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BRINGING THE WAR BACK HOME (Part I.)Jordan C. Haerter, 19, Killed In RamadiJames S. Henry

"To save this world, you asked this man to die.
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?"
-- Auden

Monday April 28th was an unusually chilly wet morning in Sag Harbor, New York, even for April, our "cruelest month."  But that didn't prevent more than a third of Sag Harbor's 2,200 year-around residents from lining the flag-lined streets and filling the Old Whalers' Church to capacity to mourn the loss of  US Marine Lance Corporal Jordan C. Haerter, age 19.

Even apart from the drizzle, there was hardly a dry eye in the village. The Rev. Steven Howarth offered a moving recollection of Jordan's short life, describing his popularity, impatience with book learning, determination to learn to fly at 16 and to join the military at 17, and his courage under fire. The minister asked the crowd to take comfort in the fact that Jordan would undoubtedly be granted eternal life in the after-world.

After the service, a long cortege made its way slowly to Oakland Cemetery, where Jordan Haerter was buried with full military honors, accompanied by his family, dozens of classmates, scores of police, firemen, Marines in dress uniform,  local American Legion members, and a squadron of motorcyclists from an organization called the Patriotic Guard. More than a hundred school children from Jordan's former elementary school stood in the rain across from the church, carrying little star-spangled American flags and signs that read, "We will remember." Every local newspaper, radio station, and TV station in the Hamptons carried extensive coverage of the funeral and Jordan's story.

Everyone agreed that Jordan had behaved courageously in Iraq, and that his death was a tragic loss for the whole community.

Standing in the rain that day, and at the wake the afternoon before, I found myself struggling with very mixed emotions about this young man's death. On the one hand, I was proud of his courage and sacrifice. On the other, I couldn't help wondering why on earth he had decided to enlist and serve in a war that for many years has been so discredited. Who was responsible for that? Was this only George Bush's war, or do we all bear some responsibility for the fact that young men and women from all across this country -- not to mention scores of Iraqis -- continue to die every day?  Given the fact that bad wars  will continue to be a reality, what special responsibility do military recruiters, high school principles, teachers, guidance counselors, religious and political leaders, veterans, and other leaders in the community bear for at least making sure that the Jordan Haerters of this world make truly-informed decisions when they enlist?   

YET ANOTHER STATISTIC

Less than one week earlier, Jordan had become another statistic in the seemly-interminable Iraq War. At approximately 7:30 a.m. Baghdad time on April 22nd, Jordan and another Marine had been killed by a suicide bomber at a military checkpoint in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province in Iraq. Two Iraqi policemen and 24 other Iraqis were also injured in the incident.

According to military sources, Haerter, an ace rifleman -- his platoon's  "high shooter" --  was credited with shooting the driver of the bomb-laden truck before it detonated, quite possibly saving the lives of more than 30 Marines and Iraqis who were standing nearby.

Haerter became Sag Harbor's first Iraq War casualty, and indeed, its first combat fatality since World War II. He was also the first Suffolk County resident, 31st Long Islander, 203rd New Yorker, 4053rd American soldier (plus 186 contractors), and 253rd American 19-year old to die in Iraq since the US-backed invasion in March 2003.

Jordan had been in Iraq just one month, on his very first trip ever outside the US.

PREPARING FOR WAR

Jordan, a life-long Sag Harbor resident,  was  the only child of Christian Haerter and JoAnn Lyles, who had been divorced in the 1990s. Christian, 50, ran a water treatment business and JoAnn, with whom Jordan lived, worked at a building supply company. Jordan's grandfather Werner, a tool-and-die maker at the local Bulova Watch plant until  it closed in 1981, had emigrated to Sag Harbor from Germany by way of Canada in 1953. He died in 1994, when Jordan was four. 

Jordan was reportedly a well-liked, pretty conventional teenager with average-to-good grades and a bit of a willful streak. According to local newspaper accounts, his passions were for driving a small outboard motor boat on Peconic Bay, hanging out with his friends, driving his 1991 Toyota 4Runner on muddy back-trails around Sag Harbor, and eating his grandmother Lilly Haerter's spaetzle and home-grown blueberries.

There was also flying. According to a widely-repeated story about Jordan, at age 16, he'd started taking flying lessons on his own, even though he had not informed his parents and was not yet old enough to legally drive himself to airport.

Jordan was just as single-minded about joining the Marines. He and a high school classmate -- Josh DiStefano, one of his closest friends --  entered the US Marine Corps together in September 2006, just three months after graduating from Sag Harbor's Pierson High School, and one month after Jordan turned 18.

According to another close friend, Jordan had met a Marine recruiter at Pierson's annual "Career Day" that spring. Soon after, at a meeting with a high school guidance counselor, he stunned his mother with the news that he had decided to join the Marines. 

At the time Jordan was still just 17, so his parents still had to sign off on his four-year commitment to the Marines' delayed-entry program. They did so reluctantly, but without much opposition  -- they'd always encouraged Jordan to be action-oriented and to get a "real world" education.  Jordan apparently used the enlistment bonus that he collected from the Marines to buy a new Dodge Ram pickup truck -- the same truck that his friend Josh would drive in Jordan's April 28th funeral procession.

WHERE WERE THE WARNING LABELS?

Jordan's reasons for joining the Marines are not entirely clear. Of course most young men his age are now avoiding military service like the plague. That is one reason why there has  been a crisis in military recruiting.

This, in turn,  is partly because the five-year old Iraq War is by now widely regarded by most Americans as an unmitigated fiasco, none of whose official justifications -- WMDs, Saddam's supposed ties to Al Qaeda, "democratization," or even the value of controlling Iraq's oil supplies -- have held up.

At best we are now down to a faith-based argument about whether things will be more  or less disastrous if we exit the country now rather than at some ill-defined time in the future -- not exactly an inspiring ground for enlisting.

What is clear that Iraq is a very dangerous way to spend one's youth. Not only have there been more than 4075 US military fatalities, but there have also been at least 30,000 Americans physically wounded, 3000-5000 of whom have injuries so severe that they probably would have died in earlier wars that lacked today's rapid medical evacuations.

According to a RAND study released in April, 31.7 percent, or 520,000 of the 1.64 million American military personnel who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 also suffer from "post-traumatic stress syndrome" (PTSD), depression, and/or "traumatic brain injury" (TBI) induced by explosive devices. These "less visible" injuries have not only contributed  to a surge in suicides by US military personnel -- an estimated 6000 suicides in 2005 alone, growing at 20 percent in 2006-2007, with more than 12,000 attempts each year. Thus the number of  Iraq-related suicide deaths in the American military far exceeds the number of combat deaths.

These mental injuries also impose a high cost on the families and friends of returning veterans, especially given the acute shortage of psychiatric care for returning veterans and their families. The Rand study found that only about half of those with such conditions were getting treatment, and half of those who have been treated got inadequate treatment.

Some cynics have even suggested that the military's understatement of these problems is partly due to the fact that the US military is so dependent on "voluntary" reenlistment that it is afraid to focus on PTSD and TBI  -- both of which are amplified by the long tours of duty that troops are facing.

There is also evidence that such battlefield risks are systematically understated by recruiters, who are under severe pressure to fill quotas. Certainly there are is nothing comparable to the hazard warnings, "truth in lending," and SEC  anti-fraud disclosure notices attached to, say,  cigarette packages, drug prescriptions, car purchases, mortgages, and private equity investments that apply to these life-and-death enlistment decisions by 17-19 year olds. This has lead to widespread demands for new "truth in recruiting" standards, and restrictions on recruiter access to the nation's public high schools.

Finally, from an economic standpoint, military service -- now entirely voluntary, except for the "stop-loss" orders that has affected more than 80,000 reservists -- is simply not very competitive, as discussed below. Unless a student has virtually no civilian job alternatives, and either can't get into college  at all or can't afford to go, the military is likely to be a losing economic proposition, unless it somehow plays a role in some longer-term career plan (see below).

WHAT WAS HE THINKING?

As noted, Jordan's family says that his decision to join the Marines came as a complete surprise.

While other family members had served in the military, there was no tradition of volunteering for duty in Jordan's family. His grandfather Werner, whom Jordan had known as a child, had been drafted into the German Army in World War II, and his other grandfather John Lyle had been drafted into the US Army. Jordan's father Christian had never served.

He spoke no foreign languages and,  as noted, he'd never traveled outside the US. In high school, he'd shown no particular interest in world events or history. Although he appears to have supported the War after enlisting, he'd never expressed strong feelings about the Iraq War before doing so.   

From age five on, Jordan had enjoyed playing shoot-'em-up games on the computer, which he would later actually compare with some of his experiences in the military. He'd also insisted that his Halloween costumes, meticulously designed by his mother, be accurate copies of those worn by soldiers in America's Revolutionary War. But such interests didn't differ all that much from those of any other Sag Harbor boys.

Nor does it seem that Jordan's decision to enlist in the Marines for the minimum term of four years strictly  a matter of short-term job opportunities. True, he had probably received a small ($10,000 or less) signing bounty for enlisting. At the time of his death, however, Lance Cpl Haerter's "E-3" pay grade was earning him just  $19,044 a year before taxes, plus food and housing allowances. By his fourth year in the service, depending on his rank, that might have increased to $25,000 per year at most -- less than $12 per hour. But that wage rate should have been easy for Jordan to beat in the Hamptons.   

A TIDY PLAN

What appears more likely is that Jordan's decision to enlist was part of a longer-term career plan, which tended to understate the risks of being a Marine in Iraq, and overstate the chances of using military service as a stepping stone.  His family says that after his four-year commitment to the Marines, he intended to join the Sag Harbor Village Police Department, get married, and eventually take over his father's water treatment business.

For the first 18 months of Jordan's enlistment,  this plan appeared to be on track. He was assigned to "the Walking Dead," Alpha Company,  First Battalion, the 9th Marine Regiment out of Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.  which had served with distinction in Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. After boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina and another year of training at Camp LeJeune and in northern Virginia and California, he was sent to Iraq in March 2008.

Once there, things also seemed to go well at first.  On Monday April 21,  the very day before his death, Jordan's mother received a letter from him, in which Jordan reported that Iraq was "easier than I expected," and assured her that he would take care to return home safely.

Unfortunately, as we'll discuss below,  all this overlooked just a few complexities -- the unpredictable, maniacal nature of the Iraq War, and the tensions that are deeply embedded in the US military's  "surge" strategy.....especially in Jordan's first and only Iraqi destination, Ramadi. (Continued in Part II.)

                                         (c) SubmergingMarkets, 2008

 

THE CLINTONS ARE STILL AT LARGE!Part I. BLACKENING OBAMA, EVEN IF IT ELECTS JOHN MCCAINJames S. Henry

For six months now, partly under the influence of Senator Barack Obama's refreshingly naive quest  for a higher level of discourse in American politics, we've resisted the temptation to "go negative" on his arch-rival -- "Sir Hillary" Diane Rodham Clinton, the relentless one-and-one-third term New York Senator,  two-term First Lady, five-term Arkansas Governor's wife, and life-long honorary Queen of the State of Blind, Unbridled Ambition.   

Along the way, we've watched aghast as some of our closest associates -- people who describe themselves as "Democrats" and "Hillary supporters," but really turn out to be Obama haters who threaten to vote for John McCain in November if Hillary is not the Democratic nominee -- have tried nearly every trick in the book to tear Obama down.   

BLACK FACE

For example, on January 4, 2008,  just one day after the Iowa primary, one pundit was overheard suggesting to members of Sir Hillary's inner circle that the best way to undermine Obama's surprisingly broad appeal would be to "blacken" him. 

At the time, Hillary's campaign was still reeling from her third-place finish in Iowa, based on the fact that Barack had done so well across conventional racial, ethnic, gender, and age boundaries.   

Evidently the advice was taken. This helps to explain Hillary's odd, a-historical comments on January 7 in New Hampshire, when she compared Lyndon Johnson's role in securing US civil rights legislation during the 1960s to that of Martin Luther King, Jr. ("It took a President to get it done.") 

(Actually it took a mass protest movement, based on years of organization and lots of blood, sweat, and tears, to get it done. Hillary's inaccurate recollections about that period may be have been due to the fact that in 1964, at age 17, she had spent her time campaigning actively for Barry Goldwater, the Republican Presidential candidate who opposed the US Civil Rights Act.)

This cynical tactic also helps to explain Bill Clinton's patronizing remarks in South Carolina on January 26, when he compared Obama's campaign to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 Presidential bids -- as if Obama were just another "black niche" candidate. 

The point is that these statements were deliberately made,  regardless of their merit, because the Clinton camp wanted to provoke rebuttals from prominent black celebrities like the Rev. Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and Spike Lee.

Bill and Hillary probably knew full well that this might well cost them votes in a handful of states like South Carolina, where blacks are a majority of registered Democrats. Indeed, they were both widely criticized for their remarks.

However,  in their cynical calculus, what really mattered was that the official black response would remind white voters elsewhere that  while Senator Obama might seem to be "articulate and bright and clean" (in Joe Biden's memorable description),  he's really just (as one anonymous Clinton campaign adviser put it) "the black candidate."

DIE HARDISM...OR WORSE?

In the short term, many observers thought that such cynical tactics had backfired. Indeed they may have. Contrary to Hillary's best laid plans, Barack not only survived "Super Tuesday" on February 5, but went on to acquire a commanding lead in delegates.

Even after the most recent machine-state primary in Pennsylvania, Barack still leads by at least 133 delegates. If the latest polls in the remaining nine primaries hold up,  Hillary would need  to capture at least 73 percent of the remaining unpledged "super delegates" to win. (Click on the chart below.)

Unfortunately, this situation appears to have only redoubled the Clintons' willingness to engage in McCarthyite tactics, including  race-baiting and "guilt by association,"  regardless of the impact on the Democratic Party's chances in November.

The Clintons are notorious for pursuing their own interests at the expense of the Party (just ask Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and John Kerry). But this spectacle is setting new records.

These tactics include trying to smear Senator Obama with the radical views of the Rev. Wright, the Rev. James Meeks, or even the Rev. Louis Farrakhan; reminding people of the Senator's admitted occasional drug use 25 years ago (as compared with Gov. Bill Clinton's denied, much heavier use of cocaine during the same period); and attacking Obama for having a few corrupt contributors in Chicago ("...NOT Chicago!!!") like Antoin "Tony" Rezko (compared with the Clintons' legions of corrupt contributors); and associating Obama with former Weatherman and now Distinguished University of Chicago Prof. William Ayers, who was never convicted of anything (while Bill Clinton had sought fit to pardon two former Weathermen who'd been convicted of involvement in terror-related crimes.)

The tactics also include promoting the idea that Obama can't possibly appeal to white working -class voters, Hispanics, Jews, or Catholics in battleground states, simply because.... well, you see, the country may just not be "ready" for a "black" President -- whatever those terms mean.

Of course the Clintons argue that dwelling on such material now is justified because Karl Rove and the Republicans would only focus on it later. Furthermore, Obama's prolonged side-show with his former pastor appears to have done a perfectly job of undermining his campaign without much help from them.

This is mostly self-serving flim-flam. The fact is that Hillary & Co. have run a terrible campaign, and are now reduced to relying on hyping bogus issues like Rev. Wright rather than talking about real issues.

If the Clintons had not underestimated Obama so badly, they would have At this point, if they believe that the Democratic Party will reject Obama and opt for Hillary, they are delusional -- such a move would only lead the majority of Party activists that has supported Obama overwhelmingly to sit this election out.  By continuing to battle Obama down all the way to the convention, the Clinton machine is wasting precious attention and resources that ought to be devoted to attacking the real enemy.

THE AGENDA

So why are the Clintonistas employing these Die-Hard, polarizing, kamikaze-style tactics?

Well, first, the hard-core stormtroopers down in the Bunker actually still hope to achieve a "Hail Mary" knock-out in the last few primaries,  shocking the super-delegates into a wholesale defection from Obama. They simply can't admit that it is far too late for anything other than an Obama candidacy.

Second, Clinton supporters have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this battle, and many of them have been preparing for it literally for decades. Many of them genuinely resent Obama's upstart campaign, and feel entitled to reclaim their White House.

Third,  many (highly-paid) Clinton campaign operatives are not exactly looking forward to seeking real jobs in the midst of a recession.

Fourth,  key Clinton supporters desperately fear being left out in the cold if Obama wins the nomination, let alone the Presidency, for as much as another eight years. Especially for those in Hillary's "boomer" generation, that's an eternity.

Finally, and most cynically of all, if 72-year old John McCain wins the Presidency, the odds are that he will only last one term. That would give Hillary another shot in four years.

Whereas if 47-year old Obama wins, he might well last two terms -- by which time Hillary will be approaching dotage and Bill Clinton will be in a retirement community for sexual predators. 

From the standpoint of naked Clinton self-interest, therefore,  the cynical calculus prevails again.

You see, it is a far far better thing to go after one's fellow Democrat with all the malevolence that one can muster, even at the risk of ruining his chances this November, than to withdraw now and help his chances.

Naturally this kind of cynical strategy has attracted all kinds of miscreants, Republicans-in-sheeps' clothing, stragglers, pimps, shills, camp followers, and hangers-on.

There ought to be a special place in Hell for such people. 

But if there is not, we should endeavor to create one right here on Earth.

(c) SubmergingMarkets, 2008

SNATCHING VICTORY?The Democrats Descend Into the Politics of Mutually-Assured Destruction James S. Henry

On an occasion of this kind, it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

-- Oscar Wilde

Isn't this a pretty picture? 

On the one hand, after seven long years of catastrophic incompetence in Washington, our country is literally begging for new ideas and leadership, especially from the erstwhile Party of the Opposition.

Recent polls show that an unprecedented 81 percent of Americans believe their country is "on the wrong track," while President Bush's approval rating has sunk to an all-time low of 28 percent. There is a growing popular demand for decisive government action on any number of issues that have been festering while "Nero" Bush and "Imperator" Cheney have been fiddling.

THE DEMAND FOR CHANGE

John "McSame's" feisty personality notwithstanding, this is not the ideal moment to be plumping for free-market solutions, let alone more tax cuts for the extremely rich,  hands-off deregulation for our wondrous mortgage banking, health care, automotive, airlines, handgun, coal-fired utility, and social insurance industries, and the unending prospect of more unilateral, open-ended wars.

No -- this is a time that cries out for smart, can-do, progressive, and -- yes -- youthful government.

Its precise slogan should be:  Yes, we had better -- or else.

 
REAL ISSUES

At the risk of depressing our readers, among the many tough issues that demand this  pragmatic approach right now are the following:

>Containing the mortgage crisis and the deep recession that it has produced.
>Withdrawing from Iraq as soon as possible, while discouraging Iran from filling the void.
>Intensifying the hunt for Bin Laden, without losing Pakistan and Afghanistan to a Taleban revival.
>Protecting our nation against the genuine on-going global terrorist menace.
>Fixing our high-cost, inhumane health insurance system once and for all.
>Biting the bullet on climate change and global warming.
>Rebuilding public education and college assistance.
>Guaranteeing the financial integrity of Social Security and Medicare.
>Restoring civil liberties and reversing the drift toward a state of siege.
>Reviving American's reputation in the world and its relations with key allies.

> Revising our increasingly disfunctional "free trade" agreements.
>Reviving efforts to prosecute corrupt politicians, war profiteers, and big-ticket tax evaders to the limits of the law, as opposed to granting them Presidential pardons.
>Slashing government waste, especially the bloated $800+billion "total war"  budget and the huge agro-industry subsidies that are literally wiping out poor farmers all over the world. 

All together,  this adds up to a demand for nothing less than at least a decade of intense regime change right here at home.

THE SUPPLY OF CHANGE ?

Is the Party of the Opposition up to this challenge?  Unfortunately, the habitually ham-handed Democratic Party,  as well as much of broadcast journalism,  have responded to the soaring demand for substantive change and attention to real issues by focusing on.....Well, what, exactly?

Let's see.  If last night's televised debate in Philadelphia is any indication, both candidate Hillary Clinton and the news media -- or at least pro-Hillary flacks like ABC News' George Stephanopoulos and the ponderous, self-important Charles Gibson --  are far more concerned with (1) Obama's Rev. Wright's alleged relationships with Rev. Farrakhan and a visiting Hamas associate, (2) Obama's even more tangential relationship with an obscure former Chicago "Weatherman" named Ayers, (3)his recent (really quite defensible) "Bittergate" comments about the roots of working-class culture, and (4) the torturous question of whether or not the Junior Senator from Illinois should demonstrate his patriotism by wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

>>As if Hillary and Bill have not accumulated a long list of even more dubious relationships,  several of whom had to be pardoned.

>>As if  Stephanopolous did not get his questions about Ayers directly from Fox News' mad-hatter host Sean Hannity the day before the debate.

>> As if there were not -- by definition -- quite a few other black males at Louis Farrakhan's  rather successful 1995 "Million Man March" in Washington, D.C.  -- at least 670,000 to 1 million, according to one careful aerial survey.

>>As if one could find a single photo on the Internet of John McCain wearing a flag pin -- although George W. Bush wears one all the time.

>>As if Gibson and his sidekick did not tilt so far to starboard in their questioning that one Washington Post journalist titled his review,  "In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC."

LAST GASP

This attempt to focus on a series of jaundiced Obama "gotchas" is actually a sign of Hillary's increasing desperation. 

Obviously she is furious at having been repeatedly up-staged and out-campaigned over the past year -- despite her vast experience, wealth, and connections with wealthy donors and lobbyists, not to mention Bill. The smooth-talking Chicago upstart with the Harvard Law degree and the Bill Clinton-like hard luck story is actually trying to deprive her of her rightful place in history!

Hillary's focus on character assassination also reflects her sheer frustration at the fact that Obama now clearly has the inside track for the nomination.

This has not been a pleasant month for Ms.Clinton. She's just fired her long-time campaign strategist, after firing her campaign manager. She's just been caught in a bald-face lie about coming under fire in Tuzla. Her lead in Pennsylvania has dropped to five points. With just 10 primaries left to go, Obama is now at least 139 delegates ahead. Even if Hillary captures, as expected, more than half of the delegates elected in these primaries, she will still need to win two-thirds of the remaining 319 uncommitted "superdelegates."  Obama just needs 125. (Click on chart.)

That's a pretty large gap for Hillary to overcome -- especially considering the fact that Obama's fund-raising machine allows him to outspend his rival by two-to-one in key states.

This explains Hillary's increasing reliance on negative advertising in Pennsylvania and the other primary states, her endless repetitions of the Rev. Wright and "Bittergate" story, and her grasping at all those other petty straws in last night's debate -- even while conceding that Obama, with all his flaws, could still beat John McCain in November.

In short, those of us who long for probing discussions of serious issues will probably have to look elsewhere than Hillary, let alone ABC News.  And we should certainly not expect to hear much about them until Hillary faces facts and does the right thing -- which, just to spell it out for her clearly, is not to remain in this race "until the last dog dies."

(c) SubmergingMarkets, 2008      

  

 

 

 

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SNATCHING VICTORY?The Democrats Descend Into the Politics of Mutually-Assured Destruction James S. Henry"

John McCain: "No We Can't" Reviving The "Daisy" Strategy in 2008 James S. Henry

My friends:  we have spent far too much time and treasure on the prolonged, intense, but ultimately intra-familial and largely issues-free beauty contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.   

Now that that contest is finally drawing to a close, it is time for us to focus like a gamma-ray laser on the real enemy in the fast-approaching November 2008 Presidential election -- Senator John McCain, the bellicose 5'7" septuagenarian fly-boy from Arizona.  

What is it about Air Force-trained Republican Senators from Arizona, anyway? 

In many respects this year's race recalls 1964, when Senator Barry Goldwater, another war-mongering, outspoken, short-tempered Air Force veteran and Republican Presidential candidate from Arizona,  scared the B'Jesus out of the entire country with his threats to use nuclear weapons preemptively ("Let's lob a nuclear bomb into the men's room at the Kremlin").

Usually such pro-war designs are kept well hidden until after the election, as the Bush Administration did in 2000 --  and, indeed, as President Lyndon Johnson did in the 1964 election, when he made Goldwater out to be a mad-man (the "Daisy" strategy," after the notorious political ad by that name: Download 20_johnson_64.mov). Johnson conveniently failed to tell the public during the election campaign that he was also a mad-man, already planning to park more than 500,000 US troops in Vietnam within a year.   

In any case, not since 1964 have the Democrats faced a Republican candidate who is as openly pro-war as John McCain is. This should provide them with  a remarkable opportunity for party unity,  a clear brand, and victory in November.     

However, it is very important to reunite the Party and get moving. McCain is already attracting fuzzy-minded support from  moderate Democrats and independents who are beguiled by his tough-guy "maverick" image -- especially lower middle-class white males who are (a) bearing the brunt of this year's  economic downturn, and (b) not entirely comfortable with voting for either  Barack  ("the black guy"_ or ("that woman") Hillary. Oddly enough, many of these folks also claim to be anti-war.

Partly because the Democrats have been so distracted by their own interminable (..19 debates??!...six months of primaries?) nominating process, the most  telling criticisms of John McCain have so far been provided by his enemies among the Very Far Right Ranters (VFRRs), including leading professional ranters  like Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and James C. Dodson. This crew complains that McCain doesn't quite pass muster on pet right issues like undocumented immigration, gay marriage, and tax cuts. Ironically, Barry Goldwater himself would have also failed these same litmus tests. Indeed, if the 1964 Presidential election had been fought on social issues and the economy rather than on war and peace, the former Air Force Major General from Arizona would most likely have carried many more states than the 6 that he did carry. Defeating Goldwater in 1964 may not have absolutely required the war-mongering issue, but it certainly helped.  

Some conservatives have also criticized McCain's preference for voluptuous office assistants and fly-boy-style socializing.  From their angle, he also lacks appropriate Christian zeal, was once involved in the shady "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal,  and has an intermittent work ethic.

Indeed, in the last five Congresses he missed an incredible 21 percent of all Senate votes, including 56 percent in the current 110th Congress. This high rate of absenteeism is also no doubt partly due to the Presidential race, McCain's long-standing battle with cancer, and the fact that at age 71.5,  he is already the oldest living leading Presidential candidate ever, having already lived longer than over half of all US Presidents.

The real problem for Democrats and independents, however, should not be McCain's lack of religious fervor, moldy old rumors about the Keating Five or extra-marital relationships, his age, or even his absenteeism, unless that is due to health problems.

And after this year's endless bouts of the smooth-talking ignoramus the Rt. Reverend Huckabee, the lack of religious zeal and ideological purity in a leading Republican candidate is really rather refreshing.

No -- our core problems with John McCain are twofold. First,  whenever he actually manages to show up in the Senate and legislate, the  results are usually far to the right of what most Democrats, independents, and sensible people in general stand for  -- and what both Barack and Hillary, in particular,  stand for.

For example,  while Barack and Hillary have both earned lifetime voting scores from the American Conservative Union (ACU) of just 8 percent, McCain's  lifetime score is 82. While this may be insufficient for VFRRs like Limbaugh and Coulter, it is well above the tail end of the Republican Senate distribution.

McCain may have mellowed slightly in recent years -- in 2006, for example, his ACU score was just 65.  However, this is still higher than any Senate Democrat, and it is more than three times the 17 rating scored by McCain's turncoat friend Joe Lieberman.  Indeed, on a wide range of key issues that progressives and independents should really care about --  from Supreme Court nominations and extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich to the State Children's Health Insurance program, setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and  bankruptcy reform, and even on his own trademark issues like campaign finance, immigration, the definition of torture, and the Bush tax cuts, the senior Senator from the Grand Canyon state is usually a big disappointment.   

Second, and even more important, on the most crucial issue of our time, the conduct of present and future wars,  McCain appears to have quite frankly gone completely off the rails.

Misguided Democratic Party strategists like John Podesta, Mark Penn, and Bob Schrum notwithstanding,  this issue of the war, and not just "the economy" or "health care," should be at center stage for this election. 

This is precisely because, on the one hand,  military affairs are supposed to be McCain's core competence, and because, on the other hand, he has gotten this central issue completely wrong.      

As discussed below, while millions of Iraqis continue to vote with their feet and either flee abroad or stay there, McCain just keeps repeating the big lie that "the surge is working."

In fact the main reasons that US military casualties,  and, to a lesser extent, Iraqi civilian casualties have dropped is not because of "the surge," but because (a) Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed, and is now a sharply divided, Shiite-dominated enclave;  (b) Sunni insurgents, fed up with al-Qaeda, have decided temporarily to ally with the "occupiers" and assert control over the "foreign terrorists;" and (c) Iran has temporarily decided to cut down on its support for attacks on US troops, in the interests of undermining the "neocon" coalition in the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel that is plumping for a McCain-style bombing. (See the video below).

None of this implies that the surge has achieved anything more than a kind of stop-gap temporary stabilization of this very ill patient's condition -- a Bush Adminstration effort that just happens to coincide with a Presidential election year. Since it is unlikely that the surge is sustainable, in terms of troops and dollars, and since its benefits are likely to be temporary, McCain should be compelled to explain on every possible occasion whether the slim increased chance that a Republican president will get elected is really worth the price.

But McCain is at least consistent. Apparently he also still believes that the Vietnam War could have been won with just a little more persistence and less interference from Washington.
 

For all his putative military experience, therefore,  in the grand tradition of Major General/ Senator Goldwater and Air Force General Curtis {"Bombs Away") LeMay,  in his 20 hours of flight time over North Vietnam, and his five years of captivity, apparently John McCain never managed to learn the fundamental lesson that millions of ground troops have learned the hard way -- that guerrilla wars, and, indeed, wars on terror,  are ultimately won or lost by political and economic development, not by military tactics. And, furthermore,  that the blind over-application of military force to a hostile civilian population by an occupying army and Air Force can actually increase enemy resistance much faster than it can be controlled.

Far from repeating the 2004 Kerry campaign's central mistake and focusing this campaign only on the US economy, therefore, it will be vital for us to keep McCain's extraordinary appetite for war in plain view.

The more general question of why so many Air Force professionals -- including, for example, the Israeli General who was widely blamed for mismanaging last year's conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon -- tend to systematically overestimate the efficacy of military power, will be left for another time. Plainly this is not just an Arizona malady.

 For the interested reader, the following is a smattering of sundry provocative materials with respect to Senator McCain. Not all of it is worth taking seriously --- some of it even resembles the scurrilous attacks on John Kerry's war record in 2004,  when McCain, it should be recalled, came to Kerry's defense.  We've presented it here in the interests of of airing it out and redirecting our attention to the clear and present danger of a Republican Party that, even in its death throes,  may still be able to unite around this "great white hawk" from Arizona. 

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John McCain: "No We Can't" Reviving The "Daisy" Strategy in 2008 James S. Henry"