Letters to the Editor
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McCain has been singing a variation of the same song for a long time
One of my strongest memories of McCain from the 90s/Clinton era is of him speaking on a TV panel show with a couple other Very Knowledgeable Personages about the then pressing question of going into the Balkans.
He was against it -- and was using the (legitimate) argument that 'they' had been fighting these tribal wars for centuries, and that we weren't going to be able to stop them without getting mired in the Balkans foreveh.....
His argument was almost the perfect opposite of the arguments he has used, and uses today in defense of active military meddling in the Mideast. He's unlikely to make the argument in public that we must be there to defend our national interest and access to petroleum -- but even if he did 'fess up and admit to realpolitik aims he couldn't support them with data.
Our military has been entrenched in the heart of the Middle East for +5 years, and the cost of running our economy just keeps going up. Iraq has been a strategic disaster -- an utterly perfectly example of what he then insisted the Serbian campaign would become.
I wish I remembered the show and could point to a link or archive. It was a great illustration of McCain promoting the Republican political viewpoint for strictly domestic political gain against Democrats.
He still does that. It's all a Great Game for an Important Person like him. And he will drive the American empire into default without the slightest hesitation.