Alex Pareene describes a recent town hall meeting of Grandpa John McCain vs. Constituents.
McCain was heckled and aggressively questioned at the Phoenix meeting. One man used marshmallows as a prop but most questioners had pretty straightforward arguments, like “we do not want another engagement in the Middle East.†John McCain promised that this would not be a real war, meaning a war in which Americans would be in any danger of dying in large numbers, but rather just the sort of minor, small-scale military action that will probably just kill a lot of Syrians. This did not seem to satisfy his critics. One of them had a particularly pointed, but sort of misdirected message:
“We didn’t send you to make war for us. We sent you to stop the war,†one man said to applause.
My question is this: Why would you send John McCain anywhere to stop a war?
That’s a good question!
Anywhere besides “retirement,†I mean? Arizonans have been sending McCain to Washington (well, they haven’t been sending him there — he lives there — but they have been asking him to represent them in Congress) for a quarter-century now, or longer if you count his time in the House. In that time he hasn’t been consistent on much, but one thing he’s always been steadfastly in favor of is war. He’s never heard of a proposed military intervention he didn’t immediately support, or not support mainly because it wasn’t a big enough military intervention.
Some Republicans pull a bait-and-switch of sorts, as when George W. Bush campaigned against Clinton-style foreign interventions and then started a couple of horrible, endless wars, but you know what you’re getting with a guy like John McCain, a man who sings fun songs about the countries he wants to bomb. Mother Jones made a map of the countries John McCain has wanted to bomb or invade over the last 20 years. There’s a lot of them!
At least they’re all in the other hemisphere.
John McCain, is the political version of the Conservative punTWIT, Bill Kristol.
ALWAYS WRONG!!!!!
Old Johnny loves the smell of napalm in the morning.
That’s the problem with electing “war heroes” to Congress. Just because McCain suffered as a prisoner of war – thus making him a hero to the American public – doesn’t mean he’s qualified to lead the nation politically. Indeed, people who have been psychologically damaged as McCain was should probably not be trusted with such life-and-death decision making powers.
You would think that having suffered the horrors of war would be enough to convince McCain not to go looking for more of the same, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. Apparently he hasn’t recovered from PTSD, and wants a chance to get even with his cruel captors. Ideally, we should be bombing Vietnam rather than Syria, but hey, as long as we’re bombing somebody it should help McCain feel better.
Every time another unstable person, such as John letsbombem Mccain ,claims this is a good idea the more unsettling it becomes . Again my heart breaks for the struggles of the Syrian people but this is just not a pool we even need to dip our toes in to tell it is filled with excrement … isn’t just a little war like being just a little pregnant?
On a unrelated note I wonder if someone could remind this old hippie how to change my photo under my screen name? Got a brand spanking new 2014 Harley Davidson Ultra Classic Limited today and I want to sport a picture of one very high tech bad ass machine!
Wish you happiness with your new baby, Justme. I’m not exactly sure how you change your gravatar icon, but if you go to gravatar.com and use the email address that you used to open the account that your current icon was posted with, then you should be able to replace your icon. I know the icon is linked to the email address.
Perhaps if we regarded war as the ultimate failure, rather than some glorious patriotic adventure, wars would be fewer and rather between.
Enjoy your new rocket, justme!
I wish someone would ask Grandpa McCain if we can raise his taxes to pay for this debacle!
What he meant was, “We sent you to stop anything that n!&&@r in the White House tries to do.”
To be clear, I’m not saying racist hatred of Obama is the only reason to be against military action in Syria. But it’s the only answer to Pareene’s specific question.
One of the best reasons to vote for O in 2008 was the bellicosity of McCain.