McCain: Product Of A Circuitous Life

John McCain at an early age displayed three defining characteristics that he would struggle with for the rest of his life. By the time he entered the Naval Academy at the age of 17, McCain admitted that his temper was at times out of control. He described himself as “rambunctious and ready to fight at the drop of a hat”.

He had a hair-trigger temper that as a toddler would see him actually hold his breath until he would pass out, a physical stature that while athletic, was so slight of build that he would compensate for it by use of an iron willed determination to not just defeat but overwhelm any obstacle placed in his path. McCain forged these into assets that would serve him well as a Naval Aviator. His compact size allowed him to easily fit into the tight cockpit of a plane- a friend once said Johnny didn’t get into a fighter, he put it on- and his white hot temper would give no quarter to any enemy that was unfortunate enough to drift into his gun sights. His ability to give more than he took and absorb more punishment than his peers became the capstone of his reputation.

McCain is fearless to a fault. That character facet has been observed throughout his life. Once, hours after his fighter jet crashed during a training mission into the Gulf of Mexico, McCain calmly disobeyed flight surgeons orders to get bed rest and instead sought other means of R&R in a downtown Jazz club. He was back on the flight line the next morning; the most immediate physical result of the previous 24 hrs was not from the plane crash but the three-alarm hangover he brought with him.

But McCain was an unwilling warrior. His ambitions lay not in the military but in other less remarkable pursuits. He said he felt that being compelled to attend the Naval Academy, following in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather, somehow compromised his innate sense of self directive; violated his right to self-determination. He felt his sense of individuality was being unduly subjugated to the ambitions of others. In the end however, he grew not only to embrace the Navy but also to love the sense of discipline it engendered and the subordination to its rules required to be a part of a cohesive unit. He became not only a model sailor but a legend in the aviation units in which he served; as did his father and grandfather before him in each of the areas of service they pursued. McCain fell lockstep in line with his predecessors and at the age of 71, he shows no sign of changing in the slightest. Following the ambitions of others it would seem, is another facet to his character; he soon embraced them fully and never looked back.

But one man’s strength is another man’s weakness. Inheriting the ambitions of George W. Bush in Iraq is precisely why I am terrified at the prospect of a McCain Presidency, personal heroism aside.

McCain seems to have fully embraced the imperative for having invaded Iraq absent any evidence that a threat to the West ever existed. Indeed, he’s not just bought into the necessity of staying the course until some as yet indefinable victory is won; he has become its most ardent champion and vocal proponent of an open-ended commitment to manage the country and assume responsibility for all of it’s political and military aspects for ”the next hundred years if necessary”, a frightening prospect given the cost of the war over the previous five years. He claims it’s the central front in the war on terrorism, although terrorism itself is but the principle tactic of the real enemy, Al Quida, which as we all know, is safely ensconced in the mountains of Afghanistan and Western Pakistan, not the streets and alleys of Baghdad.

In war, a single sentence should suffice to sum up the reason for its justification. Before you ask another man to put his life in jeopardy you’d better damn well have a simple compelling argument to make for why he should be willing to pick up a gun or to lay down his life. Lincoln did and was able to galvanize the country into action following the succession of Southern States over the issue of slavery. Roosevelt did and had no problem rallying the country to war following Pearl Harbor.

The War in Iraq abides in a historic nether world, set apart from other conflicts in which this country has engaged. It has no genesis but in capricious deceit; it has no justification but in the delusional imaginings of George W. Bush and his band of merry men. Simply put, it is a war of choice; a very poor choice.

For McCain to advocate committing the country to continue a war which can’t be justified, to an end, which has yet to be defined, is but another example of a well-meaning man following in the footsteps of another man’s ambitions, dark and flawed though they may be.