America’s madness
An Indian living in the West writes:
Here is John McCain being interviewed on the BBC. Is he losing his marbles?
LA replies:
McCain’s madness would appear to be America’s madness, would it not?
I am distraught by the now taken for granted American attitude that we have the right to attack any country and kill its leader, not because he is threatening us or our allies, but because we decide we don’t like him—because he’s the “bad guy” in our “democratic” script. I am deeply disturbed by the absence of any voices of dissent. I look around the Web, I don’t find any. Diana West is the only person I know of who agrees with me on this. I even went to The Paleostinian Conservative , a.k.a. The American Conservative, a publication I loathe, trying to find people who share my horror at what we’ve done in Libya. And what was their cover story? Another article attacking Israel, by Israel haters Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer:
That magazine never strays far from the anti-Israelism that was and remains its motivating impulse. There’s a blog at the site called TAC Daily. Nothing about Libya there, but there is a big article contemptuously dismissing the idea that Islam and Islamic terrorism pose any kind of threat to America. In the resentment-driven world of that magazine, Israel is the fount of badness, and since Israel is threatened by Muslim terrorists, Muslim terrorists must not be bad.
ILW replies:
He said many things during that interview. One of the things he said almost nonchalantly is that 30,000 wounded Libyans should be moved to a hospital located on an American air base in Germany. Of course, if you move 30,000 wounded men and women (and children), their families would accompany them. So multiply that by four (or six given the size of a Libyan family?). You get 120,000 to 180,000 freshly minted immigrants on German soil. That won’t end there because those 180,000 would have friends, cousins and relatives. Before you know it, the number balloons to a million.
I don’t think McCain would even be disturbed by that thought if someone pointed out to him the consequences of the insanity he was suggesting America engage in.
You are right that his insanity is very American. Americans no longer have a sense of national interest that is different from the propagation of democracy. I could see signs of this in the ’90s. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made it a point to lecture the Indian Government on “human rights violations” in Kashmir while she turned a blind eye to the rapid increase in terrorist training camps in Pakistan. It was also during this time that Bosnia happened. Neither policies served American interests in any way.
I sometimes wonder if the Russians assist Iran just to spite America. Seen from a Russian perspective, the U.S. has become a meddlesome bully. There are very strong feelings in Russia about the expansion of NATO despite the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism. The way the Russians see it, the Americans are hell bent on imposing their ideas on what a country’s politics should be on the whole world. Therefore, funding Iran becomes a convenient way to “get even” with the U.S.
LA replies:
Another thing McCain said in the interview, with that weird smile he always has pasted on his face, is that the destruction of Kaddafi should put Putin on warning that the same thing might happen to him. American “democracy” must rule the world, and must destroy everything that stands in its way. McCain is mad. Yet he occupies a high and respected position in U.S. politics. Not only the neocons, but many ordinary conservatives and Republicans share his view, and no respected mainstream figures clearly oppose his view. The McCain/neocon ideology rules America, without resistance.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 23, 2011 10:21 AM | Send