I can't believe it's his spotty war record that keeps him afloat in the sea of sentiment we've created for him. He's not the only American to have spent serious time in brutal captivity. And then, too, his understanding of foreign policy -- for which he's given a lot of credit -- is in the low digits at best.
Conor Friedersdorf takes on that issue raised by his colleague, Peter Beinart, and finds John McCain to be wrong ...at best! ... most of the time. Others among us might say "damfool" and others "scam artist." I'll take either one and just add that he's also an embarrassment, no less to the Times than to other media who print or televise him.
Begin with his uncorrected Times op-ed from March 12, 2003, "The Right War for the Right Reasons." He writes, "Saddam Hussein still refuses to give up his weapons of mass destruction. Only an obdurate refusal to face unpleasant facts—in this case, that a tyrant who survives only by the constant use of violence is not going to be coerced into good behavior by nonviolent means—could allow one to believe that we have rushed to war." As it turned out, of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction, and the argument about having "rushed to war" was premised on the subsequently proven notion that weapons inspectors were given insufficient time to accurately assess what was and wasn't in Hussein's arsenal.
But those aren't the only discredited claims McCain offered in that op-ed. He also assured readers that once the invasion began, "Far fewer will perish than are killed every year by an Iraqi regime that keeps power through the constant use of lethal violence." ...Friedersdorf,TheAtlantic
There's plenty more. As Friedersdorf finds, McCain persists in being wrong. Over and over again. "If there are striking or valuable insights in his oeuvre I haven't found them. What benefits offset the costs of when he is supremely confident and dead wrong?"
But the Times, and other sites, still give the Senator room to blather.
When you inevitably give McCain column inches in the future, you ought to at least ensure that he's accurately characterizing whoever or whatever it is that he's ostensibly arguing against; that readers don't come away fundamentally misled about unfolding events or existing policy; and that McCain's affirmative arguments are specific and internally consistent.
Is that so much to ask?
When a politician takes to the op-ed pages of a newspaper, readers shouldn't get an intellectually inferior product. If there is some insurmountable obstacle to demanding more rigor from powerful actors, newspapers should stop publishing them. ...Friedersdorf,TheAtlantic
Actually, just the truth would be nice.
