But it is not the kind of challenge McCain seems to think it is. From the same article:
But McCain wants a new agency separate from the CIA. He’s on record as saying so. Many neocons regard the CIA as too “risk-averse.”
It’s clear enough. You can have cooperation and unilateralism at once if the international organization in question is structured so that the U.S. is its undisputed leader.
So Lyndon B. Johnson was a neoconservative? Actually, can you name any President since FDR who was not, by this criterion, a neoconservative?
(Clarification: This is not BrianGlutton’s own words, but the authority he is citing.)
McCain is (mostly) right, and the second comment is just wholly, stupidly irrelevant. The Middle East IS the world’s major problem center, and the clash between fundamentalist Islam and the West IS a major source of problems and will be for a long time. McCain’s support of the Iraq war is, specifically, partisan and stupid.
As to the second comment, so what? Of course this is different from the struggle against the Nazis. What’s funny, though, is that Daalder conflates two other struggles - the one against Nzzism, and the one against Communism - and implies an equivalence between them, even though they were vastly, vastly different from each other. There’s very little similarity at all between World War II and the Cold War, so why would we expect the conflict with Islamist zealots to be the same as either? Every conflict’s different; geez, we’re supposed to be impressed by that insight? How does that in any way mitigate the fact that there’s a conflict to be dealt with here?
Cite? A primary one?
Well, first of all, let’s be clear what McCain wants, and what you allege unnamed “neocons” that you have a list of 78 of want. If it’s McCain’s position that the CIA should not engage in covert ops, that’s frankly an outstanding, and long overdue, idea. The Central Intelligence Agency should be in the business of gathering, collating, and analyzing intelligence. It’s a fundamental conflict of interest to have an intelligence apparatus engaging in operations; it’s convenient from an organizational and financial perspective, but results in the intelligence apparatus flying out of control and massaging data to justify its own operational activities. Speaking as a former military intelligence analyst, we weren’t even supposed to recommend, even SUGGEST, operational decisions; that was a clear, unambiguous no-no, because it was not our job and got in the way of the business of intelligence. It compromised our impartiality, our analytical skills, our ability to convey the plain truth to the people who needed to know it.
Does the history of the CIA’s dirty tricks ops strike you as being something to be proud of? Have they done a good job, all in all? Not really, huh?
You’re assuming that the less-than-one-fourth of Americans who think Bush is doing a good job are all Republicans who participate in the primary/causus process. That’s a huge assumption.
The point is, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at least arguably represented existential threats to the U.S. and to Western civilization as a whole. Radical Islam does not.
No doubt, but what McCain wants is another agency that specializes in covert ops.
I’d center around the theory that five years in a torture camp has to have rendered his brain into mush, and he therefore can’t be counted on to make sensible decisions
The same article, BTW, notes that McCain wants to maintain an adversarial relationship with Russia and even kick Russia out of the G-8. I hope nobody here needs any convincing that this is a Very Bad Idea. Putin is a creep but he’s no revolutionary ideologue. At this stage in history there is no good reason why the U.S. and Russia should not be friends; we have no material interests in conflict and we have a common enemy in the Muslim extremists.
Sure it does. It’s already killed lots people, and on a more fundamental, grand scale represents a significant barrier to the advancement and development of a lot of countries, keeping them poor and undeveloped, improverishing people and perpetuating utterly pointless hatreds and conflicts. It’s not the same thing as a single, identifiable nation-state waging a conventional war, but why does it have to be to be a threat?
And I simply disagree that the Nazis and Soviets can be cnflated. The Nazis were actually bent on the destruction of liberal democracy and civilized existence in any moral sense we would understand it, and they actually made war on us, directly. The Soviets did not, and we made war on them as much as the reverse. It was, after all, NATO, not the Warsaw Pact, that came up with the idea of a massive nuclear first strike as a viable choice to win a war.
As things turned out our conflict with the Soviet bloc was ended more or less peacefully. It would not have been possible to arrange peace with the Nazis. They’re just as different from each other as the conflict with radical Islam is, and it’s foolish to think this conflict doesn’t exist. It’s not quite as pressing right now as, say, the Nazi threat was in mid-1942, but maybe now is the time to think about dealing with it.
Well, doesn’t that make sense? Are you saying a large nation-state should not have the capability to perform covert operations? Assuming it should have such a capability, would the logical thing not to be to have an organization that specializes in carrying them out?
Unless you think a country should never do any such thing, I don’t see anything sinister about this.
In any event, you’re off topic (as am I, but you started it) unless you really, honestly believe the Democrats should trot out “ZOMG McCain is going to create a covert ops unit!” to win the election. Get serious.
You can’t be serious. Al-Qaeda is feeble. That’s why it uses terrorist tactics, to inflate its perceived importance, and because it has no other means available. We could afford to ignore Islamic extremism entirely if we did not mind losing a few hundred lives to terrorist attacks every decade. We do mind, so we have to take some action. But nothing in this situation warrants a “Long War” such as the neocons (and McCain) seem to want, or seem to assert that we’re in already.
So long as it’s based on “Congressional oversight and transparency.” Without that, you’ll get something like the CIA at its worst. But, really, at this stage we don’t need a new covert-ops agency; nothing in the current international situation justifies it.
No, that’s a detail; the general message should be, “McCain is a crazy cowboy who wants to fight the whole world.”
The point is that such an agency has to be answerable to somebody outside the executive branch. It could be a committee of Congresscritters with security clearance – just so long as nothing is ever concealed from them. I have my doubts as to our existing intelligence agencies’ track record in that regard.
Whoa, whoa… when did we suddenly start talking about just al-Qaida? You said McCain was concerned about Islamic fundamentalism. One does not equal the other.
What I said applies to Islamic-fundamentalist organizations in general: None, separately or together, is powerful enough to warrant a “long war” on our part. Neither is Islamic fundamentalism as a cultural force.
That’s how I feel about it. McCain should have cut any ties with Bush and Rove right then and there. he could have given a nice “go to hell speech” or a “we have differences” speech. SOMETHING. But he didn’t he kept going back for more. Why? I want to know. Loyalty is fine, but there is such a thing as misplaced loyalty. Even a dog will bite if he gets kicked that one time too many.
OK, Why? Why should any reasonable person have to bow down to a ny extreme fringe? Even if you do, no matter what you give them it would never ever be enough, and some of these people are against every decent thing the country is supposed to be all about. Best to cut them completely off too.
And yet, those are the very same things that COULD have set McCain apart, and allowed him to easily say he was indeed a better choice… Those decisions on those things were what make me like him. Those were the things on which he took a stand - the right stand - and showed that he does know right from wrong. The things that would alienate the loonies, are the same exact things that make him more appealing to any REASONABLE and THINKING person. McCain was againt torture. He was against “forced” prayer. He was against the forced “teaching” of"creationism/ID/alternate science/whatever". Many of us (I really REALLY doubt I am alone in this) have had a belly full of the so called “religious” right. If McCain told them to “sod off” or whatever the phrase is, that would be a PLUS for most of us.
The ONE thing that kills it for me, even though I like the man, is I think it would be just more of the same, and the way he caved after his own party treated him so damn shitty. Only a fool goes back for more.
Forgive me if I am rambling - first cup of coffee, and not quite awake yet.
The Hagee endorsement might be played up enough to disenchant some Catholic voters, in particular.
On the other hand, I fear that relatively few voters on the fence are going to care that McCain is courting the Ron Paul/antivax/They Don’t Want You To Know vote.
And I would venture a modest wager that if you put the vaccine-thimerosal-autism question to the other leading candidates, you wouldn’t get a radically different answer from the one McCain gave. It’d probably be something like “Well, some say it’s the vaccines, some don’t. We must study this further.” :rolleyes:
Hagee. That slime ball. I want to steal an old phrase, the one Goldwater had to say about Falwell. I want to change it a little since that lousyhate mongering rat (Falwell) is gone.
Every good christian should kick Hagee’s ass.
Speaking of John “Katrina wuz cause of the gay*” Hagee, I’ve heard some pro-McCain pundits on Fox and CNN already trying to equate it with Farrakhan’s endorsement of Obama. Of course the little difference between the two enodorsements that they choose not to mention is that Obama renounced Farrakhan’s position on Jews and other matters, while McCain gave an unqualified and in person “I am honored” acceptance to Hagee while standing beside him on the podium! (Great vid montage on YouTube.)
*Excerpts from the interview in which he stated that Katrina was the wrath of God for a “particularly sexual” gay pride event [that had not happened yet] are on the YouTube clip. Apparently God can stand a city having 150 years of slavery and being the voodoo capital of the U.S. and centuries of vice from “pirates, drunks, and whores” and the mafia and the killing of Indians and Madame Lalaurie’s little experiments and what-not, but that parade was just the last straw (and explains how Cooper arrived so quickly- probably was already there scoping out a spot).
It’s similar perhaps to how Hagee can find all of the verses in the Bible that can be applied to men lying with men and how one shouldn’t, but can’t find the three times that Jesus himself says that a man who divorces a woman and remarries is living in adulterous sin. (Hagee’s first marriage broke up due to his infidelity and he married his current wife later; I’ve never heard him address this- note that I have no problem with divorce or remarriage, but one who favors literal interpretations of the Bible should.)
