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In his militarist lust he was near lunacy; his ignorance: profound; he was, in many respects, conventional—numbingly conventional—on Washington’s global role. That was John McCain.
This was a man who, post-9/11, promoted measures expected to boost foreign terrorism. “Within hours” of that morning’s carnage, he made himself “leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan,” to countries—like Iraq—with no Qaeda ties, where revenge, really, would be aggression. On CNN, aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, on “Face the Nation” he pushed for assaulting Iraq, stressing the “need to keep telling the American people” about Saddam’s menace, to keep “frightening and scaring them every day.”
Later, as hopes shattered for quick success in Iraq on Washington’s terms—the only terms concerning McCain—he started “calling for the deployment of at least another division,” growing “more strident in his advocacy of escalation” with time. More young soldiers had to go to Baghdad, many to die. These troops became “the surge,” to McCain a triumph, proof of his acute thinking, his wartime sagacity. “The surge has succeeded,” he declared in 2008, claiming it showed how Washington could win in Afghanistan.
Relevant scholarship reveals these claims were, if we’re polite, dubious, if not: bullshit. Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman and Jacob N. Shapiro, in International Security, determined the surge “was insufficient to explain 2007’s sudden reversal in fortunes,” since “local conditions that will not necessarily recur elsewhere” were “essential” to its success. “These findings suggest caution for Afghanistan, in particular,” they warned. Others drew darker conclusions. Steven Simon, in Foreign Affairs, wrote that the strategy enflamed “the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism.”
But these matters lay beyond McCain’s field of attention. So did other developments: the million slaughtered; the millions more displaced; the linked plagues of cancer, soaring infant mortality and congenital birth defects in bomb-crippled Fallujah and Basra. One scholar judged the U.S. occupation “the biggest cultural disaster since the descendants of Genghis Khan destroyed Baghdad in 1258.” McCain helped visit this nightmare on Iraq.
His decisions haunt Yemen as well. “Thank God for the Saudis,” he proclaimed, insisting it was “not true” their bombings took out Yemeni civilians, that U.S. legislators were “crazy” trying to bar Trump’s $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. In reality, the Saudis in Yemen have “killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes, tortured detainees, raped civilians and used child soldiers as young as 8—actions that may amount to war crimes,” the UN concluded.
Again: “tortured detainees.” Contrary to eulogies saturating the news, McCain struck no principled stance against torture, and in fact supported, many times, groups infamous for their appalling treatment of hostages. He personally paid the Contras, for example, who counted as members “major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict.” A congressional inquiry learned they “raped, tortured and killed unarmed civilians, including children,” that they “burned, dismembered, blinded or beheaded” their victims.
He later endorsed the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian opposition group. “I thank you for being an example, an example to the whole world,” McCain told its leader. Human Rights Watch (HRW), reporting on MEK, discussed “abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.”
Then McCain rejected “the push to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush administration officials who crafted the legal basis for the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ such as waterboarding,” citing the “need to move forward.” The ACLU, Amnesty International, and HRW were just some of the critics condemning this stance.
That latter outfit also censured John Negroponte, McCain’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Negroponte’s Honduran tenure (1981-85) coincided with state-backed “abduction, torture, and murder of scores of people,” as “millions of dollars of U.S. military aid” flowed into the country.
Reagan-era policies, like those Negroponte administered, helped spur Central American migration to the U.S. Many seeking refuge here confronted, more and more over the years, a border that “promotes the death of migrants,” a boundary that channels them onto lethal desert paths. This weaponized line was one of McCain’s great causes: he called again and again for more Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops to police southern Arizona; for enhanced surveillance and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to monitor the zone; for “double-layer fencing at needed locations.”
McCain’s border priorities also lay bare his alleged environmentalism. He co-sponsored the Arizona Borderlands Protection and Preservation Act, which imperiled “a vast, 10-million-acre area of Arizona without any remotely corresponding border-security benefits.” A related proposal was “the most direct assault on national parks ever to be advanced at any level in any Congress in U.S. history,” the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees believed.
There were other signs of his reverence for nature: McCain dismissed as “extremely disappointing” Obama’s Keystone XL pipeline rejection. He praised Trump for working to dismantle the EPA’s “Waters of the United States” rule, a move savaged as a “reckless attack on our waters and health.” And he lauded Scott Pruitt’s Clean Power Plan rollback, deemed “a boon to the coal industry.”
This ersatz maverick—who voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time, with Trump 83% of the time—left a clear legacy. Unmoored from reality, unmoved by the pain his policies caused: that was John McCain.
Originally published on 2018-09-07
About the author: Nick Alexandrov lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He can be reached at: nicholas.alexandrov@gmail.com
Source: Counter Punch
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Myth #1 – Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region
Although Arabs were a majority in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel, there had always been a Jewish population, as well. For the most part, Jewish Palestinians got along with their Arab neighbors. This began to change with the onset of the Zionist movement, because the Zionists rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and wanted Palestine for their own, to create a “Jewish State” in a region where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land.
For instance, after a ...
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For a long time, the bipartisan political system was the backbone of American democracy. Thanks to freedom of speech, the media, and open hearings in the US Congress, the opposition was always able to control the party in power. However, it took just a few years of active work and a year of mass-scale, illegal protests for this system to fall apart, and the thinking of many Americans to change so dramatically as to support this new reality. Ira Glasser, a veteran public figure and the longtime leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, became one of the first to ...
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This list of shrines is based on a study by Milan Ivanovic, Crkveni spomenici XIII-XX veka (Church Monuments from 13th to 20th century) from Zaduzbine Kosova (The Foundations of Kosovo), Prizren-Belgrade 1987, and other recent publications. Dragan Jovanovic, researcher, compiled the major part of this list.
A
AJKOBILA (in the Middle Age Prozdrikobila, Pristina): demolished church in the vicinity of the present-day mosque.
AJNOVCE (in the Middle Ages Hainovci, K. Kamenica): 1. ruins of the Tamnica monastery with the church built and frescoed in the 14C on the foundations of an older Byzantme basilica; 2. remains of a church in the old cemetery ...
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When I read Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s article the question that leapt to mind was, “How come the South is said to have fought for slavery when the North wasn’t fighting against slavery?”
Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying
“I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very ...
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The Nation published an outstanding article on March 9th, by James Carden, which described the remarkable extent to which the Obama government (and virtually all of the Washington Establishment) are supporting (financially and otherwise) fascists who want to destroy Russia.
One such example was a recent event in Washington. According to Carden:
It featured the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy. According to the program bio, Parubiy served as the “commandant” of the Euromaidan (why did an ostensibly peaceful protest require a “commandant” anyway?) and, later, as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. The bio provided to attendees might fairly be described as selective. ...
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ZionismThe term Zionism is derived from the word Zion that in the Hebrew language and cultural-historical tradition of the Jews refers to the citadel (acropolis) of the city of Jerusalem but as well as to the Kingdom of Heaven. From the matter of politics, Zionism refers to the political-national movement of the European Jews in the very late 19th century for the very purpose to re-create a Jewish homeland in the form of a nation-state in the Middle East – Israel.[i]This Zionist movement was to the great extent expressed as a consequence of the European (mostly West European) anti-Semitic (better ...
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The main church of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate in Kosovo in PećThe series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans, triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of whom were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European provinces of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was again being raised, particularly in the final quarter of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument of Turkey’s policy in crushing the ...
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries.Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together.One of the critical reasons behind NATO’s formation almost 70 years ago, was ...
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The prophet Cassandra’s curse was that when she told the future, no one listened; history’s curse is that when it tells the past, no one does.The West has no shortage of charges it hurls against Russia, but most of them can be grouped into one of three categories: that Russia intervened in the American elections, that Russia is dragging the world into a new cold war, and that Russia is becoming increasingly aggressive and expansionist. Sometimes when charges are brought against you, the best witness you can call to your defense is history.Election InterventionThis history of Russia, America and political ...
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On April 7, two U.S. Navy battle ships USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Ross launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield in Syria’s Homs province from the Eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. strikes particularly targeted the main landing strip, aircraft, radio locators, air defense system and fuel stations.
The strike was approved by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the Syrian Air Force used affiliated al-Shayrat air base to prepare chemical attack on the city of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and ...
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Article by Vladislav B. Sotirovic: „Nationalism and Territorial Claims of the Yugoslavs: Challenge to Re-Map the Balkans in the 21st century. Case Study“, Journal of Security Studies and Global Politics, Vol. 2, № 1, 2017, Islamabad, Pakistan, online: http://sciplatform.com/journals, ISSN (online) 2519-9609, pp. 69−81 (PDF)SaveOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and ...
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In April-May of 1944, the Crimean Tatar battalions took part in battles against the Red Army in the Crimea. The units that were evacuated from the Crimea in June 1944, were compiled into the Tatar mountain-Jaeger three-battalion SS Regiment. A month later, the group became the first Tatar-mountain-Jaeger SS Brigade (2,500 troops) under the command of SS Standartenführer Fortenbah. On 31 December 1944, the unit was disbanded to become a part of the East Turkic branch of SS as the Crimea battle group: two infantry battalions and one hundred horses.German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein testified: "Most of the Crimean ...
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“Russia suspected of election scheme. U.S. probes plan to sow voter distrust.”That’s the Washington Post page-one lead headline of September 6. Think about it. The election that Americans are suffering through, cringing in embarrassment, making them think of moving abroad, renouncing their citizenship; an election causing the Founding Fathers to throw up as they turn in their graves … this is because the Russian Devils are sowing voter distrust! Who knew?But of course, that’s the way Commies are – Oh wait, I forgot, they’re no longer Commies. So what are they? Ah yes, they still have that awful old hangup so worthy ...
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McCain’s border priorities also lay bare his alleged environmentalism. He co-sponsored the Arizona Borderlands Protection and Preservation Act, which imperiled “a vast, 10-million-acre area of Arizona without any remotely corresponding border-security benefits.” A related proposal was “the most direct assault on national parks ever to be advanced at any level in any Congress in U.S. history,” the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees believed.
