Senator John McCain’s Putin paranoia has broken off the chain of reason. On March 15, on the floor of the Senate, the Arizona octogenarian “outed” Rand Paul as a Russian agent.
After Paul (R-Ky.) objected to McCain’s motion to approve the application of Montenegro to join NATO, McCain (shown) accused the libertarian-leaning senator of doing the bidding of the Russian president.
“The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin,” McCain declared.
The full context of his condemnation is equally disturbing. As Paul left the chamber, McCain said:
I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification or any rationale for the action he has just taken. That is really remarkable, that a senator blocking a treaty that is supported by the overwhelming number — perhaps 98, at least, of his colleagues — would come to the floor and object and walk away.
The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is he has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.
In response, Senator Paul’s office released the following explanation of his vote against Montenegro’s NATO membership:
Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan). In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.
Whereas John McCain has never met a military operation he didn’t like, the war of words between McCain and Paul began at least in 2010 when McCain called Paul a “whacko bird” for his “isolationism,” as reported by Reason.
In February of this year, Paul punched back, reminding McCain — who’s been in Congress as representative and senator since 1983 — that Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, not McCain. As reported by WND:
“Everything that he says about the president is colored by his own personal dispute he’s got running with President Trump, and it should be taken with a grain of salt, because John McCain’s the guy who’s advocated for war everywhere,” Paul said.
“He would bankrupt the nation. We’re very lucky John McCain’s not in charge, because I think we’d be in perpetual war,” Paul added.
“I would say John McCain’s been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades. He advocated for the Iraq War, which I think destabilized the Middle East,” he said.
“If you look at the map, there’s probably at least six different countries where John McCain has advocated for us having boots on the ground,” he added.
After Senator Paul’s office issued a statement explaining his refusal to force American taxpayers to foot the bill for the defense of another foreign country, Senator McCain’s office fired off its own version of the vote.
“Senator McCain believes that the person who benefits the most from Congress’ failure to ratify Montenegro’s ascension to NATO is Vladimir Putin, whose government has sought to destroy the NATO alliance, erode confidence in America’s commitments to its allies, overthrow the duly-elected government of Montenegro, and undermine democratic institutions throughout Europe,” McCain’s message read.
While John McCain has no apparent aim to remain faithful to his oath of office, he is always faithful to the tenets of neoconservatism of which he is an ardent evangelist.
In an article published last year, John F. McManus, president emeritus of The John Birch Society (the publisher of The New American), described neocons, their motives and their mores:
What is neoconservatism? The man who always claimed to be the “godfather” of the movement is Irving Kristol. In his 1995 book Neonconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, he wrote, “We accepted the New Deal in principle, and had little affection for the kind of isolationism that then permeated American conservatism.” He also bared the roots of his political and economic preferences when he additionally stated, “I regard myself as lucky to have been a young Trotskyite and I have not a single bitter memory.” So, he wanted the socialism desired by FDR’s New Deal and the U.S. to be the policeman of the world on the way to world government.
The Leon Trotsky he lauded partnered with Lenin in the takeover of Russia in 1917. A few years later after Lenin died and Stalin emerged as the top criminal, Trotsky fled for his life. The two had split because Stalin favored head cracking and gulags while Trotsky wanted to impose Marxist socialism slowly and patiently. His technique called for propagandizing people into choosing it. Both shared the ultimate goal of a tyrannical world government and differed only in how to obtain it.
So, a neoconservative advocates big government socialism and worldwide internationalism via undeclared wars and entangling pacts. Neocon Charles Krauthammer boldly spelled out these goals in a 1989 article appearing in Kristol’s journal, The National Interest. He advocated U.S. integration with other nations to create a “super-sovereign” entity that is “economically, culturally, and politically hegemonic in the world.” His ultimate goal called for a “new universalism [which] would require the conscious depreciation not only of American sovereignty but of the notion of sovereignty in general.”
An extremely effective way to diminish American sovereignty and strength is to erode the former by expending the latter of innumerable foreign “wars.” Again, from McManus’s essay exposing the neocon dogma:
Neoconservatives love war. Not the kind authorized by a congressional declaration that might result in a quick victory and the troops coming home, but a conflict started by presidential mandate with full authorization supplied by the United Nations or its NATO subsidiary. As Senator Graham stated in a recent Capitol Hill press conference, he wants the president given a green light for another undeclared war: “I agree with the president that Congress should act regarding giving him the authority to fight ISIL.”
War without the constitutional requirement for a formal congressional declaration has been our nation’s policy since World War II. Our forces haven’t won a war since that struggle because they have been hamstrung by rules imposed by the UN, NATO, or presidential dictate. The U.S. never lost a war until our leaders departed from formally issuing a required declaration.
Congress, which should have insisted on adherence to the Constitution, lamely tolerated stalemates or losses in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. If U.S. forces are to be employed to defeat ISIS (or ISIL), there should be a declaration of war, not a presidential dictate.
Readers interested in familiarizing themselves with the dangers to American sovereignty and economic prosperity posed by the proliferation of the neocon national policy should view The John Birch Society’s 2-DVD set exposing the tactics of those espousing this position.
In view of McCain’s conflating of constitutionalism with collusion with a foreign government, it seems that neocons now consider any attempt to uphold the congressional oath of office to be something akin to treason.
Ironic.
Photo: Sen. John McCain
