Senator John McCain was on the radio again this morning, urging us to intervene on behalf of Syria’s rebels. ‘It’s not a fair fight,’ he said, as if that were a good reason to wade in.
McCain, a former prisoner of war, is to humanitarian intervention what Mother Teresa was to helping the sick. He never misses a chance to promote a good scrap in the name of freedom and democracy. He cheered on western involvement in the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In McCain’s worldview, there is no conflict or international problem which cannot be solved by the application of American military power.
When running for president in 2008, he made war-mongering noises towards Russia in defence of Georgia over South Ossetia. ‘We are all Georgians,’ he said, as the Russian tanks rolled in. He also sang that he would ‘bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ to the tune of the Beach Boys ‘Barbara Ann’. He was joking, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t also serious.
McCain is a hothead and a war romantic. The world would be a more dangerous place had he taken over the White House. Yet every time there’s the slightest possibility of war, he is back in the news, gravely urging us to stick it to the bad guys. Now he urging the Obama administration to ‘show leadership over Syria’ — i.e. start bombing ’em. Why should anyone take him seriously?
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