interventionist since Woodrow Wilson, he’s only doing what must be done for the vital interests of America. And it’s noble, too. Who could resist?

Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.

Could that actually take a hundred years? Easy. Longer, in fact. Say, a thousand years.

Besides, we can’t leave Iraq and Afghanistan, now.

It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.

Our critics say America needs to repair its image in the world. How can they argue at the same time for the morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities in Iraq?

McCain finishes up with more about how we have to hunt down Al-Qaeda all over the world and revolutionize large parts of it to cut the ground from under the feet of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism.

He summarizes his warnings of their survival, of possible genocide, and of possible regional war if we withdraw from Iraq, alluding again to the alleged threat to Israel posed by Iran, and then concludes pulling all his stirring interventionist themes together.

I run for President because I want to keep the country I love and have served all my life safe, and to rise to the challenges of our times, as generations before us rose to theirs.

I run for President because I know it is incumbent on America, more than any other nation on earth, to lead in building the foundations for a stable and enduring peace, a peace built on the strength of our commitment to it, on the transformative ideals on which we were founded, on our ability to see around the corner of history, and on our courage and wisdom to make hard choices.

I run because I believe, as strongly as I ever have, that it is within our power to make in our time another, better world than we inherited.

Funny how we never get the peace we have to spend all our time, blood, and money building with wars and preparations for wars and interventions all over the world.