To Hell With the Human Collateral Damage: McCain's Dangerous War Mentality

It's staring us all straight in the face.

All McCain wants to do is tie up Bush's loose ends - usher in The War to End All Wars. If he is voted into office in November, McCain will be a battle-seeking heir to Bush's tragically expanded executive powers. Put plainly, John McCain would be the Second Coming of George Bush, and I ain't just paying lip service - that's the cold, hard truth.

And you don't have to look too far to confirm it.

McCain aide Charles Black was recently quoted as saying that a terrorist attack inside the United States of America "certainly would be a big advantage to" McCain.

This aide did not come up with that idea in some sort of vacuum - probably every last member of the McCain campaign had mulled this one over until one of them decided to give it voice one day in some meeting. And as they all considered it, they found it hard to calm their giddiness over the false conclusion they drew: voters would trample each other running to the polls to vote for McCain. It's a sick fantasy, to be sure, but it is also a pitiful admission that Black made unwittingly.

Charles Black, McCain, and the rest of them don't want the public to know that, essentially, they got nothing. They know that Obama - with his strong intellect and resolve - is positioned much better to handle most issues faced by this country right now. And they never wanted the American people to know they themselves believe that McCain is so outdone that the only way he could win is if some horrific fate befalls America once again. They believe in some odd twist of logic that all of America could be frightened right into McCain's voting bloc column.

That's astonishingly disturbing.

An aide who probably had McCain's ear on a whole host of issues discussed how a human über-tragedy on America's soil would be a political plus for his candidate. This is evidence enough alone that McCain has personally kicked around the idea himself. But the tepid response to Black's remark by the media is what was most troubling. Some in the media suggested that this would probably only be a one-day story before 24 hours were even up.

I cringe at the callousness of it all.

But I'm really happy that Black revealed this ugliness that roils inside of the McCain camp for this one main reason: it reveals just how extremely similar McCain is to Bush. McCain, like Bush, wants turmoil to arise regarding Islamic terrorism so that he can come to the rescue and display just how great of a leader he is. McCain really wants to prove to us that the word "hero" fits him.

In his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, McClellan stated that Bush hoped that by going into Iraq he would then have an "opportunity to create a legacy of greatness" by morphing the Middle East into a democracy. McCain and Bush both want to prove themselves - whether through a manufactured war per Bush's way, or through a terrorist attack that has yet to happen on U.S. soil, as Charles Black suggested per McCain's way.

To hell with the human collateral damage.

If you don't want to take McClellan's word for it, if you don't want to accept that Bush is a decided egoist with only his aggrandizement as his first priority-- much like McCain--then just look at everything that has been neglected over the years as a result of Bush's pursuits in the Middle East.

Yeah, I've heard the entirely ludicrous assertion that an Obama presidency would be both the most dangerous and disastrous ever. But how can that be when Bush's tenure was the most unabashed and unrestrained historically in both its incompetence and its belligerence? This current administration has left us more vulnerable than we ever were prior to 9/11. And that's an incredible feat Bush has accomplished, considering the clout America is supposed to have as the greatest, mightiest nation on earth.

America now carries little to no credibility or moral authority when we waged war on a country that had not attacked us first while our very own citizens suffered in Hurricane Katrina and Darfur crumbled into a new kind of depraved inhumanity. We entered into a misguided, badly planned and executed war while the mortgage lending portion of our economy collapsed in on itself, America became one of China's greatest debtors, and oil-rich countries decided to take us for a ride.

And that torturer of his own people, Kim Jong Il remains in power, unhampered. We have no leverage to even try to persuade him to pull in the reins. And any military action against him, especially with the help of the international community, is out of the question because of the horribly mismanaged Iraq War.

Ultimately, if it's not apparent enough that the war mongering intent of McCain's is dangerously similar to that of Bush's, then McCain's WWIII imaginings should just about make it painfully clear. McCain provided just a little insight into the probable innerworkings of his and other Republican politicians' minds when he agreed partially with Newt Gingrich that we are in the "early stages" of the Third World War. McCain even once expressed that he believed that a military draft would be necessary if we were to enter into a Third World War.

Bush had echoed this same concept some time back when he said there was a possible coming, imminent World War III involving Iran as one of the main participants.

The one thing that haunts McCain, just as it did Clinton, is that McCain voted for the Iraq invasion. Since that fateful vote, Clinton has called for a withdrawal of troops and an end to this farce of war. However, McCain defends this unethical, immoral war even though he takes issue with how it's been managed.

The only question left now is, if he is elected, how long afterward does John McCain plan to initiate this War to End All Wars that he, Bush, and Rove keep talking about? How soon after the election would McCain begin to get that itch to prove himself in the only way both he and Bush seem to know how: in an unnecessarily waged war?

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