What? The bold Maverick wanted to cut and run?

Bush and soulmate

In 1983, McCain voted against a bill to extend Reagan's deployment of U.S. troops [in Lebanon]. Reagan wanted more time to strengthen the fragile Lebanese government, but McCain worried that the American force was too small and that U.S. interests did not justify the risk. ...

[In 1993] after 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in an ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia, McCain decided that it was time to force a withdrawal of the troops, and he introduced an amendment to cut off funds. He wrote later that he regretted the step as an encroachment on the president's power and "as a retreat in the face of aggression from an inferior foe." (my emphasis)

So reports Paul Richter for the Los Angeles Times 03/16/08 in McCain's mixed signals on foreign policy.

But, this being good ole McCain, the Straight Talker and press corps darling, all this is not evidence of inconsistency, hypocrisy, cluelessness or (God forbid!) "surrendering to The Terrorists." No, it's evidence of McCain maverickness and his willingness to boldly speak to truth to the Republican power structure. And his general openmindedness about bipartisanship, the Holy Grail of High Broderism. Richter writes:

... before his first presidential run in 2000, he declared he would work with the Democratic Party's brain trust to devise his foreign policy.

... he infuriated Republicans as a freshman congressman in 1983 by trying to thwart President Reagan's deployment of troops in Lebanon.

[The bold Maverick] has adopted a surprising diversity of views on foreign policy issues during his 25 years in Congress.

In forming his views on national security, McCain has always relied on a large circle of outside advisors and a handful of trusted aides, say former staffers and others who know him. But he has typically worked out his own conclusions. And taken as a whole, they seem quirky and a la carte, rather than developed from a single philosophy.

Even while he wants to extend American authority, McCain as a lawmaker has regularly bucked the Republican establishment. (my emphasis)

The main point of Richter's article, though, seems to reflect an attempt by the Maverick's supporters to start positioning their 100 Years War man as a pragmatic, sensible guy on foreign policy who carefully and thoughtful considers a wide range of views. For instance:

McCain has staked out a more hawkish position on Iran than the Bush administration, saying that "the only thing worse than military action against Iran is a nuclear-armed Iran."

But McCain has sent conflicting signals as well.

In 1998, he suggested to the Weekly Standard magazine that as president he would seek to develop a kind of consensus foreign policy, consulting the "best minds I know," including President Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski; Clinton Secretary of State Warren Christopher; President George H.W. Bush's secretary of State, James A. Baker III; Scowcroft; and Kissinger.

Great. Before he bombs Iran, he'll invite a couple of old realists like Brzezinski and Scowcroft to the White House for a photo op, after which they will hopefully tell the press how impressed they were at how seriously the Maverick listened to their views. Then he'll start bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bombing Iran and turned the Iraq War into a far bigger catastrophe than it is.

When you start from the framework that the question is whether the Iraq War should last 100 years or 10,000 years - let's assume for the moment his "million years" suggestion was hyperbole - it kind of limits the immediate practical alternatives that could come out of having photo ops with a few level-headed foreign policy bigwigs.

Robert Dreyfuss casts considerable doubt on this image of open-minded, reflective Maverick in Hothead McCain 03/06/08 (03/24/08 issue):

And you've heard, no doubt, about McCain's stubbornness. "No dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide. "Hardheaded is another way to say it. Arrogant is another way to say it. Hubristic is another way to say it. Too proud for his own good is another way to say it. It's a quality about him that disturbs me."

But what you may not have heard is an extended critique of the kind of Commander in Chief that Captain McCain might be. To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge [of] radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.

Tags: mccain, robert dreyfuss