Dearest Franky.
Sifting through the melodrama and emotionalism of your rhetoric I find the following to be true:
(a) You do in fact have some sort of loyalty to something (call it honor if you will) -- possibly merely to your personal ethos of maverick individualism, possibly (hopefully) to a standard of morality and "right" and "wrong" that supercedes and transcends that of any of your other earthly allegiances. This allows you (in your mind) to flip-flop incessantly (almost compulsively) between political (and religious) groups with impunity as you follow your own little trail of crumbs to what end God only knows.
(b) You use the label "Republican Right" to identify what might better be described as the Republican Establishment, party leadership, or party mainstream.
(c) You tend to align yourself with outsiders and underdogs, ever at odds with authority, ever uncomfortable in the presence of integrity and homogeny, ever striving to differentiate yourself from everything conventional (and constantly throwing the metaphorical babies out with their bathwater as you shift around from allegiance to allegiance).
And finally (d), you fall easily into populist rabble-rousing, no matter what side you happen to be arguing...
Sometimes Honor Is Wrong -- The Problem With John McCain
Buzz this article up.
The question is this: will America sacrifice herself to vindicate the personal sense of honor of one man? If there were no war, Senator McCain might be a good president. With the Iraq war going on, however, there is an overriding reason to vote against McCain in 2008. I say this as a former McCain supporter. The reason to vote against McCain, paradoxically, is McCain's military experience. I'm not referring to his experience with military affairs, but the personal military experiences that shaped him.
(Disclosure: In the 2000 Republican primary season I went on numerous conservative and religious radio talk shows to argue for McCain against the Bush crowd and against the Republican right. McCain returned the favor by writing a great endorsement of my book AWOL-The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service, And How It Hurts Our Country. It makes me sad I can't support McCain now.)
The problem is that McCain doesn't see himself as a civilian. He was, is and will always be defined in his own mind by the code of military service. This would be a great quality in a general or perhaps in a peacetime president, but will be disastrous in wartime. There is a reason our founders wanted America's military to have dispassionate civilian leadership.
McCain thinks of himself in terms of honor, service and sacrifice. These laudable abstract spiritual ideas are a terrific quality in officers leading last stands or in medics attending the battlefield wounded. But honor, service and sacrifice are the wrong code for directing national policy.
Anyone who has read my military novel Baby Jack or nonfiction works including Keeping Faith -- A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps and Faith Of Our Sons -- A Father's Wartime Diary, knows that there is no writer in America who is a bigger fan of our military or its ethic of service, than I am. I never served and stand in grateful awe of those that do.
That said, the reason we have civilian leadership of our military is that the military code of honor is great for the military, lousy for the world of civilian decision making. It is even lousy for the military -- if the military code is adopted by the nation's leaders.
McCain would bring both a historical perspective and psychological needs to the presidency. Simply put, McCain does not want to be the president that presides over today's Iraqi equivalent of the mass exit from the rooftop of Saigon's American embassy.
McCain comes from a generation of military people deeply hurt by another war-gone-bad, a war McCain paid a huge personal and heroic price for. But what if another Vietnam-style debacle is preferable to a catastrophe? What if that catastrophe is driven by the next president's stubborn refusal to admit failure, or even admit his own historic mistake in voting for the Iraq war? What if military-style honor cannot be served? What if the Bush error is so big there can be no happy endings?
In this sense McCain's personal experiences would work against our country. Mark Benjamin points this out in "McCain's Vietnam Obsession."
[A] look at his record shows that [McCain] subjects every major foreign-policy decision to a Vietnam-derived test ... summed up by the McCain quote, 'We're in it, now we must win it.'
So entrenched are those lessons that McCain sounds, at times, like he wishes they could be applied retroactively. 'We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal,' McCain said at a speech on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 5, 2003. And for that reason, it might be advisable to take him at his word when he says he'll stay in Iraq for 100 years...
My own stupid mistake in supporting the early stages of the Iraq war is a good example of how loyalty to the military code (even by osmosis) can deform one's judgment. In the early stages of the Iraq war I wrote several op-ed pieces for the Washington Post that criticized people who were against the war. I was wrong. My only excuse -- and it's not a good one -- is that with my son in the Marine Corps I wanted to defend him and support his volunteering to serve.
I confused supporting my son's honor with support for his commander in chief's policies. I was horribly mistaken. I was taking the deep sense of purpose and pride given to our family through our son's volunteering, and allowing this emotion to color my views of a war I'd never have thought was a good idea otherwise.
That is McCain's problem: the Iraq War is too deeply personal to him. He also has had a son serving, but I mean something else. I mean that McCain confuses his personal ethic of past military service with future policy. Listen to McCain speaking and you hear an old man looking backward while articulating a litany of maudlin references to his sense of honor, service and sacrifice as the main reason for electing him.
McCain seems ready to sacrifice the American future to his sense of past personal honor. Why else would he be refusing to admit his mistake of supporting the Bush fiasco? As an afterthought McCain talks about policy, about not making things worse in the future by pulling out of Iraq "too soon," about how he was an early critic of how the war was conducted, etc. But the real McCain heartbeat is his sense of military honor.
Honor is what makes the military tick. In the military context that code is precisely what the military needs most. But military honor doesn't translate into the messy nuance of civilian life let alone policy. That's why President Truman decided MacArthur was insubordinate, and relieved him of command on April 11, 1951.
Perhaps military honor was not served by Truman. The Chinese communists were indeed evil. Millions of North Koreans died horrible deaths as a result of The US not winning because Truman believed that the war could not be won. We left some American soldiers behind -- literally -- in the North Korean camps. There was a storm of controversy. Truman "lost" North Korea it was said.
History shows Truman was right. Truman probably prevented World War Three. He was president of the United States, not of the world. He was looking out for us, not for the suffering Koreans.
We don't want a president with a desire to be vindicated and "win" at all costs. We don't want a president who imagines himself to be the next Winston Churchill, leading against all odds. Why? Because this sad war in Iraq is not World War Two any more than Korea was. It is not the hinge of fate, just a horrible mistake by a horrible president.
Iraq never attacked us. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The terrorists were not in Iraq while Hussein was in charge. We opened the door for them. We aren't bringing democracy to Iraq. This was a war of dumb choice launched in a part of the world that can't ever be fixed by our military. We brought this fiasco on ourselves unnecessarily. Any candidate who won't admit this by now should be automatically disqualified from consideration.
The next president will inherit the mess George W. Bush created with a big assist from Senators McCain and Hilary Clinton, and from other members of congress. If we are to get out of the mess they made we need good judgment and a ruthless disregard for any concern other than for the good of the American people.
Above all we need a completely fresh start. And of the three presidential candidates only Senator Obama can provide that. Only Obama showed good judgment on this matter. McCain's and Clinton's future decisions will inevitably be clouded by the need for self-justification for mistakes they have yet to admit. And, unlike Obama, they are in no position to restore faith in America by the rest of the world.
McCain has taken his lack of good judgment about Iraq to the next level. He has joined himself at the hip to the Bush disaster by demanding a "win." While we may empathize with our soldiers, who have given so much and who may grimly want to be vindicated when it comes to "sticking it out" and wanting to "win" what we can't do is elect a president whose idea of honor guarantees more wasted sacrifice.
It is time for America to draw a line under the Bush years not add to them! We may have to watch in horror as the Iraqis commit mass suicide. So be it. It's not clear that our continued presence in Iraq could prevent that suicide.
What is the alternative? Bleed our treasury dry? Sell our future to the Chinese as we borrow more and more money? Lose more and more American men and women? Rule the Middle East forever, while we destroy our economy to do it? Hand the whole region over to Iran, the one country that is, so far, the only real winner of Bush's war? Fight forever because Bush and now McCain, can't say the simple words; "I was wrong?"
Until McCain admits that the war he wants to "win" was based on mistakes and defended by lies the mere and endless repetition of the word honor will ring hollow. We need a new Truman for president, not today's version of MacArthur. The next president needs to guard the interests of the United States of America, not the abstract principles he lives by and his own sense of wounded pride. There is nothing more out of place than a great man at the wrong time, especially an old man living in his past who seems to have forgotten that lasting honor must be based on truth.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back"
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Honor is never wrong, but the definition of honor can be wrong. A president is the servant of the people, he has to serve and protect the nation that is the highest honor. The man in the Office now did not honor the oath of office. He took the nation to a war of choice based on lies, he abused the trust of young people dying for a lost and basically a criminal cause. For McCain to call it an honorable thing to do shows how screwed his understanding of love of country and honor really is.
He does not speak out for the welfare of the young men and women in uniform. The Walter Reed scandal did not touch him and so many others of his fellow so called public servants. For a man who claims to be proud of the military he keeps silence on secrecy of the body bags coming home.
Neither does he want to make any sacrifice himself, he still wants more tax cuts for himself and cuts on public services, he does not even want to pay for an improved GI Bill.
He is a creepy old man.
The thought that America would sacrifice herself to calm her guilt for McCain's POW status is a brilliant psychological diagnosis of a group pathology. That Vietnam era just keeps giving and giving toxicity. People who are addicted to pain or to brute force are always vulnerable in complex situations. They suffer from poor flexibility. Reading our current situation is tough. The metaphor of America as victim is not sustainable given the casualties in Iraq. The rest of the world doesn't buy it and the Arabs are mobilized by it. What we need are principled, subtle, flexible and committed public servants in a time like this. Not non-thinkers and petty ideologues.
Digoweli
McCain the insane is a war criminal for bombing Vietnamese civilians, a traitor for violating the UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice and wouldn't even protect his own family from the abuses and insults of the Bush gang in 2000. He's a self professed hero. He has the cold war mentality and will not change. He will just bring the cold warriors of eons past. His is a past of failures. He's destroyed 5 or 6 airplanes. He's opposed to a G.I. bill for veterans. He has a 20% FAVORABLE RATING,OUT OF 100%, FOR FUNDING THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION. Hillary FOR EXAMPLE HAS AN 80% voting record for funding the VA. This information is a matter of public record from the Congressional voting records.
The thing is that even if McCain didn't get the nomination, the same policy would be followed. Oil and Israel got the ball rolling, and outside of Ron Paul you'll never find a repub willing to say anything different. I still have little faith that the dems will do anything different either. They get the same money from the same groups as the repubs and money talks. Obama, Hillary, McCain all have the same potential to fall in line with the establishment position. We will never leave Iraq. We will attack Iran. We will seek to control the middle east as long as oil is in the ground and Israel exists.
You were foolish to ever support McCain in the first place. He doesn't read, he is not intellectually curious and he seems as stubborn and intractable as King George Himself.
McCain has already shown that he can't even tell between Sunni and Shia. He has gone out of his way to carry water for special interests for many years and his bellicose view toward foreign policy is a matter of record. He gets so excited at the prospect of invading Iran, he even sang about it into a live microphone.
By McCain's definition, any ex POW is qualified to be president.
What were you thinking?
unless you don't believe the cause is worth dying for... or you don't believe in accountability...
see, the arm-chair warriors/chicken hawks would get a chance to put their money where their mouth is... so everybody wins...
now that's a ctroop surge i could support! :-)
the thing is, compared to today, the military ran a very tight ship with the aid of truman and his felow commision members.
how the mighty have fallen! the level of waste, fraud, and yes, treason, on the part of the contractors, , vendors and politicians who have profitted from this misadventure is mind boggling!
and the thing is, everyone knew, or at least had enough of a hint, that they should have shown some curiosity on the subject. we all saw the "town hall meeting" where defense secretary rumsfeld was asked why the troops had to dig through garbage dumps and dismantle water heaters just to have some metal to strap to their vehicles, while the vendors and contractors were all showing record profits, and their congressional patrons were laughing all the way to the bank. waving the flag furiously while they disrespected and exploited the best of america's youth. just swimming in oil dollars while drinking the blood of the fallen... a cabal of reptiles!!!
and that brings me to my proposal for the troop surge: take everyone who supported the neocons' exploitation of our military for fun and profit, whether from the corridors of power, from the boardrooms of the profiteers or at the ballot box in 2004, 18 - 80, deaf dumb or blind, if they can't walk, drag 'em, hand them an m-18, and ship 'em to iraq with a cowbell around their necks, and let the punishment fit the crime...
but before i explain, a little history is in order: what many younger folks don't know, is that harry truman was only vice-president during f.d.r's extremely truncated fourth term. he spent most of ww2 in congress heading the truman commision, a body who's sole mission was to go over the military budget with a fine tooth comb, and to go over it again and again, presumably to war's end, to insure that our soldiers sailors, airmen, marines, coast guard and merchant marine got the very best equipment and supplies that american ingenuity could supply.
of course, there were still incidents of waste and fraud. the was even a certain amount of treason on the part of people like our current president's grandfather, but i digress...
this blog and it's commentary compelled me to register my support for a troop surge in iraq. you see, i was for the general concept, but against the extremely flawed form that it took under our current commander in chief.
"In valor, there is honor." Having valor and honor is never a bad thing. What is bad is abandoning the principles upon which those characteristics are built.
To suggest that "honor, service and sacrifice" just like "Duty, Honor, Country" should not be the qualities that we seek in a President is just plain stupid. The author talks about "civilian leadership" yet fails to note that the President also serves uniquely as the Commander in Chief of all the armed services, and must therefore have those qualities of character inherit in those he commands. The notion that we should not expect the highest caliber of character in our President is an insult to the voting public. The only thing this author gets right is his vote for Obama - who I believe has shown these very qualities that this author asks us to reject.
If McCain wants to bankrupt my country and destroy the U.S. Military to preserve his personal Honor, then indeed Honor is not a quality I want in a President. We are not the Klingon Empire.
Honor, Decency, Compassion, Sacrifice, ... these are all abstract concepts, meaningful only in their application in the real world. Of course, such words often become mere advertising slogans in the mouths of politicians (compassionate conservatives, anyone?)
Captain Ahab had a keen sense of honor and sacrifice, but the United States is not the Pequod.
McCain proved the writer's point when I saw him on the College Tour with Chris Matthews. I believe they were at the University of Indiana speaking to a crowd of gung ho McCain supporters. McCain was going on about how we have to stay in the war to "win" "defeat is not an option" etc. The crowd was all with him. Then Chris asked the crowd to stand if they supported the war and many did stand. Then Chris asked them to stay standing if they would enlist in the military to go fight in Iraq. Most of the crowd sat down with only a handful still standing. At least the crowd was fairly honest. Chris pressed the point of the youth not being willing to join the military. McCain could not accept that, continuing to say that the American youth would join the military to fight in Iraq. McCain is as delusional as the rest of the neocons, who have proven to be so dangerous for our country.
Americans have a soft life now. It's a sad reflection of our success at democracy and "the pursuit of happiness" in particular that many Americans are unwilling to make a sacrifice for their country. Of course, perhaps Iraq is not something Americans feel they should be fighting for. But contrast the "anti-war" sentiment here with al Quida's recruiting. Al quida doesn't seem to have any difficulty finding soldiers willing -- more than that -- eager to fight they're very unjust war, one that targets civilians equally with soldiers, Muslims equally with "infidels." Certainly they are not fighting for self-rule or anything like that. Al Quida is fighting to put a theocracy into power, one that would impose its interpretation of Islamic law upon others, distinctly from the top down.
One has to wonder what it demonstrates about the differences between two cultures. Democracy is something we want to keep safe over here. And others can kind of fend for themselves.
Pardon me? Al-Quaed, you will notice, has not managed in five years--five whole years!--to impose Sharia law on the United States. I doubt this is an immediate likelihood.
However, U. S. troops are in Iraq, U. S. troops are in Afghanistan, U. S. troops are in Kuwait, U. S. troops are in Saudi Arabia...
I think if the United States were under occupation by Arab armies, you would find plenty of volunteers, resistance fighters, to oppose them.
Only the occupying nations would call these young people "terrorists".
Al Quida's interest in fighting the US predates the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and began with the US presence in Saudi Arabia. Well, ideologically, it goes back much farther still with Arab distain for American mores.
Sharia law, however, is becoming increasingly a source of tension in Europe where there are much larger Arab populations. Especially in the Netherlands and Britian.
this blog and it's commentary compelled me to register my support for a troop surge in iraq. you see, i was for the general concept, but against the extremely flawed form that it took under our current commander in chief.
Excellent post, Mr. Shaeffer. Let's hope the voters agree, and vote for Obama.
The more virulent the attack the more truthful the post must be. Who was the president that opened the door to the communist in China, Richard Nixon. Yet this is the same nation beating Buddist monks in Tibet and this republican president hasn't even denounced this situation publicly. These are the communists that are now loaning us the money, together with the Saudis to keep in place the Irak fiasco. Maybe this is why he can't stand in their face. History has a way of repeating itself, so when we see the marines leaving the biggest US embassy in the world from the rooftop at least the choppers will have plenty of space to pick up the citizens of this country in retreat.
The events under way in Basra are similar to the events in Vietnam, we turned over the fighting to the S. Vietnamese who were trained by our military and you know what, these were the Vietcong that killed our soldiers at night. Ask any Vietnem vet if they fully trusted their lives to the S. Vietnamese soldiers when in 'Nam.Frank is correct in saying that McCain wants to revindicate himself for having been taken prisoner and not being out there to win the war. Nobody likes to loose, specially if you've already declared victory and flown onto the deck of the carrier in an arrogant fashion. McCain can not take another defeat,...hence we'll be there for another 95 years, whatever it takes to win...
I'm wondering what you mean by saying Nixon "opened the door to communist China." And from this assertion you derive a straight line to McCain's support for the Iraq war. And somehow the Chinese repression of the Tibetans is thus directly laid at McCain's doorstep.
You need to revisit your logic.
Meanwhile if you should ever be interested in reading a first person account of life under communist rule in China, I highly recommend Nien Cheng's "Life and Death in Shanghai." As a somewhat indirect result of Nixon's diplomacy with the Chinese communist government, Nien Cheng was eventually given her freedom and later emmigrated to the US. She was not so critical of Nixon as you appear to be.
Meanwhile, if you are genuinely interested in learning about McCain's thoughts on Vietnam, it strikes me as obvious that you should consult some of his own writing on the topic.
As to McCain's comment about a 100 years, he was referring to a security presence such as we still maintain in Germany, Japon, Kuwait, and other places. We are not, of course, at war in any of those places as presumably you know.
Can you answer me a question about those "security presences" after World War II?
Exactly how many years did it take for us the "win" the civil wars in Germany, Japan, and Kuwait, before we reduced our troops to a "security presence"? Was there a Greeen Zone in Berlin in 1950? Did Americans need an armored guard to walk the streets of Tokyo in 1954?
How many opposing militias and war lords were fighting over German turf five years after D-Day?
Are the Germans and the Japanese still without electricity and clean water?
I grant that we are not at that place where McCain had said a security presence could begin. We have not won yet.
If we are going to stay there, we should "win." And if we are not going to win, we should leave. I suppose the McCain candidacy is really about that question: do we win or not.
Secondly, acknowledge that Iraq is not simply a civil war brewing, though argueably that aspect is nascent. Iraq has outside Islamic forces that wish to prevent its becoming a nation. And those forces do not want to let the US government fix the electricity and water problems.
My question to you would be: what responsibility does the US owe to the Iraqi people to restore order in the wake of our invasion there? What happens to them, the Iraqis -- particularly those who want freedom and democracy -- those who have risked their lives for democracy and self-government?
Good points. Whatever happened to all the commie baiters, anyway?
Hello??? I know there's a few of you Archie Bunker types still out there The pinko chinkos have a ton of our jobs and hold a huge chunk of our national debt. Get out of your favorite chairs and vote for Obama!!!
Oh, never mind...
It becomes more and more clear that there will be no victory in Iraq. Not for lack of trying, of course, but America lost the Iraq war as soon as we realized we had no idea what we were doing. We should have cut our losses years ago, but the Bush administration and the American people kept waiting for democracy to dawn on Iraq, suspending their disbelief, willfully ignoring contrary evidence. Each day the Iraq war continues increases the magnitude of our personal and international embarrassment
Americans are plagued with indecision, hoping that somehow the next election cycle will wash away all the problems in the world. So we put off any opposition to the Iraq war, figuring congress won't do anything about it until 2009 anyway, hoping, just as we hoped to be greeted as liberators, that a new crop of representatives and senators and a president will make everything all better.
John McCain rides on the vague promise of victory that creeps into all of our minds. Iraq has become a lottery in which America has invested inconceivable resources and money, and there is a wish that somehow America will come out on top.
The issue of whether to vote for McCain becomes one of whether to follow the rabbit hole. Or whether we should keep digging ourselves in a hole in the hopes of finding ... victory?
What is victory really worth?
Frank Schaeffer
Every Time I read one of your blogs my respect for you grows. Thanks for your level headedness an humility.
GWW
Than you too for saying what I think too. The column was powerful, frank and yes, exactly what we need to read. Truth is powerful!
i agree. Eventually I might forgive him for all his right-wing activism of long ago.
This poster didn't sufficiently support the people of Vietnam, very like Jane Fonda, who helped the communist totalitarians destroy the hope of freedom for the Vietnamese people. He claims to be for our military and awed by their service, but actually seems to support dispassionate betrayal of our mission in Iraq, which, is actually about the Freedom of the Iraqi People, while the perpetrators of the "Oil for Food" scandals (taking Saddam's blood money) did all they could to stop the US helping the murdering Saddam.
I don't believe that this person was truly conservative. My transformation from the world of blank acceptance of the marxist religion pushed by university priests was long and hard. One cannot be true to oneself and so easily switch. "Why does the left always support totalitarians who hold on to power for decades at the expense of the good of their people?" . . China, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia/her captive nations whose people Stalin mass-murdered, Saddam's Iraq, the religious extremeists of Iran, etc.? The left's trail of tears is so destructive to the good of Mankind that the rest of the world could have been prosperous by now nstead of mass-murdered.
Stunningly, the left never apologizes their mass-murdering human misery! They just demand that the good and decent be brought down to their lowest common demoninator. Just remember that French universities created the intellensia for Pol Pot's Revolution for the Good of the Cambodian People!
You can support people, or you can support everything else. Jane Fonda was guilty of naively believing that you can support human beings from every side regardless of the political circumstances. She has since apologized for that mistake and it is sad that it is being brought up by someone so closed minded so many years after the fact.
It's nice that you can say that she has apologized for helping the Vietnamese communists mass-murder about 1,000,000 human beings After we left Vietnam, and amazing that you'd think that was adequate. She has never apologized, at least through the MSM. As far as "closed minded" goes, I'm wondering when you are going to start thinking/feeling for those mass-murdered millions of human beings. I don't recall George Bush holding a gun to Ho' s, Pol Pot's or any other totalitarian's head and forcing them to kill all those millions of human beings.
How much time goes by before mass-murder as state policy becomes ok?
Jane Fonda has apologized many times for sitting on that gun and and serving as a propaganda trophy for the North Vietnamese. She may have been wrong to do it, but she has apologized. She even did so on Letterman a few years ago.
She was not wrong in her belief that that war was wrongheaded, needless and unjustified. Fonda also apologized in her autobiography, so any angry old soldiers can go to a library (They won't of course buy the book) and read it for themselves.
Since it seems that you are a historical revisionist, I suggest you read overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer also author of All The Shah's Men. In this book you will find that most Wars have been started by Republican Presidents and that these wars for most part have been wars of expansionism.
Posted April 2, 2008 | 12:06 PM (EST)