John McCain is an avid reader and is known for rereading many works of his favorite authors. The favorite author of John McCain is Herman Wouk who has written The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, and the Caine Mutiny. Wouk served as an executive Naval officer aboard a minesweeper during War War II and used that experience in forming the character of Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny. Victor Henry the main character in Winds of War and War and Remembrance was a naval officer who became a confidant both to FDR and Harry Truman. FDR and Harry Truman went outside the normal channels of military command and relied on Victor Henry for straight talk advice on how to approach Russia and Germany and Japan prior and during World War II. John McCain sees himself as the Victor Henry character who was a realist in foreign policy and understood the nuances of war and foreign policy better than anyone. John McCain is a realist and more knowledgeable about foreign policy than either Joe Biden or Barack Obama due to his experiences and also just growing up as the son and grandson of Navy admirals. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have no military background between them and do not even have the background to know who to connect with to get straight back channel information. Barack Obama and Joe Biden lack the knowledge to even ask the right questions even if they could line up a current day Pug Henry commander to give them the straight scoop. It is totally inaccurate to argue that John McCain is somehow dogmatic in his approach and understanding of foreign affairs. Herman Wouk wove history into his novels. There is saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat history. John McCain knows history and has lived it and will use that knowledge to guide the United States through the tough challenges that we face in the war on terror, radical Islam and dealing with a resurgent Russia.
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A Grim Anniversary
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So if you're wondering why it's taking so long to destroy the small, ragged group that hit us seven years ago, don't. It might help if we kept our eye on the ball once in a while.
Here's a little perspective. We are now at the point in the war against Al Qaeda where nearly twice as much time has passed as it took America to win World War II. Between Dec. 7, 1941, and the surrender of Japan on Aug. 15, 1945—a period of 3½ years—Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman raised a Depression-ravaged, isolationist nation, one with virtually no Army, into the world's dominant power. They assiduously cultivated alliances with nations that did most of the fighting and dying, oversaw the defeat of two hegemonic threats (Japan and Germany), and began to rebuild these former enemies into peaceful democratic allies. At the same time, the two presidents created many of the institutions that still define the global system, including the United Nations, planning for which began in 1944. In contrast to bin Laden and Zawahiri—whose trail is as cold as it's ever been—Hitler was already dead by now. His top lieutenants, as well as their counterparts in Japan, were on trial for war crimes.
And in contrast to the United Nations and other new institutions, we have a giant, shameful pit at Ground Zero. We have a five-year-old war in Iraq that, while improving, will continue to tie down the bulk of our Army for years to come. We have a newly empowered Iran. We have a deal with the other "Axis of Evil" member, North Korea, that has taken so long to negotiate it may outlive its chief proponent, the ailing Kim Jong Il (causing military hard-liners to undermine it before it even gets off the ground). Oh, yeah, and we do have that great new strategic partnership with India. What do we get for that one—more calls routed to outsourced service techs in Mumbai?
Bush administration officials reject this view of a scattershot "War on Terror" where we seem focused on every place but the real battlefield. They contend that they have prevented any other attacks since 9/11 and killed and captured a lot of Qaeda lieutenants. As for all the time that's passed, they say this struggle is much more like the ideological one of the cold war, which lasted at least 40-odd years. But that's hyperbolic nonsense, most experts agree. Comparing the threat of tiny Al Qaeda to that of the Soviet empire is like comparing the invasion of Grenada to D-Day. Comparing Al Qaeda's lunatic, death-cult ideology to the 20th-century allure of Soviet communism is like confusing alchemy for nuclear physics. "Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears," wrote former CIA counterterror expertGlenn Carle in The Washington Post recently. "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement' but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of Al Qaeda."
Al Qaeda was and remains, Carle says, "the only global jihadist organization and is the only Islamic terrorist organization that targets the U.S. homeland." And Al Qaeda, though composed of angry young Arab men, was rooted in basically one place after 9/11—Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was an organic outgrowth of the anti-Soviet jihad that began there in the '80s, and it "has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation," says Carle.
This is a group that was, and still is beatable. But in order to beat the enemy, you have to fight where he is. Seven years on, do you think we can finally do that?
© 2008
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