McCain Recycles 2001 Pro-War Column For 2008 Speech
Yes, you have heard this speech before.
On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain delivered a "major" foreign policy address,
in which, as part of his defense for a continued presence of U.S troops in
Iraq, he positioned himself as a "realistic idealist," someone who is
acutely aware of the cost of war.
"The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people
suffer and die," McCain told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
"Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests
****elded
by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and
diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility
of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is
loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud
sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of
a
call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all
that is lost when war claims its wages from us... we cannot wish the war
to
be a better place."
It is a repackaged graph.
Six-and-a-half years earlier, McCain used the almost the exact same
language
to drum up popular sup****t for military action in the greater war on
terror.
"War is a miserable business," the Arizona Senator wrote in a Wall Street
Journal oped in October 2001. "The lives of a nation's finest patriots are
sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted,
economies
are damaged. Strategic interests ****elded by years of patient statecraft
are
endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. However heady
the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed
a
tear for all that will be lost when war claims its wages from us. Shed a
tear, and then get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly
as
we can, and as ruthlessly as we must. There is no avoiding the war we are
in
today, any more than we could have avoided world war after our fleet was
bombed at Pearl Harbor.... War is a miserable business. Let's get on with
it."
To be sure, politicians are free and often eager to use old lines,
especially those they think are persuasive. What these two, nearly
identical, remarks suggest is that McCain's view of combat -- and, perhaps
more im****tantly, its human costs -- has not really changed throughout the
course of war. That is, despite five years of military operations in Iraq
and more than 4,000 troop deaths, he still sees the "lives lost" and the
"merciless realities" as necessary sacrifices to make.
It is a position that undoubtedly remains popular with a great number of
primarily conservative voters. But it is also a sign of an unbending,
almost
stubborn, nature on the war that McCain's critics will certainly hold over
his head during the presidential campaign.
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001375
McCain? Is he still alive?
Yes and if this old man is elected we will hear and see the same old lies,
and flip flopping for the next 4 years while the country falls deeper and
deeper into disrepair while McCain gets closer to stepping on that banana
peal.
I wonder if the ghost of George Wa****ngton is sitting somewhere sobbing.
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