The Alligator

I think the wheels have come off the “Straight Talk Express”. Senator John McCain has conveniently, and for political purposes begun pandering to the right wing of the Republican party with a vengeance- flip flopping on a number of issues- just to appease the radical right wing nut bags. It’s a sad way for a career marked by integrity and conviction to end. By giving up his ethical and moral standards- guiding principles for him during his military and much of his public service career- in order to get a Presidential nomination- is antithetical to what could have been a remarkable legacy. Instead this hero is turning into a panderer and a colossal joke. He has traded his soul for power. It is truly a Faustian story that would make Mephistopheles proud.

Senator John McCain is a bona finde war hero. On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had previously been off-limits to U.S. raids. McCain’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile while pulling up after dropping its bombs. McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane. He nearly drowned after he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around, spat on him, kicked him, and stripped him of his clothes. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi’s main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” by American POWs. Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information; they beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. Soon thinking he was near death, McCain said he would give them information if taken to the hospital, hoping he could then put them off once he was treated. A prison doctor came and said it was too late, as McCain was about to die anyway. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announce his capture. At this point, two days after McCain’s plane went down, that event and his status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care.  He was interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried on CBS, and was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including the famous General Vo Nguyen Giap. Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that he must be part of America’s political-military-economic elite.  Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Hanoi nicknamed “the Plantation” in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week (one was Bud Day, a future Medal of Honor recipient); they nursed McCain and kept him alive. In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years. In July 1968, McCain’s father was named Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.  McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early:  the North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially.  McCain turned down the offer of repatriation, due to the Code of Conduct principle of “first in, first out”: he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.  McCain’s refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese senior negotiator Le Duc Tho to U.S. envoy Averell Harriman during the ongoing Paris Peace Talks.

In August of 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions, and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. Teeth and bones were broken again, as was McCain’s spirit; the beginning of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards. After four days of this, McCain signed an anti-American propaganda “confession” that said he was a “black criminal” and an “air pirate”, although he used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal that the statement was forced.He felt then and always that he had dishonored his country, his family, his comrades and himself by his statement, but as he would later write, “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.” His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head. Two weeks later his captors tried to force him to sign a second statement, and this time, his will to resist restored, he refused. He received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal. Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract “confessions”. On one occasion when McCain was physically coerced to give the names of members of his squadron, he supplied them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line.

Mr. McCain’s Viet Nam story is one of commitment to one’s ideals; it is an inspirational story of amazing selflessness and integrtity.

In the past he has exhibited that integrity and courage as a Senator too- speaking out on a number of issues which insensed the right wing of the Republican party.

When Congress was debating a Constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, Mr. McCain said “The constitutional amendment we’re debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans,” McCain said. “It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.”

In 1999, John McCain said that overturning Roe v. Wade would be dangerous for women and he would not support it, even in “the long term.” Here’s McCain in the San Francisco Chronicle: “I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations”

McCain had been unequivocal in his condemnation of torture, and eloquent in expressing why. “We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” he said at an Oval Office appearance in December 2005, after he had forced the president to endorse an earlier torture ban McCain had authored and pushed through (a ban the president quickly subverted with a signing statement). “What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror.”
He made a similar case on the campaign trail in Iowa in October 2007: “When I was imprisoned, I took heart from the fact that I knew my North Vietnamese captors would never be treated like I was treated by them. There are much better and more effective ways to get information. You torture someone long enough, he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to know.”

Senator McCain voted twice against the Bush tax cuts saying that it is irresponsible to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans during a time when we are conducting a war.

But Mr. McCain has reversed all of these positions recently in a mad dash to the right in the most blatant pandering in recent memory just so he can be the Republican nominee for President

On the issue of gay marriage- he’s now on the side of the folks who would like to see our “laws” be subservient to “God’s laws”- whose God and what laws- remains a mystery

Now John McCain says he would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned and would appoint

Now he seems to be just fine with torture. Taking to the Senate floor to justify his vote against the torture ban on February 14th, McCain twisted himself in knots trying to explain how he could sponsor a bill — the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act — that prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment by the military while voting against a bill that would extend that ban to the CIA and other intelligence agencies: “It is important to the war on terror that the CIA have the ability to [detain and interrogate terrorists]. At the same time the CIA’s interrogation program has to abide by the rules, including the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act.” In other words, the CIA has to abide by rules prohibiting torture but we can’t tie the CIA’s hands by making it abide by rules prohibiting torture.

And of course he has made it a campaign promise to make the “Bush tax cuts” permanent regardless of the burden it causes as he vows to continue operations in Iraq.

I feel badly for Senator McCain. He has irreparably tarnished his integrity and his character for power. That is profoundly sad and I see it as a modern version of a Greek tragic myth. How sad to see someone give up honor for power.

I am not a Conservative and I am not a fan of Ronald Reagan. But I truly do not understand the deification of Ronald Reagan by the Conservative Right- his record wouldn’t be very popular by the Right today. It baffles me. I watched some of the CPAC convention and they spoke of Reagan as if he had been Christ himself.  The Conservative Republicans all worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan.  Governor Romney invoked the name of Reagan regularly to present “Conservative credibility” and Senator McCain continues to refer to himself as a “foot soldier” of the Reagan Revolution. 

Didn’t they live through the 1980’s? Sure he was transformational in the way that Senator Barack Obama has described, but there is so much about his record I would imagine would infuriate the Right Wing nuts- tax increases, immigration reform, a poor economy, increasing the size of government, arming the Taliban and Sadaam Hussein. Why is it that they deify him so? The policies and actions of his presidency do not give credence to the Reagan myth. It seems that this is nothing more than, as President Clinton said of Mr. Obama’s campaign- a fairy tale. The thing is that Mr. Obama’s campaign is not a fairy tale, but the Reagan myth is.

They claim he ended the Cold War- a fact I dispute – The fall of the Soviet Union was based on many factors that fell into place during his presidency not because of some miracle performed by Ronald Reagan.  You can read more about this in my post Who ended the Cold War? The Clash of Myth and Reality

Reagan is, to be sure, one of the most conservative presidents in U.S. history and will certainly be remembered as such. His record on the environment, defense, and economic policy is very much in line with its portrayal. But he entered office as an ideologue who promised a conservative revolution, vowing to slash the size of government, radically scale back entitlements, and deploy the powers of the presidency in pursuit of socially and culturally conservative goals. That he essentially failed in this mission hasn’t stopped partisan biographers from pretending otherwise.

A sober review of Reagan’s presidency doesn’t yield the seamlessly conservative record being peddled today. Federal government expanded on his watch. The conservative desire to outlaw abortion was never seriously pursued. Reagan broke with the hardliners in his administration and compromised with the Soviets on arms control. His assault on entitlements never materialized; instead he saved Social Security in 1983 (which was probably the best thing he did). And he repeatedly ignored the fundamental conservative dogma that taxes should never be raised

At the outset of his first term, Reagan’s revolution appeared to have unstoppable momentum. His administration passed an historic tax cut based on dramatic cuts in marginal tax rates and began a massive defense buildup. To help compensate for the tax cut, his first budget called for slashing $41.4 billion from 83 federal programs, only the first round in a planned series of cuts. And Reagan himself made known his desire to eliminate the departments of Energy and Education, and to scale back what his first budget director David Stockman called the “closet socialism” of Social Security and Medicaid.

But after his initial victories on tax cuts and defense, the revolution effectively stalled. Deficits started to balloon, the recession soon deepened (due to tax cuts and increase in defense spending), his party lost ground in the 1982 midterms, and thereafter Reagan never seriously tried to enact the radical domestic agenda he’d campaigned on. Rather than abolish the departments of Energy and Education, as he had promised to do if elected president, Reagan added a new cabinet-level department–one of the largest federal agencies–the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Though his budgets requested some cuts in some areas of discretionary spending, Reagan rapidly retreated and never seriously pushed them. As Lou Cannon, the Washington Post reporter who covered Reagan’s political career for 25 years, put it in his masterful biography, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, “For all the fervor they created, the first-term Reagan budgets were mild manifestos devoid of revolutionary purpose. They did not seek to ‘rebuild the foundation of our society’ (the task Reagan set for himself and Congress in a nationally televised speech of February 5, 1981) or even to accomplish the ’sharp reduction in the spending growth trend’ called for in [his] Economic Recovery Plan.” By Reagan’s second term, the idea of seriously diminishing the budget was, to quote Stockman, “an institutionalized fantasy.” Though in speeches Reagan continued to repeat his bold pledge to “get government out of the way of the people,” government stayed pretty much where it was.

This hasn’t stopped recent contemporary conservative biographers from claiming otherwise. “He said he would cut the budget, and he did,” declares Peggy Noonan in When Character Was King. In fact, the budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What’s more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)

One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year’s reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike–the largest since World War II–was actually “tax reform” that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn’t count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.

Reagan deserves some credit for a foreign policy of confronting and challenging the Soviet Union that helped bring on its collapse–a central theme of any account of his life- even though his challenge to the Soviet Union was done so by shoring up the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But the vexing problem for conservatives, then and now, was that Reagan’s bellicosity, which they liked, obscured an equally strong belief that nuclear weapons could and should be abolished, a conviction found mainly on the liberal left. Long before he became president, Reagan had argued for a massive military buildup not just to confront the Soviets, which hardliners approved, but also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control–a goal to which conservative pragmatists subscribed. But no one shared, or even understood until late in the game, Reagan’s desire for total disarmament. “My dream,” he later wrote in his memoirs, “became a world free of nuclear weapons.” This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war–and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons.

The great success of Reagan’s 1980 campaign was that it united the disparate strands of the conservative movement: supply-siders, libertarians, religious conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and big business. The fact that Reagan’s presidency didn’t accomplish anything approaching its seismic promise–the size of government grew, abortion remained legal, and entitlements still abounded–is one that his partisan biographers elide by focusing on what Reagan believed and said rather than on what he actually did. The imaginary Reagan who inhabits these books embodies the ideas on which all these groups can agree. His shining example helps maintain the coalition while putting pressure on current GOP politicians to hew to the hard-right ideal.

During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We take a look at America’s role in Afghanistan that led to the rise of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought Reagan’s approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that “he had the duty to bring those Americans home,” and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan’s campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

A clear analysis of Mr. Reagan’s policies supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Sadaam Hussein in Iraq lead me to the conclusion that the iconic Mr. Reagan actually added and abetted the causes of terrorists in Afghanistan and Sadaam- a man who Ronald Reagan armed, by illegal means, and then by George W. Bush attacked to disarm.

And then there was The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which included that dirtiest of all Conservative words – AMNESTY!

The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it’s hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden. If you insist, as many hardliners now do, that America is dangerously soft on communist China, then it is best to ignore Reagan’s own softening toward the Soviet Union. As with other conservative media efforts–Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, The Washington Times–the purpose of the Reagan legacy project is not to deliver accuracy, but enhance political leverage.

I guess the 1980’s were a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. History is re-written quickly. I thought rewriting history that occurred in my life time wouldn’t happen at least until I was dead.

Senator John McCain says we might be in Iraq for 100 years. In his swan song- well at least until 2012- Governor Mitt Romney said he was leaving the race because the party needed to unite in order to defeat the Democrats and he felt that staying in and allowing the Democrats to have an opportunity to “win” would be complicit in aiding a surrender to terror. The surge is working they say. Sure it is! The reason for the surge was to give the Iraqi government some breathing room to get its act together. It hasn’t. So, DUH, there is less violence because we have more troops there. You don’t need a PhD to figure out that math, but I guess it takes someone other than a Conservative to understand that less violence does not equal success. Unless political progress is made- the surge hasn’t worked.

But that “surge myth” is only part of the story that makes the idea of continuing our folly in Iraq more than absurd- but an INCREDIBLY dangerous enterprise.

A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis according to a report from the Associated Press on February 8, 2008. Despite security gains in Iraq, there is still a “significant” risk that the strained U.S. military cannot quickly and fully respond to another outbreak elsewhere in the world, according to the report.

According to Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a House hearing on Thursday, a new influx of Western recruits – including American citizens – are being trained in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan. These recruits would be able to more easily enter and move about the US than foreign operatives.

“Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US: the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack on the homeland,” wrote Mr. McConnell in prepared Congressional testimony.

Over the years, Mr. McConnell reported that al-Qaeda has lost its Afghanistan training camps, and much of its senior leadership, including key operational planners. But Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants have been able to retreat to the sanctuary of Pakistan’s wild border areas, while drawing on a bench of skilled operatives to replace members that have been killed or captured.

McConnell reported that Al-Qaeda’s ability to reconstitute and retain a base of operations in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has been a major setback to counterterror efforts, admit intelligence officials. The FATA has given the group many of the advantages it once took from its bases in Afghanistan. The region has served as a staging area for Al Qaeda attacks in Afghanistan, as well as a base for training operations.
Pakistan remains in political turmoil following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Its security forces are thought to number many Al Qaeda and Taliban supporters.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been in the past a formidable enemy in that country bu this has been a year of major setbacks, with hundreds of its members killed and facilities destroyed. But unlike Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts believe, the Iraqi branch poses, or has ever posed, little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland.

Attacking the United States clearly remains on bin Laden’s agenda. But the likelihood that such an attack would be launched from Iraq, many experts contend, has sharply diminished over the past year as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has undergone dramatic changes. Once believed to include thousands of “foreign fighters,” it is now an overwhelmingly Iraqi organization whose aims are likely to remain focused on the struggle against the Shiite majority in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said.

And of course there was that moment of eloquence and clarity from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she described the NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan as “bumpy”.

It is beyond my comprehension how any person with a brain could think that continuing this folly is Iraq is making us safer. On the contrary even some of those “experts” that the administration looks to in order to sell its Iraq policy are stating that we are not in safer, our military is stretched, al-Qaeda has reconstituted and is more of a threat, and the situation is- to quote Ms. Rice- “bumpy”.

It is astonishing to me that Senator McCain- a bone fide war hero- would be so clueless about the effect that this policy is having on the safety of the nation and the strength and responsiveness of our military. He drank the Neo-Conservative Kool-Aid.

And if Senator McCain wants to support the troops, maybe he should listen to the troops. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign cash, looks at the 2007 money-raising In the 4th quarter of 2007, individuals in the Army, Navy and Air Force made those branches of the armed services the No. 13, No. 18 and No. 21, contributing industries, respectively. War opponent Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, received the most from donors in the military, collecting at least $212,000 from them. Another war opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, was second with about $94,000.

Is anyone listening to the troops? Obviously “supporting our troops” doesn’t include listening to them. And clearly waging an absurd war in Iraq is clearly more important to the Republican party- and Senator McCain- than actually making our nation safe and actually defending the nation against terrorism.

I have a message to Governor Romney and Senator McCain- if you really want to do what’s best for our nation- vote for either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton, doing otherwise will surely put our nation in peril- and that would be shameful.