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But wait - did you hear the one about the photographer hired to get some shots of John McCain for the Atlantic Monthly? I'll let her explain: "Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them to hire me.”
And the Atlantic's PR firm, working weekend overtime: "She has, in fact, disgraced herself".
And Jeffery Goldberg, the author of the cover story: "Greenberg is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism"
You can find most of those quotes - and the photos in question, at the link. The quote you won't find is the one from McCain. That's because it's from Goldberg's story, which isn't linked there or at any of the other sites that have made the pictures into the story. And while those pictures are a (briefly) noteworthy story that's too bad - because sometimes you can learn a lot from reading the words, too.
And while The Wars of John McCain includes a lot of words, they are most definitely worth reading.
A few weeks ago, sitting in his suite in a Columbus, Ohio, hotel, I handed the senator a copy of his father’s 1972 Times opinion piece.That, my friends, is good stuff.“1972?” he asked, reading it. “I hadn’t seen this. I was still in the prison.” He turned to Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is among his closest friends in the Senate, and who had wandered into the suite while McCain and I were talking. “Hey, Lindsey, look at this article. This is from when The New York Times still published op-eds by McCains,” he said with a half-smile.
You'll find mention of McCain's father and grandfather and sons beyond what little was presented in the biography video at the Republican Convention - and discussion of the wars they fought (or are fighting). And interviews with several of McCain's fellow POWs (though I'm inclined to take issue with the blurring of the distinction between their position and that of John Kerry's felllow Swift Boat vets - those few words could have been cut from the finished product altogether) and fellow congressional Vietnam vets. You'll read some articulate and informed debate on America's final years in Vietnam, and how and why that (and all those other wars) does or doesn't inform John McCain's view of the world today. It is one of the finest, most balanced pieces of writing I've seen on John McCain, and it would be a damn shame if all anyone ever saw was the pictures - at least the ones that don't accompany the story anyway.
And while not referred to by the candidate as such, most of the article deals with McCain's view of his son's war. “The country is in one of our occasional periods of isolationism, a reaction to what [the public views] as failure, even when we are succeeding in Iraq—and we have succeeded in Iraq."
Goldberg notes - accurately - that "McCain rarely discusses his original vote, in 2002, to authorize the Iraq invasion; he prefers to talk about the surge." And that's unfortunate, because in spite of the opposition's steadfast refusal to back away from Iraq is Vietnam arguments (many of which were developed in 2002 - and most of which can still be validated by rapid withdrawal) one of the side benefits of winning is that you can actually say you knew we could do it all along. (Especially if you were right all along about what needed to be done - but in the US Government that group has a population of approximately one.)
There are two things I believe I can't be accused of - one is lack of commitment to finishing what we started in Iraq, and the second is not paying attention to what's going on over there. In late 2006/early '07 I wasn't sold on the idea of a surge (even though I knew I was going to be over there regardless). That's partly because I knew something that only a handful of people in America did - not just that something called the Anbar Awakening was turning things around in that province, but that American forces in Iraq had committed to ensuring the Awakening was going to work. I wasn't happy with McCain's treatment of General Abizaid at the time, and also thought certain people weren't paying enough attention to Afghanistan.
That makes me one of a very few people who can now legitimately argue that I was against the surge because I thught we could win without it and that we needed to pay more attention to Afghanistan. (But I also knew that if we fled Iraq we wouldn't stand a chance against the al Qaeda recruiting boom for the Afghan campaign that would follow.)
But I won't - because I was wrong. And throughout 2007 I came to realize that McCain was right, and that we couldn't calm Baghdad without "the surge". And we did - throughout a long hot summer while Americans were completely focused on Mexico.
How do I know McCain is right in saying we succeeded? Because of the number of people making this point (from the Atlantic):
Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island and a former Army officer, who traveled with Obama to Iraq in July, said of McCain: “I think he’s ignoring the consequences of Iraq. First of all, the intelligence and the arguments for Iraq have been proven universally wrong."Obviously he isn't going to take my advice, but I say give 'em hell, John.
But McCain believes strongly that the only way to ensure Saddam would never pose a threat to American interests was to remove him from power. “Is there anyone who believes that Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have pursued WMD?” he asked me. “He told his interrogators he would. Is there anybody who believes that the sanction regime was going to hold, or that the status quo would hold, or that sooner or later they wouldn’t shoot down one of our planes patrolling the no-fly zone?”Read the whole thing.This comment was unusual because McCain rarely discusses his original vote, in 2002, to authorize the Iraq invasion; he prefers to talk about the surge. The comment was also striking because it is almost identical to something he said to me around the time of the original vote. “There is no such thing as containment,” he said then. “If we don’t act, we’ll pay the price later. If we ‘give peace a chance,’ Saddam will pursue his ambitions against us, but he will be more powerful, and more deadly than ever.”
His constancy is noteworthy. Nothing in his experience, recent or not-so-recent, has moved him away from his essential belief that the president has a duty to confront perceived threats well before they reach American shores. I asked Kissinger whether he thinks that McCain can be too inflexible on the subject of preemption. He said McCain will not change his mind if he feels that the nation’s defense is at stake. Much of this, Kissinger continued, is related to McCain’s sense of national honor, and personal honor. “He will not do the easy thing,” he said.
I pointed out that McCain has changed many of his positions during his candidacy in order, it seems, to better conform to Republican orthodoxy. Kissinger replied: “Under the pressure of a presidential campaign, it’s possible that he will make adjustments. He may deviate from his positions, but he will not like himself for it.”
In my conversations with McCain, however, he never appeared greatly troubled by his shifts and reversals. It’s not difficult to understand why: tax policy, or health care, or even off-shore oil drilling are for him all matters of mere politics, and politics calls for ideological plasticity. It is only in the realm of national defense, and of American honor—two notions that for McCain are thoroughly entwined—that he becomes truly unbending.
Kissinger learned this at their first meeting. “When I was in Vietnam for negotiations on implementing the Paris Agreement, the North Vietnamese prime minister had a dinner—I was leaving the next day—and he said if I wanted to take McCain on my flight, it could be arranged,” he said. “I told him that I won’t take McCain or anyone else on my plane. The prisoner release would have to happen on a schedule previously agreed. Somehow McCain heard about this and months later, at the White House reception for returned prisoners, he said to me, ‘I want to thank you for saving my honor.’ What McCain did not tell me at that time was that he had refused to be released two years earlier unless all were released with him. It was better for him to remain in jail in order to preserve his honor and American honor than to come home on my plane.”
For McCain, the doctrine of preemption clearly falls outside the realm of mere politics, as does the need to “win,” rather than “end,” wars; the safety of America demands that they be fought, and honor demands that they be won.
