On the heels of his trip to the Middle East and Europe last week, John McCain is in Los Angeles today, where he delivered a much anticipated speech outlining his views on the nation’s foreign policy goals. The presumptive Republican nominee didn’t say much new. Speaking before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, McCain, as he has in the past, admitted the U.S. has an image problem around the world and suggested the way forward is to have a more cooperative foreign policy with international allies. “Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed,” McCain told the group. “We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies.”
The most striking thing about the speech was the personal tone that McCain used when speaking about conflict–perhaps a nod toward critics who say the senator, if elected, will merely continue the same path as the Bush administration when it comes to waging war. He talked of the sacrifice he and his own family had made on behalf of the country–noting when his father went to war after Pearl Harbor that he barely saw him for four years. “I detest war,” said McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies…Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.”
Yet this was not a game-changing speech for McCain. The senator did not back down from his steadfast support of the war in Iraq, and, in a clear jab at his Democratic rivals, said advocates of troop withdrawal were pushing a course that would draw the U.S. into a “wider and more difficult war” full of “greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date.” He said it would “strengthen” the country to confront “radical Islamic terrorism.” “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House,” McCain declared.
A significant problem for McCain is that he is trying to accomplish something that President Bush has tried to do for years, which is to convince a war-weary American public that leaving Iraq would be worse than staying and continuing the fight. In an election year so focused on “change,” McCain is struggling to distinguish himself from the Bush administration when it comes to Iraq. Asked earlier this week in San Diego how his position on Iraq is different from Bush, McCain didn’t answer, instead reminding the reporter that he went against the wishes of his party in advocating a change in strategy and in leadership (i.e., the removal of Former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld) when it wasn’t politically popular. Will voters remember McCain’s previous stand against Bush come November, especially when their positions are so similar today? That’s a question that could decide the election.
