McCain vs. Trump (Free to Everyone)

There have been two times when I though a presidential nominee by one of the two major parties was so hawkish America could be pushed into a war of annihilation with Russia. One was last fall with Hillary Clinton, who by all accounts was the most hawkish member of the Obama administration, plumping hard for the Afghan “surge,” the 2011 attack on Libya that destroyed that country and sent millions of refugees streaming into Europe, the destabilization of Syria, etc.

The other was in 2008 with John McCain, a man obsessed with pushing wars almost everywhere, in particular in Ukraine and Syria to bait the Russian Bear wielding 7,000 nuclear bombs. McCain just gave a speech at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy trashing President Trump’s relative restraint and common sense so far on foreign policy.

After a joke, he began: “On a serious note, I realize that not all Americans fully appreciate the vital role Italy plays in protecting our common security—in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, where Americans and Italians are serving side by side ... to North Africa and the Mediterranean, where we are working together to defeat ISIS in Libya and address the flow of refugees and migrants.”

The 1999 Kosovo War now mostly has faded into the mists of history. But in that war, President Clinton bombed to death 5,000 Christian Serbs to put the terrorist-drug gang the Kosovo Liberation Army in power. Kosovo since has become a center of terrorism and criminality, especially for white slavery, drugs, weapons and refugees.

Here’ the latest U.S. Department of State Crime & Safety report (similar to the 2016 report under Obama): “THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE HAS ASSESSED PRISTINA AS BEING A HIGH-THREAT LOCATION FOR CRIME DIRECTED AT OR AFFECTING OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT INTERESTS….

“Trafficking of persons remains a problem despite government steps to address the issue….

“THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE HAS ASSESSED PRISTINA AS BEING A HIGH-THREAT LOCATION FOR TERRORIST ACTIVITY DIRECTED AT OR AFFECTING OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT INTERESTS.”
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Bill Clinton started the war both to take the Monica Lewinsky-impeachment scandal off the front pages and to take over Serbia. It came out later there was a secret appendix to the Ramboullet Accords being pushed in Serbia that would have let NATO troops roam freely not only over Kosovo, the historic heartland of Serbia that was being given to the KLA, but over all Serbia, ending the country’s sovereignty. The Serbs refused, so Clinton bombed them. The final accords did not include that clause.

As Peter Schwarz wrote at the time: “The way in which the Yugoslav government was called upon to sign this diktat – delivered as an ultimatum – and the secretiveness regarding its content, suggest that the Rambouillet and Paris conferences were aimed at providing a pretext for war, not a political solution to the Kosovo conflict.”

During the war, it was McCain who kept insisting that bombing the Serbs into submission was not enough, but that America must place “boots on the ground” with a full invasion. Fortunately, Clinton never went that far. American troops entered Kosovo only after peace was signed. Even then, Gen. Wesley Clark, heading the U.S. force, nearly sparked a nuclear war with Russia in a confrontation at Pristina Airport.

Justin Raimondo recently wrote a summary of the Kosovo War and its aftermath here.

In Italy, McCain also referred, among other disasters, to the Libya bombing as something conducted with our Italian allies. That’s a really bad joke now that Italy’s social safety net is collapsing because it’s so “overwhelmed” with refugees, according to the Bezos/Washington Post: “The influx has strained Italian infrastructure – and the goodwill of Italian voters.

“Italian citizens, once relatively friendly to migrants, rejected many politicians seen as soft on immigration in local elections Sunday.”

It was a platform to Make Italy Great Again. Sort of how McCain’s sidekick, Sen. Linsey Graham, who also was at the conference, and like McCain favors open borders and endless wars, got close to zero support in his presidential bid, with Trump the winner.

McCain again: “It is true that there is a real debate underway now in my country about what kind of role America should play in the world. And frankly, I do not know how this debate will play out. What I do believe, and I do not think I am exaggerating here, is that the future of the world will turn, to a large extent, on how this debate in America is resolved.

“That is why I will never stop fighting to ensure that America stands by our allies and remains an active, principled leader in the world. I know I am fighting along so many of my countrymen who feel the same. But we cannot do it alone. We need your help, my friends. Now more than ever, we Americans are counting on Italy and our other European allies to stick with us ... to encourage us to stay true to who we are at our best ... and to remind us always just how much is at stake.”

But NATO’s reason for existence, keeping the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, dissolved when the Communist Party was abolished on Christmas Day 1991 and the USSR fell apart. Today, there are more cosmmunists in a humanities faculty lounge at your local community college than in all the Russias.

Moreover, except for the refugees flooding in from all the countries McCain helped destroy, and the terrorists he helped set up in Kosovo, just what exactly is the threat to Italy and the rest of Europe? Russia? What, is Putin going to march in and force them to raise their death-rattle “birth” rates?

McCain one last time: “Put simply, my friends: I believe bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-alliances, pro-trade, pro-investment, pro-military, pro-globalization, in favor of an internationalist foreign policy, and supportive of our transatlantic alliance. It may not look that way on Twitter, but that is what opinion polls clearly show, time after time after time.”

Notice how he doesn’t refer to an actual “poll,” and lump together many different policies. Well, here’s one poll. Right after President Obama sponsored a coup against the legitimately elected democratic government of Ukraine and installed a puppet regime, so the country was in the news, the Bezos-Washington Post took a poll and found just 16% of Americans even could locate the country on a map.

And the only “poll” that really counts is the one where voters go to the polls. Trump, not McCain or Hillary, was elected president. And for Democrats, Bernie Sanders, mostly a non-interventionist, won 43% of the votes in last year’s primaries – a high percentage even though Wikileaks proved the Democratic National Committee rigged the election against him and for the interventionist Hillary.

Adding Trump + Hillary, about 2/3 of Americans favored non-interventionism. And when McCain says Americans are “pro-military,” the reality is we certainly favor our troops, but that really means not getting them killed in the senseless wars he has pushed, and is pushing.

Indeed, going back to 2008, a major  reason President Obama won was because he opposed the Iraq War from its beginning in 2003, while the two senators he defeated that year, Hillary and McCain, voted for it.

Another plebiscite comes next year when McCain’s Arizona sidekick in the Senate, the pro-war, pro-amnesty and anti-Trump Jeff Flake, faces opposition in the state’s primary from Kelli Ward. She is leading in the polls and last year, when she lost in the primary in her bid against McCain, was endorsed by Ron Paul.

The fact is the fiscal pressures on both the United States and Europe are going to force cuts in military forces and foreign deployments. Representing Arizona, McCain obviously is aware of the Senior Lobby.

Realistically, what will be cut first? Medicare and Social Security? Or many of the nearly 800 U.S. military bases in 70 foreign countries? Ask your grandma.