John McCain: liar or idiot?

Or, Tim Russert, buffoon or dupe?

First of all, hola to Martini Revolution readers. I’ve been on sabbatical, hiatus, vacation, winter break, busy doing important shit which actually pays the bills for my magnificent estate. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I have a job, of sorts, and was moving to a new office. So I haven’t had time to enlighten you with my brilliant commentary, okay? I feel bad about this, but not as bad as I would feel if my daughter’s tuition came due and I couldn’t cut a check.

But back to the topic at hand: John McCain’s de-evolution from a principled maverick into a Neocon-propaganda spewing caricature.

Juan Cole spends a bit of time deconstructing McCain’s pitiful and disingenuous attempt at a gotchya on Obama’s response to a Russert hypothetical postulating al Qaeda’s seizure of Iraq at some point in the future:

‘ MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?

SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . .’

As Cole points out, the question was a hypothetical about future events occurring after an American withdrawal from Iraq, a nuance Sen. Corkscrew blithely ignored. Cole also points out the disingenousness of Russert’s hypothetical and McCain’s premise that al Qaeda was capable of establishing or sustaining a viable regime in Iraq, or even a friendly regime similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the allegation that he makes about there being ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?

The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.

But McCain’s intellectual dishonesty or sheer, mind-numbing stupidity goes deeper than that, because even among Iraq’s Sunnis, Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda are widely despised.

Polls conducted at the end of 2006 showed that:

Overall 94 percent [of Iraqis] have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings. The Shias and Kurds show similarly intense levels of opposition, with 95 percent and 93 percent respectively saying they have very unfavorable views.

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Views of Osama bin Laden are only slightly less negative. Overall 93 percent have an unfavorable view, with 77 percent very unfavorable. Very unfavorable views are expressed by 87 percent of Kurds and 94 percent of Shias. Here again, the Sunnis are negative, but less unequivocally—71 percent have an unfavorable view (23% very), and 29 percent a favorable view (3% very).

Get that? Iraqis as a whole hate al Qaeda and Osama. And for good reason: al Qaeda views Iraq’s 80% Sunni Shia (thanks Andrew) and Kurdish populations as apostates and enemies.

But even among the 20% Sunni population which Osama might troll for support, he and his organization are mainly reviled. This is predictable, as many Iraq Sunnis were Baathists, or simply more secular than the fundamentalist al Qaeda, and also because Iraq’s Sunnis grew to resent being murdered by al Qaeda’s small contingent of foreign cutthroats and murderers. While the administration and its pro-war flacks like McCain have tried to portray the “Anbar Awakening” to the surge or increased American military activity in those regions, this is simply untrue. Sunni rejection of Al Qaeda is typically accompanied by more of a hands off approach, turning away from confrontation with Sunni groups, and arming their former enemies while giving them more autonomy and less interference from US or Iraqi Central government forces. The awakening movements have succeeded largely by lowering our profile in those areas.

As the mission in Iraq grew more costly, more bungled, and more protracted, Bush and the few remaining war pimps like McCain have struggled to put forward a rationale for the fiasco, stubborn and unwilling as they are to admit the most monumental fucking mistake in the history of American foreign policy. The rationales which were put forward before the war, destroying the phantasmagorical WMDs, and liberating a grateful population to establish a secular, pro-western democracy are, as the late William F. Buckley not, irretrievable failures.

The last resort is fear — and the attempt to tie the whole misbegotten, ill-executed Iraq failure into the meme of 9/11 and the war against terror. It may be disingenuous, and unconscionably stupid for Bush and McCain to present the war in this light, but it is all too predictable given the complete absence of remorse for ruinous decisions and utter lack of intellectual integrity. McCain, for better or worse, has saddled himself to being pro-war, and he intends to ride it into the ground.