[editors note, this isn’t one of my better written entries.. hopefully you can forgive those transgressions] 

Who is the real John McCain?

Ok, allow me to explain my self here.. I am politically on the left… I think.  John McCain is politically on the right. Are you following all this so far? I’m probably voting for Obama..  but all that said..  I do tend to like McCain..  and frankly.. it pisses me off to get these emails from my leftist activist brothern with there whole “Who is the real John McCain” shtick.

Listen.. I HATE, is that even a strong enough word? George Bush. I sometimes have a hard time choosing which I hate more.. the stupidity, or raw evil of the manipulations.. in there communications. And lets face it.. I really want the republican party to pay a price… because they where the enablers of George.. and hell, I get pissed at the Democratic party for being such giant wusses in this battle! 

But John McCain.. he escapes much of my anger at the Republicans because.. though he has consistently voted in conservative manners.. he didn’t just do whatever the party was doing.. the man thought for him self.. so he wasn’t the terrible enabler that the rest of his party was.

Now we got this war in Iraq.. you’ve heard of this one right? My view of McCain’s position is.. though I’m not sure that I can agree with his position.. I do respect it. He’s critisized the utter stupidity of the stupid parts.. and got behind the smart parts… and frankly I’m a little on the fence as to wether I should embrace him on this..

Hmm..  to understand this you really want to understand that larger geopolitical subtext, and.. I suppose, it might help to know something of what the Neo-Cons where thinking.. the folks whom.. prior to the invasion of Iraq, talked a lot about the notion of going there..  

Ok.. so.. you know the middle east has a reputation for.. not always being the nicest neighborhood, right? It probably doesn’t help that we are dependent on this unpleasant neighborhood for our fuel supply..  You know, we’re going crazy as the cost of fuel goes above $4 a gallon…  depending on what goes on over there.. our economy, I dare say, could grind to a halt.. . I mean $4 is nothing.. . 

The fuel issue.. at the very least, keeps us focused on the middle east.. because keeping that fuel supply in order.. well that’s probably in American interest, right?

Ok.. so the other deal is the middle eastern terrorist organizations.. you’ve heard of this one right? I mentioned it was a bad neighborhood, right?

So.. its complex… but there are complex interrelationship….

err… This is complex.. let me give you the Thomas Barnett’s take on.. well, war.. He gives a killer power point presentation.. I disagree with him in places.. but he is an amazing guy with respect to the framework he gives us for thinking about National Grand Strategy.

a shorter one:

And finally: 

Ok, I know that was long, but I need to give comments!

First off, yeah.. I love his military humor.. and yeah, I disagree with him in a number of places.. but I think his stuff is so important to think about.. and while I know that many a reader might… well.. I’ll hopefully get to this.. in any event, you can follow Thomas Barnett’s blog here.

So there’s a number of interesting things germane to our conversation… relative to John McCain… This presentation throws the Iraq conflict in a radicle new light… and when viewed from this vantage point, McCain doesn’t look so bad on Iraq…

Here’s the trouble.. as I said earlier, Bush screwed things up.. Should we be in Iraq? How could he be so stupid about how we went there, and how we have stayed here? I sorta feel like.. if we can do this right.. lets stay, if not lets cut our losses and leave….  A big part of the political realities surround the war are.. well the stupidity of Bush’s public relations:

Bush did not prepare us for a prelonged occupation.. His PR surrounding Iraq was.. short sighted.. how do we get in there…  All of Bushes PR, no matter what the subject, has been short sided in this way.. which is why for a short time he didn’t look soooo bad, and why he now looks even worse then that. Frankly we don’t believe in the Iraq war.. largely because of the Bush pr catastrophe… Frankly, there’s a political dimension to war.. we pulled out of Vietnam, not because we had lost the war militarily.. but because we had lost the political will. The Vietcong’s moves that lead to us loosing the political will was a set of actions that was very bad for them militarily.. the reason this was a decisive blow to our political will was because our political will was based on a PR strategy that.. was not aligned with reality.. another words, its the same stupidity we see with George Bush.

Frankly.. which is the bigger sin, the stupidity or the dishonesty?

You know I’m not arguing that we should have stuck it out in Vietnam…  I’m just telling you what the people who think we should have… say, people like Henry Kissinger, say. I dare say that it was the dishonesty of the US’s PR surrounding Vietnam.. that has a lot to do with the success that period’s anti war movement. Another words… the Hawks are creating Doves.

The trouble with talking about this stuff is that we are going so far beyond the public debates of now.. so it strikes me as very likely that the lens through which you read these words is the lens of these debates.. and to really get what I’m saying we need to try and move beyond that.

So back to McCain.. we’ve now talked about the stupidity of Bush and Vietnam.. what we can say about McCain is that authenticity and honesty are core to the McCain brand… And I believe these are the core values people are looking for in this political season… and its George Bush who’s made this the most important thing.. because we are all so sick of the bull… and this is why I’m saying that people on the left need to be careful in how they attack McCain.. because if those attacks misrepresent the reality… well then you’re in danger of associating the left with the sort of values that.. value power over truth or honesty or good government.. which is exactly what is driving the political realities against Bush.

What we need now is strong leadership.. a leadership that has the maturity to tell us things we might not want to hear. 

One of the things that’s astounded me about McCain is his willingness to stay with the Iraq war.. even when it seemed to mean political devastation for him. He’s now taking heat for what amounts to PR missteps:

Will we stay in Iraq for 100 years if McCain has his way? That’s not really what McCain is saying.. McCain is saying.. we need to be committed to victory in Iraq.. that failure would suck really really bad.. and blah blah blah.. and he’s also saying that.. a long term commitment to staying in Iraq is.. not the same thing as a long term commitment to war in Iraq; its a long term commitment to peace in Iraq.

The political situation surrounding Iraq has a big problem.. basically, we the people don’t understand Iraq.. the situation there.. I don’t think you can sell us on staying in Iraq unless you can really educate folks about what’s really going on in there.. how it really works, etc.. Otherwise fears are very likely what will drive the political realities.. and of course McCain’s political problems, relative to Iraq, are all about fears.

So, if we bare all this in mind.. I also think it’s safe to say that Obama need’s to be careful in how he takes on McCain on this front… Because there’s more merit to McCain’s stances then if commonly understood..

Still.. I don’t think Obama is as bad on Foreign Policy is McCain would have you believe..  and at the same time.. we have an increasingly complex foreign policy situation… And clearly McCain is the stronger candidate, with regard to sophistication in Foreign policy.

Out of the Weeds, back to Barnett 

My issues with what Barnett is saying: 

1. I think its a mistake to be too pro globalization… this is an area where I’m not real comfortable with Barnett.. but it takes a complex and nuanced conversation to really get at this.
2. He’s using a systems approach to thinking about this stuff (much as I use with social media).. which is groovy and all.. but I think its easy to feel like things are safer then they potentially are.. see Bill Ward Video after this list.
3. He did work under Rumsfield.. (though he voted for Kerry).. so that some of his political analysis seems.. well its worth treating critically.
4. I still think we need to listen to voices like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn..  Barnett is, after all, the product of a Harvard education.. is a bit of an elite.. and I don’t really think has, at least for my taste, quite enough sensitivity to wrestle with the dark sides of all this stuff.
5. He’s basically saying.. economic / network / whatever.. integration leads to piece.. which I think is true enough.. the trouble is that the challenges between here and there are freaking huge… and that could be enough to sorta blow up the systems.. to put it a certain sorta way.
6. As wonderful as globalization can be.. there is a greater concentration of power happening in this context then ever before.. which has huge ramifications of which we don’t fully understand.. which represents a danger he’s not addressing..  Indeed this sorta message, about the problem of power concentration in globalization, has come from a guy who used to be a part of Henry Kissinger’s consultancy group! He wrote a book on the subject called Super Class.. which I still haven’t gotten around to reading… but I’ll recommend it to you anyway!

Bill Ward Video  (fellow who used to play drums for Black Sabbath) 

And finally, because I just couldn’t help myself, a video a to end on:

There I feel better, don’t you?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.