Has John McCain Lost His Mind
Recent events have nothing to do with the OP’s particulars. If his VP choice in 2008 is any indication of anything (and I really think it is) then he has at least lacked the ability to chart his own course from day to day for 7 or so years. He never struck me as particularly stupid until he formalized Palin as his running mate. Now I have difficulty regarding him as anything more than a mindless bot under full control of the R-party. I have to believe the people who continue to elect him are still seeing the John McCain of 20 years ago and not the over-the-hill puppet he himself would be ashamed of 20 years ago.
That said, so what if he’s meeting with someone AQ has been cozy with in the past? Contrary to W’s assertion of “You’re with us or you’re against us” approach, politics is not as clear cut as that. The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy, and the friend of your enemy can still be a better choice than a known enemy (US & USSR were on the same side during WWII remember).
We can’t support anybody in particular. My inclination would be, of course, to support those who favor a secular parliamentary democracy. Which is who, exactly? The Shia fanatics and the Sunni fanatics would both hate you as an atheist. On top of that would be the enormous benefit of being associated with America. Might as well call yourselves the Benjamin Netanyahu Fan Club.
Another option would be to refuse any judgement in terms of the rebel groups, support them all regardless, assuming that the Assad regime is too beastly to permit. So awful that any group, however fanatical, would be an improvement. Trouble is, with any secular movement so disadvantaged, the “winner” is almost sure to be aligned with some religious program, of which we have seen far too much already.
Without some actual position to leverage, we got nothin’. We might as well confine ourselves to pious statements and deploring whatever just happened. And prayer. Can’t hurt, I suppose. Probably just as good if not better than anything John McCain is likely to cook up.
If this is in reference to my post, I was merely clarifying that you cannot say that Obama has treated Idris the same way McCain has. Obama has not had a personal public meeting with the man in an effort to further an agenda to arm him. That’s a fairly material difference.
The two events are not exactly parallel (for one, Carter arguably has more cred than McCain in the area of ME negotiation, and for another, he wasn’t discussing having the US arm anybody), but they’re not that dissimilar.
The Obama Administration. No one expects Obama to be over there, himself, meeting with rebel leaders. But officials in his administration have met with them on his behalf and they have actually given them aid, something McCain hasn’t done. And to the extent that material goods are fungible, one could argue that Obama (through his proxies) is cozying up to them in a way that McCain is not.
Now, I actually consider both of those arguments to be rather silly. The idea that McCain is somehow “cozying” up to N-degrees of al-Qaeda in a way that Obama is not is simply false. McCain offers different policy prescriptions than Obama but both support this rebel leader.
A signal to involved parties that America understands that simply because someone’s cousin has a brother in law in AlQueda, that is no reason we will not talk to them, or even support them.
Or, it is another damning proof of Obama’s determination to surrender to radical Islam. Depending.
Your argument turns on the continued use of ambiguous phrases like “dealing with” and “support.” One includes efforts to arm him (and the FSA, which is how this political shorthand of refering to leaders works). The other does not. The distinction isn’t trivial. Anti-aircraft missiles are not fungible.
In 2000, I liked McCain, and was really pulling for him to get the nomination, despite some minor concerns he was too hawkish. Of course, that was a simpler time, and the hawkishness seemed like less of a liability.
But I have to agree- his choice of Palin seemed poor at the time, and downright absurd in hindsight. It does make me wonder if he’s not the man he used to be.
In recent years it seems like his number one concern is military funding: Give till it hurts and then give some more. And, in my opinion, we are at a point where we really need to rethink our “#1 by an order of magnitude” approach there.
It seems obvious to me that arming rebel groups in Syria today is at least as dangerous as arming the Mujahedeen in the 80s. I sympathize with the Syrian people, and I truly hope they depose Assad and build something better. We should be talking to them and trying to build some relationships for the future. But as for arming anyone there, I say that when the situation is damned if you do, damned if you don’t, best if you don’t
Really? You don’t think there would be people lining up to buy anti-aircraft missiles on the black market?
Medical supplies can be sold, either to third parties or to the people Obama is intending to help. If we give them aid, we give the things they can sell or we aliviate the need they have to get that aid from countries that ARE willing to give them weapons. And if medical supplies end up helping al Qaeda fighters, then that’s more of them to go after us at some point.
But you continue to want to expand this beyond my original objection to the OP, and I’m not really sure why. THe OP states " Second, he is meeting with people affiliated with Al Queda". The claim was "meeting’, not “dealing” or “supporting”. I’m asking the OP why McCain “meeting” with certain people is different from Obama administration officiaLs “meeting” with the same people.
It was in reference to your post, but the question is for people who are suggesting there’s something deeply wrong with what McCain did. I agree that his jaunt sets a different tone than Obama’s posture, but I’m not clear that there’s anything reprehensible or even inappropriate about it.
McCain is a Republican. I’m not comfortable asserting that this adds reprehensibility as a feature of everything he does; however, it does mean he doesn’t usually deserve the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t.
While I think Senator McCain has veered off to far to the right in many ways in recent years, I think this is a commendable visit on his part, providing moral support to the rebels against the Assad regime.
Does that mean the R-party wants U.S. intervention in Syria? IME, American RWs are divided on that point, are even divided as to which side they want to win this war.
I guess with 80,000 dead, millions displaced, and the war gradually, deliberately, spreading to its neighbors we can still only assume that Assad is ‘too beastly to permit’
With an attitude like yours, I guess nobody in the Middle East deserves to live in a democracy that reflects their beliefs and attitudes.
I’m glad McCain is trying to do at least something to bring attention to this problem. I think it also helps to see pictures of this old white guy with the FSA leadership; they lack our public’s support due to them being insufficiently like us to be considered worthy of democracy. McCain adds a touch of whiteness to them that I think the FSA really needs.
I think this is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree about.
For the record, I’m against it. I have no problems giving moral and humanitarian support, but not military support. This is a civil war, and we’re already seeing Syria divided up into fiefdoms. It could make Iraq look like Czechoslovakia (eg, the velvet revolution), as the ethnic and sectarian divisions are much, much more complicated.
