It is long past time for America to have the debate over whether our willingness to fight one unnecessary war after the next -- more than any other country in the world -- and to see war as a central method for dealing with other countries, is smart or "tough" or conducive to being "safe." The last thing the country needs -- and the last thing Democrats should want -- is a Democratic candidate whose strategy is to accept the GOP foreign policy premises and then make themselves as much as possible like Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol and John McCain.The other day, I saw someone on one of the talk shows start talking about how, from the Vietnamese point of view, pilots like John McCain were committing war crimes by bombing Vietnamese civilians. The rest of the panel was shocked, but it was actually true, of course. I wonder if the Democrats will be able to confront and neutralize McCain's war record the way the Republicans were able to neutralize John Kerry's record, even turning it into a liability?
The Democrats' greatest failure over the last eight years -- both political and substantive -- has been a refusal to offer any contrast to Republican warmongering and fearmongering in the national security realm. With the Republicans about to nominate one of the country's most unhinged warlovers, that cowardly strategy is more dangerous, and more self-destructive, than ever before.
As far as I am concerned, there is nothing more frightening about McCain than his war-mongering. This is a man who sang "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran!", who talks blithely about the US staying in Iraq for 100 years -- if Americans confuse grandiosity and ego with leadership again, it means they have chosen war until 2016.
I wonder if Jon Stewart will think McCain is such a great guy when he drafts Stewart's son to fight in the Middle East?
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