When John McCain slipped into Syria the other day to meet with Islamist rebels, Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted “best wishes” to his fellow warmonger and claimed “dibs on his office if he doesn’t come back.” Leave it to Sen. Graham, who has been agitating along with McCain for the US to send weapons to the rebels, to joke about the untrustworthiness of the very people he wants to arm. But the rebels’ savagery is no joke: we are, after all, talking about people who eat the lungs of their enemies.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) had it kind of right when he admonished the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after it voted for a bill that would arm Syria’s Islamist insurgents:
“This is an important moment. You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It’s an irony you cannot overcome.”
And yet irony doesn’t quite cover it: insanity is more like it. Here is a man who is the Republican party’s voice when it comes to foreign policy, a role he has appropriated due to his intimacy with those who book the Sunday talk shows, and yet when it comes to America’s relationship with the rest of the world his utter and complete ignorance is appalling.
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In short, McCain doesn’t know s%^*t about foreign policy: he has been wrong, wrong,
wrong about absolutely everything. So it isn’t merely ironic that he is leading the charge in demanding we intervene in Syria – it’s downright crazy.
What’s puzzling is why anyone is listening to him. And his fellow Senators are certainly paying attention: an overwhelming bipartisan vote of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the McCain-Menendez bill authorizing aid to the rebels (there were only three dissents).
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So what did McCain do in Syria? The military backbone of the opposition is the al-Nusra Front, which has recently pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. Did McCain meet with their commanders – in spite of the fact that they have recently been added to the State Department’s list of officially-designated terrorist organizations? He didn’t say. What we do know about his trip is that he went and listened to their demands that we set up a no fly zone, send them guns and cash, and attack Hezbollah in Lebanon – yes, Lebanon. They want us to widen the war, and naturally Sen. McCain is for that, too. Has there ever been a war he didn’t want to escalate?
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Finally, it may be initially puzzling to contemplate the support for aiding the rebels coming from supposedly staunch opponents of “terrorism,” such as McCain and Graham. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense: those two don’t care so much about fighting jihadists as they do about effecting regime-change throughout the Middle East. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran – all are in the War Party’s sights, and the Two Amigos are leading the charge. Forget about the “war on terrorism” – that was a cover story from the very beginning. The real story of American foreign policy in the new millennium is all about
regime change.
