Sunday, March 30, 2008
Opinion

Do you want four more years of this?

Having acted heroically in a foreign war does not magically translate into foreign policy expertise and judgment.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (center) in Jerusalem, following a visit to Jordan, where he expressed support for Israel's claim to the city as the capital of the Jewish state.
CREDIT:MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images
By Arianna Huffington

If our polarized country can agree on one thing, it's that the greatest danger facing America over the next decade will not be Islamic extremism and instability in the Middle East, but rather Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. That's just "common knowledge," right?

So it only makes sense that the media have focused nonstop on this looming threat while paying scant attention to the fact that the presumptive Republican nominee for president apparently doesn't have a clue about what's going on in the Middle East.

For those who were too busy watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright damn America for the 10,000th time let's review: at a stop in Jordan last week, Sen. John McCain made the ludicrous claim that al-Qaida insurgents were being trained in Iran. Asked again about it, he dug in deeper, claiming it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaida is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known."

A few moments later, McCain's chief lady in waiting, Joe Lieberman, leaned forward and whispered in his ear. McCain promptly offered a quick rewrite: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaida."

Yes, John McCain is a war hero, and yes, we're all grateful for his service during the Vietnam war. But as McCain's embarrassing foreign fact-finding fiascos make clear: Having acted heroically in a foreign war does not magically translate into foreign policy expertise and judgment.

The fact that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn't grasp the general outlines in Iraq would seem to be a big story. But not to the mainstream media.

To the Washington Post, it was just a "gaffe." CNN let stand the McCain campaign's assertion that he just "misspoke." Brit Hume, senior member of the McCain Support Team, brushed it off as a "blip," and a "senior moment." (Of course, Hume had a very different take on "senior moments" when it came to Jack Murtha.)

Not content with excuses, one of McCain's foreign policy advisors, Max Boot, decided to tout the "misstatement": "What gaffe?" Boot asked, going on to claim, "there is copious evidence of Iran supplying and otherwise assisting al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni terrorist groups (including al-Qaida central). The 9/11 Commission itself noted a number of links between Iran and al-Qaida." And McCain senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann claimed there is "ample documentation" for this.

This would be news to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno. In July, Odierno, then the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said, "We don't see any evidence, significant evidence, that shows that (Iranian-controlled) groups that are funding and providing arms to Shia extremists are directly related to al-Qaida."

The problem is that the media have got an image in their creaky narrative machines about John McCain and they're sticking to it. It's much easier to just present the tried-and-true version of McCain that has prevailed since 2000 instead of presenting the new McCain as he has become: cavalier, dismissive and lazy about the facts.

And it's hard to claim it's all just because the public is bored with Iraq and prefers a good story about incendiary pastors. If that's true, why was there no feeding frenzy about Rev. John Hagee, the bigoted minister who endorsed McCain, partly because McCain's foreign policy fits neatly into Hagee's apocalyptic (and I'm not speaking metaphorically) worldview? Again, the media rushed to let McCain off the hook, even though, as Hagee himself said in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "McCain's campaign sought my endorsement."

You can count me as one who actually does have Iraq on my mind and who wants the next president to have a mind capable of understanding it - and a thirst to do so. As his trip to Iraq makes clear, McCain is not a candidate who has crossed that threshold. SP