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Onward the revolution!
Speaking of our five-year war in Iraq, McCain declares, "It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possible genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal."
Fair point. There is surely a great risk in a too-rapid withdrawal.
But if a U.S. withdrawal, after 4,000 dead and 33,000 wounded, and a trillion dollars sunk, runs the risk of a genocidal calamity, what does that tell us about the wisdom of those who marched us into this war?
"Whether they were in Iraq before is immaterial," McCain warns; "al-Qaida is there now." And that is surely true.
But if al-Qaida was not in Iraq before we invaded, why did we invade? And if al-Qaida is there now, what drew it in if not the U.S. occupation McCain championed?
McCain enjoys parading the higher morality of his devotion to democracy-uber-alles: "For decades in the Middle East we had a strategy of relying upon autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family. ... We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these outdated autocrats is the safest bet."
Speaking of self-delusion, does McCain believe the "democrats" lately elected in Pakistan will be tougher on al-Qaida and the Taliban than Pervez Musharraf, who has twice escaped assassination for having sided with us?
From Richard Nixon to George Bush I, we expelled Moscow from Egypt, won the Cold War, brought peace between Egypt and Israel, and created a worldwide alliance, including Hafez al-Assad of Syria, that drove Saddam's army out of Kuwait.
What has the Bush-McCain democracy crusade produced, save electoral victories for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas? And if we dump the sultan of Oman, President Mubarak, and the king of Saudi Arabia, who does McCain think will replace them?
McCain proposes a "League of Democracies" to unite a hundred nations for peace and freedom. "Revanchist Russia," however, is to be blackballed from McCain's league and thrown out of the G-8.
What would this accomplish other than undoing the work of Reagan in bringing Moscow in from the cold, driving Russia into the arms of China, restarting the Cold War and recreating the Beijing-Moscow axis it was Nixon's great achievement to break up?
"Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests," said Lord Palmerston. What is critical, especially in wartime, is not whether a regime is autocratic or democratic, but whether it is hostile or friendly.
Gen. Washington, at war with democratic Great Britain, is said to have danced a jig when he heard we had Louis XVI as an ally.
When Nixon launched his airlift to save Israel in the Yom Kippur War, autocratic Portugal let us use the Azores. Democratic France denied Reagan over-flight permission in the 1986 raid on Libya. Two brave U.S. pilots died as a result.
When McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton, British and French ships were unloading goods in Haiphong while Ferdinand Marcos and the South Korean generals sent troops to stand with us and fight beside us.
To root one's attitude toward nations based upon their internal politics rather than their foreign policies is ideology. And policies rooted in ideologies, from Trotskyism to democratism, end up on the Great Barrier Reef of reality.
Pat Buchanan edits The American Conservative magazine.
