McCain reflects on his mistakes

"We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing."

While I hesitate to start this blog off with a seemingly negative post, I found this video to be of particular interest. First of all, I would like to say that I do not believe John McCain is a bad man. I believe that that he thinks he's doing the right thing for this country. However, I think his own comment about doing the right thing is precisely how McCain seems to contradict himself.

Many of the McCain supporters I know have made the argument that we should put McCain in office because he has more military experience and would thus make a better Commander-in-chief. At the same time, I would venture to guess that a sizeable number of these McCain supporters would readily agree that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. This was a decision that McCain had initially supported in the first place, and he seems comfortable with maintaining a long-term commitment there.

Yes, we can all be a little slow in doing the right thing sometimes, but do we really wan't to put someone in office who showed so much confidence in Bush's war in the first place? Sure the American public supported the war at first. So did most policymakers as well, but ignorance should be no excuse. As a policymaker who is supposed to be accountable to the American public, John McCain showed little inclination to split from his party and his president and oppose the war. Even still, he maintains that we will be committed to Iraq in the long-term. Unfortunately, because of mistakes he was partly at fault for, this may be a reality. He ackowledges that mistakes were made, yet he seems prepared to continue the war in much the same way that it has been run over the past couple of years.

If you believe that John McCain is fit to be Commander-in-chief, you are tacitly admitting that you are supporting someone who is "slow in doing the right thing sometimes." Okay, he didn't support MLK day the first time around, that sounds bad. That shouldn't disqualify him for being a good leader, though it does make you wonder about some things. How does this make him a better Commander-in-chief, if he was uncritical of the war in the first place? I am not saying that this is the basis on which either of the democratic candidates have automatically become more qualified leaders, but the logic of the argument for supporting McCain because of his foreign policy credentials seems fallacious.

If anything, because of his experience as a POW I would think thatMcCain should have been even more cautious in showing support for this war that will likely cost us over 3 trillion dollars. Do you know how many generations of American students' college tuitions could be paid off by 3 trillion dollars? How many people could that money have provided medical treatment for? How many hungry children could you have fed? Just some thoughts.

How can somebody who is slow in doing the right thing in our largest foreign policy commitment possibly be well-qualified to be Commander-in-chief? I'm not talking about his relative qualifications to Clinton or Obama, I'm just talking about his own credibility. It wouldn't matter who he was running up against. We are in a period where we went from a burst of worldwide sympathy to a time of global apathy and ambivalence in terms of international attitudes towards the United States. Is John McCain really going to be any better, or will his policies simply carry on the Bush doctrine and leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the international community?